The suicide bombing of a Bulgarian bus packed with Israeli tourists has stoked fears of a deadly new phase in the long-running "shadow war" between Iran and Israel, with ordinary civilians now apparently replacing diplomats as primary targets.
U.S. and Israeli officials pointed to similarities between the Bulgarian attack and three recently foiled plots also aimed at civilians, including a nearly identical plan to kill vacationing Israelis in Cyprus. While the identity of the bomber in Wednesday's attack remained unclear, the earlier attempts have been tied to Iran or Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militia movement closely aligned with the Islamic republic.
Even before the blast in Bulgaria, intelligence officials were seeing signs of a dangerous escalation in what had until recently been a campaign of covert, tit-for-tat strikes targeting diplomats and — inside Iran — nuclear scientists.
Earlier this month, Kenyan authorities arrested two Iranian men in connection with a plot to bomb several Western and Israeli businesses in that East African country. The suspects, identified by Kenya as members of an elite Iranian military unit, had brought with them more than 220 pounds of RDX, a powerful military explosive strong enough to destroy a large hotel.
As far back as January, the Israeli government has sounded warnings about a growing terrorist threat in Bulgaria, a country whose Black Sea beaches have become a popular destination for thousands of Israelis each year.
After Wednesday's attack, Israeli officials were quick to blame Iran, but Israel did not release evidence linking Iran or Hezbollah to the incident. U.S. intelligence officials said they have not seen proof, though they did not dispute the link.
A series of Iran-linked plots in the fall and winter had mostly targeted diplomats and embassies. Iranian nationals and Hezbollah operatives had been implicated in attempted assassinations of Israeli, U.S. and Saudi figures in five countries. In one incident, Iranian operatives allegedly sought to hire Mexican gang members in a foiled plan to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington.
The attacks paused for several months during the spring, a lull that coincided with preparations for nuclear talks between Iran and the United States and five other world powers. But as the negotiations faltered in June, new plots surfaced, this time with civilians as primary targets.
In a plot eerily similar to Wednesday's attack, authorities in Cyprus announced July 7 that they had detained a Lebanese man who confessed to entering the country to plan attacks on planes and buses used by Israeli tour groups.
Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism expert who is writing a book on Hezbollah-sponsored terrorism, said the new plots pointed to a tactical shift by Iran that suggested both a deliberate escalation and an acknowledgment of the difficulty of going after embassies and other heavily guarded installations.
"They're going after softer targets," said Levitt, a researcher with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank. The new plots "fit within the pattern of the shadow war" that pits Iran and its proxies against the West, he said. "But what is shocking is the fact that, while the modus operandi is the same, this time they succeeded."
U.S. officials have cautioned that there was, as yet, no firm evidence linking Iran or its allies to Wednesday's attack in the Black Sea port of Burgas. In the latest incident, a suicide bomber managed to blend in with an Israeli tour group at the city's airport before detonating his explosives, killing five Israelis as well as their Bulgarian bus driver and himself.
Iran denied having any role in the Bulgarian attack, and its official media dismissed Israeli accusations as "ridiculous."
Both Iran and Hezbollah have publicly blamed Israel and the U.S. for the assassinations of nuclear scientists and of the militia's former security director, Imad Fayez Mughniyeh, who was blown apart in Syria in 2008 by a car bomb detonated by remote control.
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