The head of Israel’s military intelligence, Aharon Haliva, warned today that Iran is “considering disrupting” the 2022 football World Cup, but that he fears a negative reaction from Qatar.
“The Iranians are considering disrupting the World Cup in Qatar”, underlined Haliva during a conference at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv.
“The only thing stopping them is a possible reaction from Qatar,” he added.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz also warned that Iran, Israel’s enemy, could carry out actions during the event to destabilize the region.
Iran, which is experiencing a violent wave of protests against its Islamic regime, “seeks to maintain instability as something constant”, highlighted Gantz, during the weekly meeting of his political party in Parliament.
“The football World Cup is likely to be one of those events where it tries to cause instability,” he added, according to statements reported by Israeli media.
On Wednesday, Israel and the United States blamed Iran for the drone attack on a diesel tanker in the Gulf of Oman.
Although this was an isolated event, an Israeli official told the Efe agency that “it is very interesting that the incident occurred a few days before the start of the World Cup in Qatar, neighboring Iran”.
The same source defended that Iran wants to show that it can destabilize the area and terrorize the whole world”.
The 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the first to be held in an Arab country, kicked off on Sunday at the Al Bayt stadium, in Al Khor.
Around 1.5 million fans from all over the world are expected to participate in the event.
The minutes before the start of England-Iran (6-2), Group B of the 2022 World Cup, were marked by protests from both teams, with Iranian footballers refraining from singing the national anthem and the English demonstrating against the racism.
The eleven players chosen for the starting eleven by the coach of Iran, the Portuguese Carlos Queiroz, including the forward of FC Porto Taremi, remained impassive on the lawn of the Khalifa stadium, in Doha, without uttering a word, while the country anthem.
The captain of the Iranian team, striker Alireza Jahanbakhsh, had revealed that the national team players would make a “collective decision” on the possibility of not singing the lyrics of the anthem in the debut game at the 2022 World Cup, as a way of supporting the victims of the demonstrations against the government of that Middle Eastern country.
The outrage in Iran over the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, sparked the biggest wave of anti-government protests since 2019, then against rising gasoline prices in an oil-rich country.
