Iran is trying to strike Israeli targets around the world in a bid to stop the assassinations of its nuclear scientists, the head of the Shin Bet security service, Yoram Cohen, said Thursday.

Lecturing at a closed forum in Tel Aviv, Cohen said that Iran believes Israel is behind the attacks on its nuclear experts, which have killed four scientists since November 2010. “It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not that Israel took out the nuclear scientists,” Cohen said. “A major, serious country like Iran cannot let this go on. They want to deter Israel and extract a price so that decision makers in Israel think twice before they order an attack on an Iranian scientist.”

Cohen said Iran was working very hard abroad through the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to hit Israeli targets.

“Over the past year three serious attacks were thwarted that were on the verge of being carried out,” the Shin Bet head said. “In Turkey against the general consul in Istanbul; in Baku, Azerbaijan; and two weeks ago in Thailand.”

Israel’s main dilemma in the coming year, Cohen added, was how to stop Palestinian terror groups in Gaza from obtaining rockets that could reach the metropolitan Tel Aviv area, but without becoming embroiled in a large-scale military action in Gaza.

Cohen said the terror groups’ main goal was to increase the range of their missiles to the greater Tel Aviv area, as well as their precision and the size of their warheads.

For more, go to Haaretz.com

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