A near‑miss on Flydubai flight FZ1073 has ignited fears that Iran is adopting a new terror tactic.
Former IDF colonel and intelligence officer Miri Eisin, now head of Reichman University’s International Institute for Counter‑Terrorism, warned that a radicalized pilot could become the next weapon of mass destruction.
“An individual doesn’t get the idea on his own to crash a plane full of people including himself. Somebody told him that if you do that you get your 72 virgins,” Eisin told The New York Post. “If you think back to past plane hijackings, including 9/11, the hijacker was never the pilot of the plane … This could be a new kind of suicide bomber.”
Eisin said she had suspected Iranian involvement from the start, citing the strategic reach of Hezbollah and the IRGC Quds Force.
“This to me is very much something that could have come from Hezbollah or the IRGC Quds Force, this is the kind of things that they think of,” she said. “Just because someone’s a pilot doesn’t mean they can’t be radicalized; people from all walks of life could be radicalized. [Former Syrian dictator] Bashar al‑Assad was a doctor, Josef Mengele was a doctor … And if you kill Israelis, the whole world applauds you.”
President Donald Trump also hinted that Iran could be behind the incident, though he offered no specifics.
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Former Mossad deputy head of global operations Oded Ailam noted that recruiting a pilot represents a far more sophisticated operation than typical lone‑wolf attacks.
“Recruiting and convincing a pilot to do something like that, it’s not the same as telling a 15‑year‑old to strap on a bomb and walk into a promenade and explode himself. This is a very sophisticated and long operation,” Ailam said.
He added that “lone wolf” radicalization by extremist preachers and Iranian figures calling for Israel’s destruction makes such attacks likely.
Ailam proposed a technological fix — allowing cockpit access for crew during an attack — as the most effective preventive measure.
An Israeli television report found that pilots from Iran, Syria and Iraq have recently flown foreign airliners into and out of Israel, many holding dual citizenship that could evade security scrutiny.
