Iran ‘is considering attacking the World Cup in Qatar’, Israeli intelligence chief claims

Iran is considering attacking the World Cup in Qatar to divert attention from protests in the country that have left more than 350 people dead, Israel’s intelligence chief has claimed.

Major General Aharon Haliva, the head of Israel’s military intelligence, warned that Tehran could launch an attack on the Qatar football tournament to create instability in the region.

Haliva said the aim would be to divert attention from nationwide protests in Iran and instead to the consequences of such an attack.

His warning comes as widespread protests continue to shake the Islamic Republic after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police on Sept. 16.

Haliva said that as public unrest intensifies, Iran is likely to respond “much more aggressively.”

“I’m telling you that the Iranians are now considering attacking the World Cup in Qatar as well,” Haliva said at a conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv.

Iran is trying to keep instability as a constant. At a time when the world around her is stable and thriving, this is the opposite of what is happening in Iran,” Haliva told The Times of Israel.

“The World Cup is probably one of those events where it tries to create instability,” he added.

The nationwide protest movement in Iran first focused on Iran’s state-mandated hijab, or headscarf, for women, but soon turned to calls for the downfall of Iran’s ruling Shia clerics.

Haliva added that there is “real concern” within Iran that the unrest is “endangering” the regime.

Haliva said, “I don’t see any risk to the regime at this stage, but as the pressure on Iran increases, including internal pressure, the Iranian response is much more aggressive, so we should expect much more aggressive responses in the region and in the world.”

Discord in Iran is growing after Amini’s death, with Iranian football fans even publicly cheering for the national team’s defeat to England at the World Cup yesterday.

Footage surfaced overnight of a man sitting on the back of a moped waving a huge Union Flag waving behind him as he cruised the streets of Tehran in the wake of his team’s 6-2 defeat inQatar.

“People are happy with England’s victory,” said the man who filmed the spectacle from his car solemnly.

During the football match, Iranian fans in the stands chanted Amini’s name, held signs and wore T-shirts with protest slogans and booed during the national anthem.

Elsewhere in the Iranian capital, thousands of people packed into residential high-rises could be heard whistling and cheering as their team was routed, while another video – blurred to protect the identities of those involved – showed protesters celebrating after the defeat.

Such open disdain for Iran’s football campaign comes as widespread protests continue to shake the nation.

“The protest movement has eclipsed football,” said Kamran, a linguistics professor who lives in the northern Iranian province of Mazandaran. “I want Iran to lose these games.”

Anusha, a 17-year-old whose high school in Tehran was rocked by protests, said the recent unrest had changed everything for her.

“A few months ago I would have said: of course I want Iran to win against England and America,” she said. ‘Now, it’s strange. I really don’t care.’

Even as the Iranian national team performs on the world stage in Qatar, Iranian security forces continue to mistreat demonstrators.

Since the protests began in late September, more than 400 civilians have reportedly been killed, with many more injured and arrested.

Before the game yesterday, Iranian players refused to sing their national anthem and the music was met with a deluge of boos from fans in the stands, many of them Iranians holding banners and wearing shirts with anti-regime messages.

The side stood with a frosty face as the national anthem was played at the Khalifa International Stadium in a clear sign of solidarity with the protests currently engulfing their homeland.

Catherine Perez-Shakdam, an Iran specialist at the Henry Jackson Society, told MailOnline that the team and fans will likely be “severely punished” for such open defiance of the regime.

“The refusal of the Iranian football team not to sing the national anthem of the Islamic Republic will be a decision for which the players will pay a heavy price.

Similarly, any Iranian fan identified by the regime for shouting the national anthem will be severely punished. This is the brutal reality of contemporary Iran.

Iran’s players may have lost more than just their freedom today; and their lives may not be the only thing at stake.

Indeed, the regime has shown a tendency to attack relatives of dissidents in order to dissuade others from expressing their views.

Given Iran’s appalling record, it stands to reason that the players and fans who shun the regime today knew full well the risks they were running.

“Such courage and dignity in the face of absolutism certainly deserves our full recognition.”

Iran has been ravaged by more than two months of anti-regime demonstrations sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody after she was arrested for failing to wear a mandatory hijab.

Since then, almost daily marches have taken place to call for an end to the country’s strict interpretation of Islamic law and the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime.

News from the country is limited amid widespread internet outages, but hundreds – if not thousands – of protesters are thought to have been killed by security forces in an increasingly violent crackdown.

Rights groups accuse security forces of shooting live ammunition and birds at protesters and beating them with clubs, violence captured in numerous videos circulated online.