The effort accelerated after 2004, when Iran’s nuclear program expanded under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

By Hezy Laing

Over the past two decades, Israel has quietly constructed a network of covert military and intelligence facilities across the Middle East, forming what analysts describe as a “forward ring” encircling Iran.

According to reporting from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Der Spiegel, the effort accelerated after 2004, when Iran’s nuclear program expanded under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The first layer of this ring emerged in Kurdish northern Iraq, where Der Spiegel reported in 2012 that Israeli intelligence operated training sites used to monitor Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) movements.

Kurdish officials denied formal cooperation, but U.S. intelligence sources quoted in The New Yorker confirmed that Mossad teams used the region as a staging ground for surveillance missions.

A second layer was built in Azerbaijan, which shares a 765‑kilometer border with Iran.

In 2012, Foreign Policy cited senior U.S. officials claiming Israel had secured access to “airfields on Iran’s northern border,” enabling refueling for long‑range aircraft such as the F‑15I Ra’am and F‑16I Sufa.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev dismissed the report, yet military cooperation between the countries grew, including a $1.6 billion Israeli arms deal in 2012 and the deployment of Israeli‑made Harop loitering munitions by Azerbaijan in the 2020 Nagorno‑Karabakh war.

A third component emerged in the Red Sea, where the IDF established covert naval positions to counter Iranian weapons shipments.

In 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel had carried out at least a dozen strikes on Iranian vessels since 2019, using bases and maritime infrastructure in Eritrea and the Gulf of Aden.

The IDF later confirmed that Israel conducted a “campaign between wars” involving operations “in six or seven theaters.”

Finally, Israel expanded cooperation with Gulf states after the 2020 Abraham Accords, enabling intelligence sharing with the UAE and Bahrain.

Satellite imagery analyzed by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) showed upgraded radar installations in the Gulf capable of tracking Iranian missile launches.