The Israel-Iran shadow war is a sustained conflict conducted through covert operations, cyber activity, sabotage, and strikes on Iranian personnel and weapons networks. The episodes below show how the contest has touched Iran’s nuclear program, military infrastructure, and the routes used to arm Hezbollah.
Major episodes
- Stuxnet and Operation Olympic Games—malware discovered in 2010 that targeted industrial systems associated with Iran’s uranium enrichment.
- The 2021 Natanz outage—a power failure at the enrichment facility, followed by reports of damage to centrifuges.
- The 2018 nuclear archive seizure—Israel’s presentation of files it said were taken from Tehran.
- Operations against Iranian officials—including the 2020 killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and the 2023 killing of Razi Mousavi.
- Cyber operations and influence activity—including the disruption reported at Iran’s Shahid Rajaee port in 2020.
- Drone and arms-transfer networks—Iranian drone proliferation and Israel’s campaign against weapons shipments to Hezbollah.
Why Syria matters
Iran used Syria as a route and staging area for military support to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel has acknowledged a sustained effort to prevent Iranian entrenchment in Syria and the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah; it rarely claimed individual strikes. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ account of the campaign between wars describes that effort and its focus on supply routes. The reported 2020 Shahid Rajaee port disruption shows how cyber incidents became part of the contest. The IAEA’s assessment of Iran’s past nuclear work supplies context for the nuclear-related episodes.
These episodes differ in what is confirmed. Iran and Israel have not officially acknowledged responsibility for every cyber incident or covert action. Read each account for the documented event, the attributed claims, and the stated effects.