Israel’s open warfare with Iran after decades of shadow war
Israel’s strikes on Iran have heightened fears of an all-out war between the two countries, whose history of enmity spans decades of clandestine conflicts. A timeline of key events:
1979 – Iran’s pro-Western leader, Mohammed Reza Shah, who regarded Israel as an ally, is swept from power in an Islamic Revolution that installs a new Shi’ite theocratic regime with opposition to Israel
1982 – As Israel invades Lebanon, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards work with fellow Shi’ite Muslims there to set up Hezbollah
1983 – Iran-backed Hezbollah uses suicide bombings to expel Western and Israeli forces from Lebanon
1992-94 – Argentina and Israel accuse Iran and Hezbollah of orchestrating suicide bombings at Israel’s embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and a Jewish centre in the city in 1994, each of which killed dozens of people
2002 – A disclosure that Iran has a secret program to enrich uranium stirs concern that it is trying to build a nuclear bomb in violation of its non-proliferation treaty commitments, which it denies
2009 – In a speech, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calls Israel “a dangerous and fatal cancer”
2010 – Stuxnet, a malicious computer virus widely believed to have been developed by the US and Israel, is used to attack a uranium enrichment facility at Iran’s Natanz nuclear site
2018 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hails President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers after years of lobbying against the agreement
2020 – Israel welcomes the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the overseas arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, in an American drone strike in Baghdad
2021 – Iran blames Israel for the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, viewed by Western intelligence services as the mastermind of a covert Iranian program to develop nuclear weapons capability
2022 – US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid sign a joint pledge to deny Iran nuclear arms
April 2024 – A suspected Israeli air strike on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus kills seven Revolutionary Guards officers. Israel neither confirms nor denies responsibility
October 2024 – Iran fires over 180 missiles at Israel in what it calls revenge for the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on September 27 and the killing of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31
June 2025 – Israel carries out strikes in Iran it says were aimed at disrupting the Islamic Republic’s nuclear infrastructure and targeted scientists working on a nuclear bomb. The US denies providing assistance for the operation
AAP
