On May 6, the office of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson told the press that Israel had exposed Iran's “vengeance plan.” According to the disclosure, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is planning to unleash a salvo of rockets and missiles on an Israeli military target (or targets) in the north to avenge recent attacks against Iranian targets in Syria that have been attributed to Israel. Highly placed IDF sources said that the Iranians plan to transfer rockets or missiles to Syria to conduct the operation. On April 30, a warehouse near Aleppo stocked with hundreds of missiles was blown up in one of the suspected Israeli attacks. Foreign commentators surmised that the strike represented an attempt to thwart the Iranian retaliation.
Under ordinary circumstances, such an intelligence item testifying to Israel’s first-rate intelligence capabilities would have remained a deep, dark secret. Why let the Iranians know that they are so vulnerable to Israeli intelligence? For example, it took Israel more than a decade to admit to one operation that everyone already knew about — the destruction of the Syrian nuclear reactor near Deir ez-Zor in 2007.
