Israel just threatened to punish whoever sent the flydubai attacker
1 hour ago · 2 October 2026Share
Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deliver statements to the press at the Israeli Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, Israel, on August 24, 2020. File photo. U.S. Department of State from United States · Public domain
Israel's Prime Minister just put a country on notice. Sort of.
Benjamin Netanyahu says whoever sent the man who tried to crash a flydubai plane will pay a very heavy price.
But he hasn't named a country. And he hasn't shown any evidence a country was involved at all.
He said it a few hours ago. That's two days after a co-pilot stabbed the plane's captain mid-flight and tried to bring the whole aircraft down.
Here's the flight. FlyDubai FZ1073, Dubai to Tel Aviv. The co-pilot was Omani. The captain was Smit Machchhar, an Indian national. The co-pilot stabbed him, then tried to crash the plane.
Passengers and crew stopped him.
The plane dropped about 17,000 feet in under a minute. Then it landed in Saudi Arabia instead. Everyone survived.
AFP says 174 people were on board. The Times of Israel says around 180 were helped to safety. Those numbers don't match.
Netanyahu says quote "Whoever sent the perpetrator of the Flydubai plane attack will pay a very heavy price".
So that's Israel's Prime Minister threatening to punish somebody. Before anyone has said who that somebody is.
And here's the thing. That same afternoon, he sounded completely different.
He told reporters Israel is still working to understand who, if anyone, sent the Omani pilot.
So in a few hours, his own language went from a threat of punishment to saying the investigation is still wide open.
A day before that, Donald Trump, the US President, had already brought up Iran.
Asked if Iran was involved, he said quote "I would say the answer, based on what I'm hearing, is yes but we're working on it right now".
He said if Iran did it, Iran gets hit very hard.
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Atomanlage Natanz (2022). File photo.Parsa 2au · CC BY-SA 4.0
So America's president named Iran before Israel's own prime minister would.
Now, the attacker's motive. Netanyahu has given three different answers.
First, that the man went through Islamist indoctrination. Separately, that the man shouted "Kill me, kill me" and was clearly suicidal. And earlier than that, in an interview with CBS News, Netanyahu wouldn't rule out mental illness.
Three explanations. None of them lined up with each other.
The UAE is leading the investigation, with Israel taking part. The UAE has already called it a terrorist act. Anwar Gargash, an adviser to the UAE president, wrote on social media that it was a serious terrorist act and a potential disaster, and called the captain a true hero.
Israel Katz, Israel's Defence Minister, called it an attempted jihadist terror attack.
Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, pushed back on any link to an earlier security briefing. He said nothing resembling this attack came up in the briefing given to the prime minister the night before.
Now the backdrop. Israel and the United States bombed Iran seven months ago. A ceasefire Trump struck with Iran in April has fallen apart, according to AFP.
But here's a fact that cuts against the Iran theory. Hijackings aren't something Iran has a track record in. Historically, that's been al-Qaida's tactic, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine's. Not Tehran's.
And there's an election angle too. Israel votes later this month, and Netanyahu has been trailing in the polls.
Ahron Bregman, a security analyst at King's College London, says Netanyahu's best shot at turning this to his advantage is if a link to Iran gets confirmed. That would mean more escalation with Tehran.
Yossi Mekelberg, from Chatham House, says the attack feeds into a sense of insecurity many Israelis have felt since October 7, 2023.
None of that tells us who actually sent the attacker, if anyone did.
Washington has already sent extra Patriot missile batteries to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group was heading to the region too, according to Axios reporting cited by AFP.
So here's where this stands. A man with no declared employer stabbed a pilot and tried to bring down a passenger jet. Two world leaders have now talked about punishing whoever sent him.
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