According to The Guardian, the Head of Shin Bet says three attempted attacks by Iran have been thwarted in the past year. Iranian agents are attempting to attack Israeli targets around the world in retaliation for covert operations, including the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, the head of Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency, has warned. "It doesn't matter if it's true or not that Israel took out the nuclear scientists. A major, serious country like Iran cannot allow this to go on. They want to deter Israel and extract a price so that decision-makers in Israel think twice before they order an attack on an Iranian scientist," Yoram Cohen said in a lecture reported in Haaretz. Four Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in the past two years in what Iran – and many others in the international community – believe are operations by the Israeli secret services, or its proxy agents, as part of a covert war.
Earlier the paper reported that Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, has said the moment is approaching when any military intervention to halt Iran's nuclear programme will come too late, in a strong indication that the Jewish state is closer than ever to authorising action. But the veteran politician also publicly acknowledged the extent of debate and disagreement within Israel's political and military echelons over the merits of a military strike.
The New York Times published an article entitled “Effort to Rebrand Arab Spring Backfires in Iran”. According to the author, “It was meant to be a crowning moment in which Iran put its own Islamic stamp on the Arab Spring. More than a thousand young activists were flown here earlier this week (at government expense) for a conference on “the Islamic Awakening,” Tehran’s effort to rebrand the popular Arab uprisings of the past year.” But there was a catch. No one was invited from Syria, whose autocratic president, Bashar al-Assad, is a crucial Iranian ally. The Syrian protesters are routinely dismissed by Tehran’s government as foreign agents — despite the fact that they are Muslims fighting a secular (and brutal) dictatorship. Also, the Tehran conference coincided with fresh signs of division between Iran and other Muslim countries. On Sunday, Turkey hosted a conference of the Syrian opposition, whose members denounced Iran’s assistance in the Syrian government’s crackdown on protesters. And on Tuesday, a Saudi delegation walked out of a pan-Islamic conference in Indonesia, after a former speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Nateq Nouri, said the Saudi monarchy was corrupt and oppressive. (Needless to say, there were no Saudis at the Tehran conference.)
