Tehran already has accused Israel of covert attacks on its nuclear program, including assassinations of top nuclear officials and scientists.
Monday’s attacks appeared to have been carried out with sticky bombs attached to cars by magnets. Similar weapons were used against Iran’s nuclear scientists, feeding suspicions that the new bombings were a retaliation crafted to mirror those attacks.
‘‘Today we witnessed two attempts of terrorism against innocent civilians,’’ Netanyahu told lawmakers from his Likud Party. ‘‘Iran is behind these attacks and it is the largest terror exporter in the world.’’
In India, an assailant on a motorcycle apparently attached a bomb to an Israeli diplomat’s vehicle and it quickly exploded, officials said. Israel said an attempted car bombing in Tbilisi, Georgia, was thwarted. Netanyahu also said Israel had thwarted attacks in recent months in Azerbaijan and Thailand and unspecified other countries.
‘‘In all those cases, the elements behind these attacks were Iran and its protege, Hezbollah,’’ he said, vowing to ‘‘act with a strong hand against international terror.’’
Iranian officials rejected Netanyahu’s accusation as unfounded.
‘‘This accusation is within the Zionist regime’s psychological war against Iran,’’ the official IRNA news agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast as saying.
‘‘The Zionist regime, due to repeated crimes against humanity, is the main party accused of terrorist activities,’’ he said, according to IRNA.
Both Hezbollah and Iran have deep grievances against the Jewish state.
Hezbollah battled Israel in a monthlong war in 2006, and on Sunday, the Lebanese guerrilla group marked the anniversary of the 2008 assassination of one of its commanders, Imad Mughniyeh, in a bombing widely believed to have been carried out by Israel. Iran suspects Israeli involvement in attacks on its nuclear program.
