Iran’s Terrifying New Terrorist Tactic Could Turn Airplane Pilots into 9/11-Style Attackers, Former IDF Colonel Warns

The hijacking of the Dubai airliner carrying Israeli passengers could be the start of a horrific new terrorist tactic of recruiting and radicalizing real pilots to carry out 9/11-style attacks, a former IDF colonel and veteran intelligence officer warns.

“An individual does not come up with the idea of ​​crashing a plane full of people, including himself. Someone told him that if you do that, you will have your 72 virgins,” Miri Eisin, now a spokesperson for the Israeli government, told the Post.

“Looking back at past hijackings, including 9/11, the hijacker was never the pilot of the plane. . . . This could be a new type of suicide attack,” she said.

Eisin, who served in the Israeli military as an intelligence officer for more than 20 years, said she immediately suspected Iran’s hand in the near-tragic FlyDubai hijacking – although she was careful to emphasize that she had no direct evidence and that the investigation was ongoing.

She said the Omani pilot who stabbed his Indian co-pilot and attempted to crash the plane filled with 174 passengers before being overpowered by heroic Israeli passengers could have been radicalized by the Islamic Republic or its terrorist proxies.

President Trump also suggested that Iran might be involved, but did not elaborate.

The pilot was identified by the Wall Street Journal as an Omani national named Hamam al-Hammami. He had previously been banned from flying by Oman due to suspicions that he had become radicalized, according to the publication.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacker was the victim of “Islamic radicalization.”

“To me, this is definitely something that could have come from Hezbollah or the IRGC Quds Force, these are the kinds of things they are thinking about,” she said.

Eisin said Iran, if responsible for the attack, could try to trigger a new type of suicide attack by infiltrating airlines with radicalized pilots who could launch an attack at any time.

Eisin said a pilot’s professional training would not protect him from extremist indoctrination.

“Just because someone is a pilot doesn’t mean they can’t be radicalized, people from all walks of life can be radicalized. (Syrian dictator) Bashar al-Assad was a doctor, Josef Mengele was a doctor,” she said.

“And if you kill Israelis, the whole world applauds you,” she added.

Oded Ailam, former deputy director of global operations for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, said recruiting a professional pilot to deliberately crash a plane would require a far more elaborate process than persuading a young suicide bomber to carry out an attack.

“Recruiting and convincing a pilot to do something like that is not the same thing as telling a 15-year-old to put on a bomb, walk on a boardwalk and blow himself up. It’s a very sophisticated and time-consuming operation,” he said.

Ailam, who is now a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, said it is likely that Iran was able to passively radicalize the pilot without formally recruiting him through its wide range of anti-Israel propaganda online and elsewhere.

“The lone wolf is influenced by the wolf pack around him, he is influenced by jihadists, by extremists in mosques, he is influenced by prominent Iranians calling for the death of Israel,” he said.

Ailam said the prospect of lone-wolf extremists could pose an even more dangerous threat to air travel than organized terrorist cells that could be identified and dismantled.

“Terror combined with mental disorders in the pilot, when you combine them, the result is horrible. There are a lot of people who are radicalized and who are airline pilots,” he said.

Ailam said the Flydubai attack would likely cause governments to rethink their post-9/11 security measures, and he predicted airlines will soon have to install technology allowing crew access to the cockpit in the event of a copied attack.

“It is impossible to control every driver, the answer will have to be technological,” he said.