In addition to open conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel is waging a not-so-secret war against Iran and its allies. In late December, an IRGC commander was killed in a suspected Israeli airstrike in Damascus. A week later, Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas official, was assassinated in an attack on a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut. On January 20, another rocket attack in Damascus killed five IRGC members, including Hojatallah Omidvar, an intelligence chief in the IRGC’s foreign operations division. On January 4, the Americans killed Mushtaq al-Jawari in a drone strike on his headquarters in Baghdad. He was the leader of Harakat al-Nujaba, a group involved in attacks on American forces.
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Meanwhile, a series of terrorist attacks has rocked the Iranian regime. These include a double suicide attack claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group that killed about 100 people at the grave of Qassem Soleimani, a senior IRGC general assassinated by the Americans in 2020. There was also the killing of at least 11 police officers in the tense eastern Balochistan province by a Pakistan-based group called Jaish al-Adl.