CNN quoted former and current US officials as saying that the Israeli intelligence services have intensified their covert attacks on Iranian scientists and Iranian nuclear targets, mostly without Washington sharing this information.
The network said, on Tuesday, that an American official and another source, who had been briefed on this matter, assured it that Israel was behind the assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodayi in Tehran last month.
CNN indicated that two Iranian scientists were also killed in late May, amid allegations of poisoning by Israel.
Also, at the end of the same month, a drone attack on the Parchin military complex killed an Iranian engineer, and a member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was killed as a result of his sudden fall from the balcony.
In addition to these alleged attacks, tension has escalated in recent weeks between Iran on the one hand and the United States and Israel on the other, as a result of a Western decision condemning Tehran at the International Atomic Energy Agency and talk of a regional alliance against Iran and the disclosure of the deployment of Israeli radars in the UAE and Bahrain and the Israeli bombing of an airport Damascus International.
Biden's upcoming visit
Intelligence and military officials in the United States are closely monitoring indicators of the Israeli-Iranian escalation before US President Joe Biden's visit to the region in the middle of next month, according to CNN.
An American official told the network that the situation in Iran is heating up, and that Washington's allies in the region need to be reassured that the United States is dealing with this matter seriously.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that Israel has intensified its operations against Iran's nuclear and missile facilities and drone programs.
And the newspaper added - in a report published on Monday - that Israel escalated its campaign of attacks by using small drones to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, as part of a new strategy called "the Octopus Doctrine."
She said that the strategy of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett aims to transfer the battle against Tehran to Iranian territory.