War of words over bombings

Delhi – Relations between the Middle East’s most bitter enemies plunged to a new low yesterday as Israel blamed Iran for twin attacks on its diplomats in India and Georgia and threatened revenge.

‘‘Iran is behind these attacks. It is the biggest exporter of terror in the world,’’ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

The twin strikes came a day after the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Imad Mughniyah, the top Hizbollah militant whose death in a car bombing in Damascus has widely been attributed to Israel. Iran dismissed the accusation as ‘‘lies’’.

The wife of an Israeli Defence Ministry attache was seriously hurt when a hitman on a motorbike attached a magnetic bomb to her car as her driver was taking her to pick up her children from school, Indian police said.

Despite being wounded, Tal Yehoshua Koren, 42, managed to call embassy staff, saying ‘‘the vehicle exploded’’.

She and the driver were taken to hospital, where she was said to be in a critical but stable condition.

The blast occurred on Tughlak Rd, near the prime minister’s official residence. Television footage showed a charred minivan with blue diplomatic plates, its rear door blown out.

The second attempt, in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, was foiled when an embassy employee noticed a suspicious device taped to the underside of his car and called police. They found a grenade that was then defused.

The simultaneous attacks were almost certainly linked and were probably the work of Iran and its Lebanese ally Hizbollah using a local sleeper cell, said Danny Yatom, a former Mossad chief.

Al Qaeda-linked groups, which have been sponsored by Iran in the past, may have been involved, he said.

Israeli officials said the Jewish state would strike back.

‘‘We know exactly who is responsible for the attack and who planned it, and we’re not going to take it lying down,’’ Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said.

The method used in Delhi – a motorcyclist with a ‘‘sticky bomb’’ – closely resembled attacks against Iranian nuclear scientists for which Israel has been blamed.

Three scientists and a physicist have been killed in the past two years and Iran has vowed to hit back against the attacks, which Israel denies orchestrating.

Netanyahu said there had been several failed attempts on Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide in recent months, from Thailand to Azerbaijan, as Israel and the West stepped up efforts to thwart Iran’s alleged ambition to build a nuclear arsenal.

Yatom said Israeli investigators would work closely with security forces in India and Georgia, both of which have close defence ties with Israel, to track down those responsible.

‘‘We will have to do something to try to deter this so they will be scared to do it again.’’

He said Israel would be stepping up its already high security to prevent further attacks as its covert war with Iran spread.

However, he said Israel was aware that Iran may be trying to provoke it to distract attention from its own woes, including the international sanctions hitting its economy and the international fury directed at a close ally, Syria’s President Bashar al-assad, for the slaughter of anti-regime activists in Homs.

‘‘Maybe someone is trying to export domestic problems outside the country,’’ he said.

Analysts said the attempted assassination may offer Israel the opportunity to increase pressure on India to sign up to international sanctions against Iran, seen as a crucial step towards forcing Tehran to give up its presumed nuclear programme.

India recently announced that it planned to boost trade with Iran to exploit commercial opportunities presented by the Western embargo.