Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to appear on CBS and Fox news programs Sunday to link Iran to last week's
terrorist attack in Burgas and push home the point that if this is how Tehran acts without nuclear weapons, imagine what its behavior will be with them.
The interviews are part of a stepped-up diplomatic campaign following the Bulgarian attacks to get the world not only to condemn Iran for the attacks, but also to take measures against Iran for its support and involvement in international terrorism.
According to Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev, the Iranian government's denial of involvement in terrorism, including in the attack in Burgas Wednesday that killed five Israelis and a Bulgarian bus driver, "simply have no credence whatsoever."
Regev said that a terrorist involved in the attack on the wife of an Israeli diplomat in New Delhi in February was first recruited by the Iranian embassy. He also said that three Iranian terrorists were arrested in Thailand for an attack that went awry there in February, and two other Iranians were arrested last month with explosives in Kenya.
In addition, operatives of Hezbollah, which he dubbed Iran's terrorist "sub-contractor," have been arrested both in Cyprus and Thailand. Over the last year Iran has been behind some 20 terrorist initiatives, he said
One diplomatic official said Israel was in "conversations at both working levels and the highest levels" with governments around the world to share the facts it has regarding Iran and Hezbollah's involvement both in the Bulgaria attack and in the others over the last year.
Efforts to get the international community to take action against Iran for its sponsorship of terrorism picked up support from
The Washington Post's editorial page Saturday, when the paper wrote an editorial headlined "Holding Iran accountable for terrorist attacks."
"The bombing of a bus in Bulgaria filled with Israeli tourists on Wednesday underlines the grim fact that Iran is waging a war of terrorism. Using the territory of countries across the world, working sometimes through proxies like Lebanon’s Hezbollah and sometimes with its own forces, Tehran has been intentionally targeting not just diplomats of enemies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia but also civilians," the paper wrote.
"If Iran suffers no consequences from its acts of terrorism, they will continue," the paper continued. "The Security Council should review the abundant evidence of involvement by the Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah in this year’s attacks and punish both those groups as well as the Iranian government with sanctions."