Yesterday’s attack against Israel launched by Iran using drones was yet another illustration that this country lives under an ongoing existential threat. Yet, the war against Israel is not new. The Ayatollahs’ régime is waging it since it seized power in Tehran in 1979. Ever since, it invested wealth of resources and imagination to eradicate Israel. The continued efforts to acquire the nuclear bomb features in that evil military toolbox.

The efforts deployed by Israel to counter and prevent this deadly scenario to materialize is at the center of Target Tehran: How Israel Is Using Sabotage, Cyberwarfare, Assassination – and Secret Diplomacy – to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Create a New Middle East (Simon & Schuster) by Yonah Jeremy Bob and Ilan Evyatar.

Ever since Tehran is trying to build the bomb, Israel has worked around the clock to expose this evil machination. Things came to a head on April 30, 2018, when Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled the content of Iran’s nuclear secrets to the world in a brilliant press conference. The denunciation of Tehran’s hypocrisy was made possible by a Mossad operation to seize archives from the belly of the beast.

If the fight against Iran’s nuclear ambition is the main thread of Target Tehran – comprising covert operations and neutralizations of scientists involved in the deadly intentions against Israel – so is Jerusalem’s hard and continued work in building a new Middle East through the Abraham Accords. The groundwork for this was laid during the premiership of Ariel Sharon.

Meir Dagan, “a fighter and an intellectual” whom he selected to lead the Mossad, was entrusted with the double mission of penetrating Iran’s nuclear program, but also “to strengthen ties with the Arab Gulf nations, building on their mutual fear of Tehran.”

The dialogue and exchanges between Jerusalem and Arab capitals for whom Tehran was more of a threat than Israel increased. This evolution was tremendously facilitated with the ascension of Mohammed bin Salman as Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia in 2017. The environment became “far more accepting of Israel” and would help counter Iran’s ring of fire established around it with proxies like militias in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, pro-Iran militias in Iraq and Houthis in Yemen.

One of the key ingredients in this rapprochement can be attributed to personal relationships. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is quoted mentioning it and one of those who played a central role in that regard is also a main character of the book. Yossi Cohen, director of the Mossad between 2016 and 2021, is a larger-than-life character under the pen of the authors. Full disclosure, he was a “central source” for the book. Maintaining a close relationship with CIA Director and later US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, you can follow the sophisticated spymaster, as he roams the cozy palaces of friendly Arab capitals to promote the rise of a new Middle East with the blessing of his boss, PM Netanyahu, and Washington. Couple that with the speculated use of a kinetic cyberweapon against Iran and the killing of Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi, a main actor in Iran’s nuclear program with “a remote-controlled, satellite-linked machine gun” while he was en route to his weekend villa, and you have the image of James Bond and Q wearing a kippah.

Yonah Jeremy Bob and Ilan Evyatar’s book is extremely well-documented and fast-paced. Target Tehran reminded me of Bob Woodward’s omniscience about the corridors of Washington politics. Case in point, President George W. Bush’s slap on the wrist to former IDF chief of staff and defence minister Ehud Barak, when the latter insisted on a preventive strike against Tehran during the US President’s visit in Israel in 2008. Here’s the extract of their exchange as recounted by the authors: “General, do you understand what no means?” the president asked Barak. Then, banging his fist on the table, he growled, “No means no.”

Iran’s designs against Israel are nothing new. The régime attempted to fly suicide drones from Iraq in 2022 and hacked a water system somewhere in the country two years prior. The latter could have had catastrophic consequences for civilians. Yesterday’s attack is just another manifestation of Tehran’s long-held desire to harm and destroy Israel. The added pressure, in the context of last October 7 barbarian attacks against innocent civilians in Southern Israel is just a manifestation that “because of this fundamental shift in Israel’s relations with the Arab world, the Islamic Republic of Iran […] now faces the most powerful opposition that has ever existed to its messianic ambitions to destroy Israel and to spread radical Shiite Islam and terrorism throughout its region.”

Israel and the Mossad have drawn a clear line in the sand. Possession of the nuclear weapon by the Shiite theocracy is not an option. The war started by Hamas on October 7 and yesterday’s drones’ attacks were a predictable attempt to derail the new reality and its emerging alliances. But it’s a powerful incentive for Jerusalem to keep on fighting the doomsday scenario of a nuclear Iran. Even though no enemy should ever be underestimated, this villain shall not prevail.

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Yonah Jeremy Bob and Ilan Evyatar, Target Tehran: How Israel Is Using Sabotage, Cyberwarfare, Assassination – and Secret Diplomacy – to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Create a New Middle East, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2023, 368 pages.