Iran ‘planning to attack Israelis in Turkey’

ISRAEL urged its citizens in Turkey to leave the country yesterday as it warned that Iranian operatives were planning to attack them.

“There is a real and immediate danger,” Yair Lapid, Israel’s foreign minister, said. The warning came as tensions rose because of Iran’s collapsing nuclear deal with world powers and a series of mysterious killings of highranking Iranian officials that bear the hallmark of Mossad assassinations. “If you are already in Istanbul, return to Israel as soon as possible,” Mr Lapid warned his countrymen. “If you have planned a flight to Istanbul, cancel. No vacation is worth your life,” he added.

The warning was the latest sign that Israel is braced for retaliatory attacks and followed the reported deaths of two members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) aerospace division over the weekend. The Irgclinked Tasnim news agency identified one of the dead as Ali Kamani and said he died in a “car accident” in Iran’s central city of Khomein. Fars agency reported that another man Mohammad Abdous died “on a mission” in Semnan province, the location of the Imam Khomeini Spaceport, which has been used in satellite launches.

While there was no public accusation that the men were assassinated, their deaths followed other recent killings, some of which Iran has accused Israel of carrying out.