‘We are prepared for any scenario’ warns Netanyahu as US general flies to Israel amid fears of ‘imminent’ Iran strike

WHEN the Israelis attacked the Iran consulate in Damascus, they must have known there would be a reaction to it.

In a sense they were almost taunting the Iranians — testing how far they could push them on the assumption that they didn’t think the Iranians would react very strongly.

The Iranians always talk apocalyptically.

They make blood-curdling threats but usually carry them through at a much lower level.

They are murderous dabblers, a malign actor across the whole of the region.

But everything they do is always arm’s length and low risk.

They persuade their clients, like Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen or Hamas to undertake operations against the Americans, the British or the Israelis.

But it’s always somebody else doing the dirty work.

The reason that they only dabble is because they know they are internally insecure.

Revolution has never been very far away from modern Iran in the last 20 years. They always worry about taking on a real war in case it brings the regime down.

Are they prepared to do more this time?

I suspect not, but it’s likely one of their clients will hit Israeli interests across the region, like Israeli firms or embassies.

The whole region will be on high alert, including the British and Americans.

The Americans are fully behind the Israelis, who are warning: “If you push us too hard, we will attack straight into Iranian territory.”

If the Israelis did attack Iran directly, they would probably go after large parts of the infrastructure Iran needs for its nuclear weapons programme, something they have been itching to do for many years.

The Israeli message is: “If you give us the opportunity, we’ll be glad to do it.”

It is intended to scare the Iranians off and make them take a step back.

If that does not work, then things could be a lot more dangerous this time next week.

FEARS that the Middle East could explode into all-out war are ratcheting up after Iran vowed vengeance for a deadly Israeli missile strike on its embassy in Damascus, the capital of Syria.

At least 11 people were killed when a consular annex was reduced to rubble by strikes which Iran says were carried out by Israeli F-35 fighter jets.

Among those 11 killed were two top Iranian generals, Brigadier Mohammed Reza Zahidi, who we understand commanded Iran's Revolutionary Guard in Syria and neighbouring Iraq, and Brigadier Mohammed Haji Rahimi.

Also among the dead is a representative of the Hezbollah terrorist group Hussein Yusuf.

Both Iran and Hezbollah have vowed vengeance, with Iran's president Ebrahim Raisi saying this strike will not go unanswered.

The suggestion is that perhaps Israel has crossed a threshold with a strike on an embassy.

Embassies are sovereign soil of the nations they belong to, so this was a strike on sovereign Iranian soil in Syria and in one sense it is an escalation and the concerns that this could spiral out are in many ways well founded.

Interestingly, we've heard reports in the local media in Syria and in the region that America appears to be distancing itself from this strike, officials saying they had no advanced knowledge.

It would appear that the reason for this missile strike was the meeting between these Revolutionary Guard commanders and the representatives of Hezbollah.

We will now have to wait and see how Iran chooses to take its revenge.

Now of course, if you are an Israeli diplomat living abroad, then you may well think that you are now more of a target.

Because Israel has targeted an Iranian embassy, we may expect to see the possibility that Iran may target Israeli diplomats or missions around the world.

And we have just seen, in the last few days, suspected Iranian agents attacking an Iranian journalist here in London.

Tehran is showing, perhaps by this stabbing that it maintains the ability and the capability to attack people it sees as critical of the regime and enemies of the regime around the world.

Some context that we understand that Tehran employs criminal proxies to carry out that sort of dirty work doesn't necessarily have the same sort of sophisticated overseas operations that we might expect of other hostile actors like Russia.

But nonetheless, I think in the wake of what happened in Damascus on Monday, combined with what's been happening across the region in recent months, there is concern and anxiety to see how Iran responds and what that will elicit from Israel.