Ari Shavit reports on his interview with former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, one among several former Israeli intelligence and security officials who have infuriated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by making public statements against an Israeli strike on Iran. Halevy tells Shavit that his views about the threat that Iran poses to [...]]]>
Ari Shavit reports on his interview with former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, one among several former Israeli intelligence and security officials who have infuriated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by making public statements against an Israeli strike on Iran. Halevy tells Shavit that his views about the threat that Iran poses to Israel are “complex”, but compared with Netanyahu’s statements, it’s strikingly apparent that Halevy wants to avoid a lone Israeli military venture with Iran:
…“I do indeed argue that a nuclear Iran does not constitute an existential threat to Israel. If one day we wake up and discover that Iran has nuclear weapons, that does not mean the start of the countdown to the end of Israel’s existence. Israel need not despair. We have deterrent capability and preventive capability. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, Israel will be able to design a true operational response that will be able to cope with that. We will be able to prevent a Hiroshima in Tel Aviv and we will prevent a Hiroshima in Tel Aviv; so we must not talk about a Hiroshima in Tel Aviv, because prophecies like that are self-fulfilling. Nor must we draw baseless analogies with the 1930s.
“The true Churchillian way is not to talk about the possibility of a second Holocaust, but to ensure that there will be no holocaust here. I was a boy in Britain during the Blitz. I remember vividly Churchill’s speeches blaring from the radio. He did not talk about the possibility that Britain might not survive. On the contrary: even in the direst straits he said that Britain would have the upper hand. He promised that whatever happened, come what may, in the end Britain would win. Anyone who purports to be Churchill needs to talk like Churchill and project self-confidence.
“I am absolutely appalled when I hear our leaders talking as though there were no Israel Defense Forces and as though there were no State of Israel and as though Auschwitz is liable to be repeated. As I see it, the message we should be conveying to the Iranians − and to ourselves − is that we will be here in any event and in any scenario for the next two thousand years.
“But we must not become confused,” Halevy continues. “A nuclear Iran is not an existential threat, but a nuclear Iran is a grave matter. Nuclear weapons in Tehran’s hands upset the regional balance and create a very serious strategic situation. Nor can we completely rule out the possibility that if Iran possesses nuclear weapons it will ultimately use them. When the danger is very great, even if the risk that it will be realized is only 10 percent, we need to treat it as a risk of 100 percent. So I am not one of those who are indifferent to the Iranian danger. Under no circumstances am I ready to accept a nuclear Iran. But I maintain that the way to prevent nuclearization is not necessarily by means of force.
To prevent a “a generations-long war”, Halevy says that Iran can be deterred from building a nuclear weapon through more international pressure aimed at further weakening and isolating it:
]]>“There should have been cooperation with Turkey vis-à-vis Iran. There should have been action against Iran in Syria. The Russians should have been brought into the picture. If Israel had adopted a creative, active policy, and if the international community had held up to the Iranians a far richer package of threats and enticements, I think there would have been a chance to dissuade the Iranians from embarking on the dangerous road they have taken. And I believe it is not too late. The sanctions are very painful. The negotiations have not yet been exhausted. The threat of an American military option can also be more concrete. If instead of focusing on a military solution, Israel were to succeed in mobilizing the international community for complex and sophisticated political-economic action, I believe that the results might be surprising.”
In Haaretz, Ari Shavit, a member of the paper’s editorial board, lashes out at the former spy chief for undermining the possibility of “the military option” against Iran.
The prime minister responded with rage to the former Mossad chief’s statements. Benjamin Netanyahu thinks Dagan has sabotaged the diplomatic effort to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But Netanyahu isn’t alone. Senior officials in the United States, Britain and France this week castigated Dagan for his utterances. The White House and Capitol Hill expressed shock and anger. Major allies of Israel saw the former Mossad chief’s briefing as incomprehensible and irresponsible.
I’m not sure who exactly in the White House “expressed shock and anger”—Dennis Ross? It would be helpful if Shavit could point to which “senior officials” in the U.K. and France “castigated” Dagan — though I suppose I could guess which members of Congress might be disappointed by Dagan’s blast of honesty.
Shavit claims that Dagan’s “utterances” may have undermined the glue that holds together the Western powers’ ability to “adopt a firm approach to Iran.”
The success [of this strategy] stemmed in part from the feeling of urgency Israel instilled in the powers. Now comes the former Israeli Mossad chief and blurs the sense of urgency. The Russians, Chinese, Germans and Italians cannot be expected to be more Catholic than the pope. Dagan hurt Israel’s allies and played into the hands of officials abroad who dismiss the Iranian danger and seek an excuse not to address it.
Is Shavit arguing that Dagan’s comments, which weren’t widely challenged on factual grounds, undermined the “sense of urgency” that Israel had instilled in the West? It sounds like Shavit is acknowledging that some factual exaggeration may have occurred when Israel made the case that Iran’s nuclear program presented an imminent existential threat. His bizarre argument seems to be that if Israeli officials fail to tow the line and exaggerate the Iranian threat, Western powers might not feel as inclined to take such a hard-line—and potentially self-destructive –approach to pressuring Tehran.
Shavit drives this point home:
[Dagan’s] statements about the grave consequences of an attack on Iran are balanced and correct. But one of the main tools to put pressure on Iran was the implied threat of an Israeli military attack. The international community has also begun to pressure Iran seriously for fear of a sudden strike by the Israel Air Force. Now Dagan has weakened the leverage. He made the Israeli threat seem unreliable and not serious. The man who was in charge of thwarting the Iranian nuclearization made the Iranians think they can continue galloping to the bomb because they are not in any real danger.
Shavit is essentially admitting that Israeli leadership might not have been as serious about a military strike as it were suggested to be by the likes of Jeffrey Goldberg. Instead, it appears to have been blackmailing the U.S. and other allies into conforming to a hard-line strategy with the threat that Israel might launch a disastrous unilateral strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. For Shavit, and perhaps Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s not just the fact that Iran might call the bluff in Israel’s threats. Israel risks losing the support of its western allies when Dagan let the truth slip out about Iran’s nuclear program.
Israeli hawks have little to fall back on after Dagan’s remarks, so Shavit concludes his column by suggesting that the spy chief’s statements might make an Israeli military strike more likely because allies may lose their will to “impose a diplomatic-economic siege on Iran.”
It will be interesting to see how the voices in the U.S. who have echoed and magnified hysteria about the “existential threat” from Iran respond to increasing uncertainty about the actual danger posed to Israel and the West.
Of course, those who have placed their professional reputations on the line by repeating Israeli talking points about the likelihood of an Israeli military strike will be more likely to repeat Shavit’s argument.
Jeffrey Goldberg, whose Atlantic cover story last September kicked off widespread speculation about the possibility a unilateral military strike by Israel, was already repeating Shavit’s argument on his blog this morning.
Goldberg, in a post titled “Has the Ex-Mossad Chief Made an Iran Attack More Likely?,” wrote:
Ari Shavit excoriates Meir Dagan, the recently-retired Mossad chief, for subverting the international coalition aligned against Iran by speaking so loudly against a military option.
He then block-quoted two paragraphs of Shavit’s column.
For those who have helped maintain the illusion of urgency and imminent danger posed by Iran’s nuclear program, Dagan’s comments must pose a serious threat.
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