It hasn't taken long at all for Israeli and US officials to strongly suggest a link between Wednesday's scary FlyDubai security incident and Iran.
President Trump raised Thursday that Iran may be linked to the copilot who tried to crash an Israel-bound plane, which forced it to make a dangerous rapid descent and an emergency landing, after passengers and crew rushed the cockpit.
But while investigators have yet to disclose a motive in what Israel called a full-fledged terror attack, which also left the flight's captain with a stab wound, Trump laid out the following on Thursday:
Fox's Peter Doocy: "Has anybody briefed you about whether or not the guy, the pilot of the flight in FlyDubai plane is linked to Iran?"
President Trump: "We're working on it right now. They're being very open with us. I would say the answer based on what I'm hearing is yes, but we're working on it right now.”
Doocy: "So this guy might have been either put in there by the IRGC or ratified some other way, and then he tried to take down the plane."
Trump: "It could have been, yeah."
So we've gone from no motive yet being publicly offered to assertions that the IRGC may have clandestinely inserted the pilot onto the flight with an aim to conduct some kind of 9/11-style terror attack against Israel and the over 170 passengers who were inbound from Dubai.
Trump was further asked whether - if it is established that Iran was behind it - he would retaliate, to which he responded: "Oh they’ll be hit, very hard, don’t worry."
"You just ask them," he added. "They know what happened. They’ll be hit very hard."
Netanyahu too has been quick to suspect Iran - though without saying if this is based on any evidence, though this is perhaps to be expected considering his history of such linkages.
"I spoke to the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, and he agreed that Israel would join the investigation and we'll find out," Netanyahu told CNN..
"Look, we know that Iran is sponsoring a lot of this, but I can't speak specifically of this. I can say that they did stand behind the attack in Britain. We passed that information to the Brits."
He still acknowledge that ultimately it's too early to tell, while confirming that co-pilot accused of stabbing the captain and trying to bring down the plane is currently in the custody Saudi Arabia (where the plane diverted upon the emergency) and is expected to be sent to the UAE.
The timing of the horrible episode couldn't be worse (or also some pundits might also say the timing is curious), set against the background of the Iran conflict. Trump is said to be mulling resuming a major bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic by end of November, after the midterm elections in the US. The terror incident will likely exacerbate US-Iran tensions, and seems to already be doing so.
