The string of security incidents which rocked Iran last week, and which Tehran attributes to Jerusalem, prompted Israel to increase its alert levels for fear of Iranian retaliation, officials said Sunday.
The move came in the wake of last week's assassination of Sayyad Khodaei - a senior member of the Revolutionary Guard Corps who was shot dead outside his home in Tehran - and the attack on the Islamic Republic’s sensitive Parchin military site, both of which Tehran has attributed to the Israeli security agency Mossad.
While no one has taken official responsibility for Khodaei’s assassination, The New York Times reported that Israel has informed the Biden administration of its operation to take out the Iranian colonel - himself believed to have been the architect of a number of plots to attack and kidnap Israelis and Jews around the world.
Israel, for its part, described the leak as a breach of trust between Jerusalem and Washington, with whom the Jewish State cooperates closely in matters of security and intelligence, and warned that Israelis may be put at risk of Iranian vengeance in the wake of the NYT report.
Officials in Israel believe the leak originated from administration officials who oppose Israel's actions against Iran out of concern that they would be harmful to the negotiations on a return to the 2015 nuclear deal.
Khodaei’s death was followed by a report in the semi-official Fars news agency, which stated that an engineer had died and another employee was wounded in an incident at the Parchin site, where Iran is known to develop high-tech weapons as well as nuclear technologies for its controversial nuclear program.
The NYT also reported that the facility was attacked by several drones, which exploded on the exterior of one of the military site’s research buildings. The newspaper added the operation was similar to previous attacks on nuclear targets in Iran - attributed to Israel.