Israel keeping US in dark about covert ops in Iran, CNN says

Jerusalem does not let Washington know about ops ahead of time and Washington is maintaining a hands-off policy. 

By World Israel News Staff

Israel is leaving the U.S. in the dark about ramping up covert operations against Iran’s nuclear program, according to a report by CNN published Tuesday.

The report comes against a backdrop of high-profile killings of Iranian officials, some of which have been attributed to Israel, and what CNN termed “gray-zone operations” inside Iran in recent months.

Israel is “hoping that through a series of tactical actions it can keep the pressure on and continuously delay Iranian progress,” Jonathan Panikoff, head of the Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council and a former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East at the National Intelligence Council, told CNN.

One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel was behind the assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei last month.

Israel does not inform the U.S. know about its actions ahead of time, and for its part the Biden administration has refrained from interfering in Israel’s covert operations, to the extent that they are not even discussed in closed-door meetings, the report said, citing past and current officials.

On Monday, the state news IRNA agency cited a judiciary official as saying that three Mossad-linked Iranian agents arrested in April would be put on trial on accusations of collaborating with Israel to kill Iranian nuclear scientists.

A day earlier, an IRGC commander admitted that a May explosion at a military site near the Parchin nuclear facility outside Tehran that  killed a scientist was the result of “industrial sabotage.”

Iran was recently censured by the UN nuclear watchdog’s Board of Governors over “systematic insufficient cooperation,” especially its failure to disclose information relating to undeclared uranium traces found at three sites.

Iran responded by removing dozens of of UN surveillance cameras from its from its nuclear sites.

“The situation with Iran is getting very hot,” an official told CNN.