Israeli Iran attack? What goes around comes around.

Israel’s “outraged” response to the recent attacks and its blaming of Iran drip hypocrisy. Israel has assassinated Iranian scientists in Iran and Palestinian figures around the world going back decades, and as recently as January 2010, when it killed Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. Israel claims that the Lebanese Hezbollah was involved in the attacks. If so, this would represent a blowback for Israel’s assassination of Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus in February 2008. Hezbollah has denied involvement – which again might be self-serving – making it clear that any possible revenge attack for Maghniyeh’s death will be “spectacular,” for which Hezbollah will take full responsibility.

It is misleading for the media to report that last week’s attacks targeted Israeli “civilians.” While we oppose such attacks against both Iranians and Israelis – indeed against anyone and any nation – the recent assassination of an Iranian scientist and his driver, and the 2010 near-fatal wounding of another scientist and his wife, were no less attacks on “civilians.” Somehow Israel’s supporters miss this element of the story, though Iranians certainly have not. Israeli military and diplomatic personnel serving in foreign assignments are frontline troops in their nation’s covert war against Iran. If Israel does not want its own civilians targeted, it must not target Iranian civilians.

Israel considers itself immune from the immutable law of terror: What goes around comes around. Israelis such as Defense Minister Ehud Barak have in the past downplayed the possibility of Iranian blowback, saying that Iran would not wish to widen the war and risk the overthrow of its regime. The strikes in India and Georgia and the plot in Thailand counter such claims.

The fact is that the Iranian regime is under domestic pressure by its democratic opposition, and is threatened by Israel and the United States on a daily basis. Tough sanctions have been imposed on Iran that have hurt the lives of ordinary Iranians. Thus, the Iranian regime may feel compelled to strike back at some point. At the same time, the assassination of the Iranian scientists did not provoke a word of protest by almost anyone in the West.

Israel – and by extension the US – seem to believe that there is good terrorism (committed by them and their allies) and bad terrorism (committed by their foes). The US State Department expressed concerns only for Iran’s possible involvements in the terror campaign but did not utter a single word about Israel’s covert war against Iran. But there is only one type of terrorism, terrible for humanity. If we do not condemn terrorism universally – regardless of who has or which state commits it – then we should not be surprised when our adversaries adopt it as a strategy to counter the terrorism committed by us and our allies against them.

Muhammad Sahimi, a professor at the University of Southern California, analyzes Iran’s political developments for the PBS Frontline/Teheran Bureau website. Richard Silverstein is a freelance journalist who specializes in Israeli national security issues and writes the Tikun Olam blog.

© 2012 Global Viewpoint Network/Tribune Media Services. Hosted online by The Christian Science Monitor.

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