On Monday, a magnetic bomb attached to an Israeli embassy car in New Delhi by a motorcyclist—a duplicate of the technique used to kill three Iranian scientists in Tehran—blew up and injured the wife of the Israeli military attaché.
On Tuesday, an Iranian emerged from a house that exploded in Bangkok and tried to throw a bomb at pursuing police but instead blew off his own legs. Thai police said the house was a bomb-making factory.
The Islamic Republic denied any involvement in the New Delhi bombing—and accused Israel of bombing its own diplomats in India in an effort to tarnish Iran.
The New Delhi bombing was the fourth known instance so far this year of plotted attacks on Israelis that appear to be linked to Iran. All the other attacks—in Thailand, Azerbaijan and Georgia—were thwarted.
The New Delhi bombing killed no one. But it seriously injured the Israeli woman seated in the back of the car. She was identified as an Israeli staffer at the embassy and the wife of the defense attaché. She was on her way to pick up their children from school.
An eyewitness said he saw a solitary man on a motorbike pull up behind the car and place something on the back of the Toyota Innova minivan . The motorcyclist then drove off and seconds later there was an explosion and the car was engulfed in flames. The Indian driver of the car and two Indians in a trailing car were injured, though not seriously.
The attack method was a direct copy of that used in Tehran in four attacks over the last two years that have killed three Iranian nuclear scientists, the most recent on January 12. Iran has blamed Israel for those murders. (Two other scientists have been killed as well, but the Iranian government has not blamed them on Israel although the Western media often include them with the trio Iran does blame on Israel.)
The use of a magnetized bomb attached to a car is no proof of origin, however. Such bombs have been used by terrorists for decades.
As Iran lost no time in blaming the Tehran bombings on Israel, so Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu swiftly accused Iran of running the New Delhi bombing. “Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, are behind each of these attacks,” he said. “We will continue to take strong and systematic, yet patient, action against the international terrorism that originates in Iran.”
The United States did not blame anyone, saying it did not have enough information on the bombing.
Just one day later, a man with an Iranian passport identifying him as Saeid Moradi ran out of a Bangkok house seconds after an explosion blew off part of the roof. Two others quickly fled the house as well and disappeared.
Moradi tried to hail a taxi, but the driver, seeing him covered in dirt and blood, refused to pick him up. The driver said Moradi threw a small package at his taxi that then exploded, injuring the driver and three other Thais.
Police summoned because of the house explosion arrived and chased after Moradi, who then tried to hurl a bomb at his pursuers. But it blew up prematurely, blowing off one of his legs and injuring the other so severely that doctors later had to amputate it.
Police Gen. Pansiri Prapa-wat said his officers later found more unexploded bombs in the house. So far, he said they have not found any indications of Moradi’s planned targets.
Pansiri said Moradi flew into Thailand from Seoul on February 8, just six days before the explosion in the house.
The New Delhi bombing the day before the Bangkok events was the first successful attack on Israelis this year, but news reports tell of three other plots that have been unsuccessful.
Last month, Thai police announced they had arrested a Lebanese national believed to be a member of Hezbollah. They said they had been alerted to a possible plot involving the man by Israel several weeks earlier. They found evidence the man was plotting attacking Israeli tourists in Thailand. After his arrest, Thai police said, the man led them to a warehouse that held four tons of urea fertilizer and several gallons of liquid ammonium nitrate, key components of home-made bombs.
Also, last month, Azer-baijani police said they had arrested two Azerbaijani men they believed were recruited by Iran to attack Israel’s ambassador in Baku and a local rabbi. (See accompanying story at right below.)
The third foiled attack was Monday, the same day of the bombing in New Delhi. A Georgian national who works as a driver for the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi went to his car, which was parked some distance from the embassy. He checked beneath the car, as anyone involved with the Israeli government is taught. He saw something had been attached to the base of the vehicle and called city police. They found a grenade in a box and defused it.
In a January 24 speech, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, accused Hezbollah of trying to carry out attacks on Israelis far from Israel in an effort to avoid a direct confrontation with Israel. “During this period of time, when our enemies in the north, fearing a harsh response, avoid carrying out attacks [on Israel], we are witness to the ongoing attempts by Hezbollah and other hostile entities to exercise vicious terror attacks at locations far away from the State of Israel.” He did not mention Iran—unless the reference to “other hostile entities” was intended to mean the Islamic Republic.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast said, “Israel has bombed its embassies in New Delhi and Tbilisi to tarnish Iran’s friendly ties with the host countries…. Israel perpetrated the terrorist actions to launch psychological warfare against Iran.”
The Israeli woman injured in New Delhi, Tal Yehoshua Koren, 42, was taken to a New Delhi hospital where a doctor said she immediately underwent surgery to remove shrapnel that had penetrated her spine and liver. The doctor said she would live but might suffer some permanent damage.
Historically, both Israel and the Islamic Republic have not shied away from assassination. Iran has mostly targeted Iranian dissidents, though attacks on Saudi diplomats in the late 1980s when relations were especially low have also been attributed to Iran, and a few mass killings like that at the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994 have also been put on the Islamic Republic’s tab.
Israel has chiefly targeted the Palestinian leadership and its most violent operatives and distinguishes itself from its opponents by not targeting masses of the public with bombs.
In Tehran, at about the same time as the bombing, Prosecutor General Gholam-Hossain Moh-seni-Ejai said Iran had filed formal complaints against Israel for the three assassinations of scientists. He said the complaints were filed at an international court, which he did not identify.