Decades of shadow war between Iran and Israel

Israel launched a strike on Iranian soil this morning, sources said, in the latest of the tit-for-tat exchanges between the regional arch foes whose long-running shadow war has broken into the open.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had vowed his country would respond after Iran fired drones and missiles at Israel on 13 April.

Tehran’s action, its first-ever strike on Israel, had been in retaliation for a suspected Israeli airstrike on Tehran’s embassy compound in Damascus on 1 April.

The exchanges are part of a wider escalation since the war in Gaza began last year, but the two nations’ enmity stretches back decades, through a history of shadow wars and clandestine attacks by land, sea, air and cyberspace.