Haaretz:

Amos Harel is one of Israel's leading media experts on military and defense issues. He has been the military correspondent and defense analyst for Haaretz for the last 12 years.

It’s very tempting to connect all the dots into one straight and sure line: The prime minister calls for national unity and hints at an expected escalation with Iran; the president describes “an economic-security need that we haven’t known for many years;” Iran claims that it thwarted an assassination attempt against Gen. Qassem Soleimani and in the background there are again assessments about war getting closer, certainly with Yom Kippur around the corner.

Still, it’s doubtful that these things are connected to one another so simply and clearly. Indeed there is increasing tension between Israel and Iran, but it’s been building up over time and isn’t necessarily related to the assassination attempt, which no one knows when or if it happened, and who might be behind it.

At the same time, President Reuven Rivlin is continuing his efforts to persuade Likud and Kahol Lavan to agree on an outline for a unity government. Rivlin is using the security argument to achieve this, but he isn’t referring to an immediate military development; he’s focusing on the Israel Defense Force’s budgetary problems and its links with a difficulty in implementing its multiyear plan. The situation in the Middle East is particularly complicated, but there are no clear signs on the horizon pointing to an immediate war that would upend all political calculations.

The announcement by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on Thursday was unusual. This wasn’t an anonymous leak, but an official declaration by the head of the group’s intelligence division, claiming that Iran had uncovered an Israeli-Arab plot against Soleimani. The announcement included several details: It claimed that the Iranians had succeeded in intercepting a killer cell, which sought to plant 500 kilograms of explosives under a prayer site built in memory of Soleimani’s father, during a religious ceremony.

Broadly speaking, the plan is reminiscent of Operation Bramble Bush, the Israeli attempt on the life of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein which was disrupted by a training accident that killed five soldiers in 1992, known as the Tze’elim Bet disaster. Still, it’s hard to assess the reliability of the claims. There are plenty of people who would like to see Soleimani dead, including the Saudis. According to reports, Soleimani has escaped death at least twice – during the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and in an operation attributed to Israel and the United States in which Hezbollah chief of general staff Imad Mughniyeh was killed in Damascus in 2008.

The announcement, as well as an unusual and detailed interview aired with the general this week on a website associated with the Iranian leader, appear to be part of an attempt to continue to build a myth around Soleimani. In the background, the Iranians do indeed have accounts to close with Israel. Dozens of attacks against Iranian targets in Syria have been attributed to Israel, most recently in Iraq and one case in Lebanon as well. So far, Iran’s attempts at revenge have been thwarted.

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