In June, German and Belgian police—acting on a tip from Israeli intelligence—foiled a plot to bomb a rally being held in France by an Iranian opposition group, which several American public figures were expected to attend. The plot was orchestrated by an Iranian diplomat stationed at Tehran’s embassy in Vienna. This was by no means the first time one of the Islamic Republic’s diplomats has engaged in terrorist activity; the most notorious examples include the hijacking of TWA flight 847, several attempts on the life of Salman Rushdie, and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires. Matthew Levitt writes:

In June 2018, a [separate] investigation by Dutch intelligence led to the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats based at the Iranian embassy in Amsterdam. . . . This followed the assassination several months earlier of an Iranian Arab activist who was gunned down in the Dutch capital. . . . In January 2018, after weeks of surveillance, German authorities raided several homes tied to Iranian operatives who reportedly were collecting information on possible Israeli and Jewish targets in Germany, including the Israeli embassy and a Jewish kindergarten. . . .

[I]n 2012, four [Iranian] operatives were found trying to attack Israeli targets in Turkey, and another was arrested in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he was conducting surveillance of a local synagogue. . . . The first successful assassination of an Iranian dissident in Western Europe occurred in 1984. . . .

Despite the fact that so much of this activity has occurred on their soil, European countries have been consistently passive in their response:

The most daring and public assassinations Hizballah carried out at the behest of its Iranian masters occurred on September 17, 1992, when operatives gunned down Sadegh Sharafkandi, secretary-general of the PDKI—the largest movement of Iranian Kurdish opposition to Tehran—and three of his colleagues at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin. This operation also involved Iranian diplomats. In its findings, a Berlin court ruled that the attack was carried out by a Hizballah cell by order of the Iranian government. . . .

And yet, the German court ruling in the Mykonos case did not translate into durable and tangible action against Iran or Hizballah. . . . Apparently concerned over the diplomatic ramifications, the German ambassador to Iran distanced his government from [any] assertion of Iranian responsibility for the Mykonos attack. While many European nations withdrew their ambassadors from Iran following the ruling, this diplomatic freeze lasted only months. And . . . none of the Iranian leaders identified in the court judgment—[then-President Hashemi] Rafsanjani, [then-Foreign Minister Ali Akbar] Velayati, or [Supreme Leader] Ali Khamenei—was ever held to account for his role in the attack.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.