Recent Attacks Bring Israel and Iran's Covert War to Light

While it remains remote, the risk of a major war breaking out between Israel and Iran is slowly growing as the two rivals continue to trade tit-for-tat tactical escalations. On March 13, Iran claimed responsibility for a dozen ballistic missile strikes targeting a secret Israeli intelligence base in the Iraqi Kurdistan capital of Erbil. The following day, Israel's National Cyber Directorate declared a state of emergency after most government websites were temporarily taken offline in a large distributive denial of service (DDoS) cyberattack that Israeli media has since blamed on Iran. These recent incidents come a month after a still-unverified Israeli airstrike hit an Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) base in the western province of Kermanshah in mid-February (Iran has not directly blamed Israel for this rumored attack, though coinciding reports published by the Associated Press of a fire at the same base and explosions heard by locals indicate some...