Iran hanged three men and one woman on Friday for allegedly collaborating with Israeli intelligence services, as regional tensions escalated amid the backdrop of the war between Israel and Hamas.
The Mizan news agency, which is affiliated with the Iranian judiciary, said that the executed people were accused of "waging a war" against the Islamic Republic and"are directed directly by Mossad spy officers".
The executions come after an airstrike hit a suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus on Monday, killing a senior Iranian commander, Razi Mousavi. Iranian officials, who said the slain gunman was an "adviser," blamed Israel for the assassination and said they reserved the right to reciprocate.
Israel and Iran have engaged in an increasingly overt shadow war throughout the Middle East over the past decade. Syria, where Iranian forces intervened to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during the country's civil war, has emerged as an ongoing battleground. Syrian state media reported late on Thursday that Damascus International Airport had been hit by alleged Israeli air strikes, having only recently resumed operations after previous attacks.
Israeli officials usually refrain from claiming responsibility for operations against Iranian assets, but Naftali Bennett, who served as prime minister in 2021 and 2022, said in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Friday that the Jewish state struck a drone base and assassinated a senior militant commander on Iranian soil in early 2022, under his government.
"The Iranian regime is at the heart of most of the problems of the Middle East and a lot of global terrorism."However, inexplicably, almost no one touches it," Bennett wrote, calling for the United States and other international actors to take tougher measures against Tehran.
Iran is a long - time supporter of Hamas in Gaza, and supports militant groups throughout the region that have launched attacks against Israel and U.S. forces in the region since the Palestinian group launched its October 7 attack on the Jewish state. Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group, its most powerful proxy, has exchanged fire daily with Israeli forces across Lebanon's border with Israel, raising fears that the war in Gaza could lead to a wider conflagration.
The Iran-backed Houthi rebel group in Yemen has launched drones and ballistic missiles at Israel since the outbreak of hostilities in Gaza. Commercial vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden have also been targeted since mid-November.
The United States earlier this month formed an international maritime task force to address Houthi attacks, amid concerns about major disruptions in global trade as ships shifted around the Horn of Africa.
The US military's Central Command said that since Tuesday, its forces in the southern Red Sea have intercepted 13 attack drones and six missiles fired by the Houthis at ships in the area. The United States also announced on December 25 that it had struck three facilities in Iraq used by Iranian-backed militias, following a drone strike on a US military base earlier in the day that seriously injured a US service member.
Iran has denied any involvement in the deadly Hamas attack on October 7, a claim supported by Western officials. The Hamas attack on southern Israel killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities, and led to a retaliatory attack in Gaza that killed more than 21,100 people, according to Palestinian health officials.
Tehran also insists that any operations by its proxy forces in the region, including Hezbollah and the Houthis, are engineered on its own, a claim rejected by Israel.
On Tuesday, Yoav Galant, Israel's defense minister, told a parliamentary committee that Israel was under attack in a" multi-arena war " from seven areas, which he identified as Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran.
"We have already responded and acted in six of these arenas and I say here in the most obvious way - anyone who acts against us is a potential target, there is no immunity for anyone,"he added.
