by Jasmin Ramsey
Another Israeli expert has contradicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear program.
“The Iranian nuclear program will only be operational in another 10 years,” said Uzi Eilam, the former head of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, during an interview with Ronen Bergman published today in the Israeli [...]]]>
by Jasmin Ramsey
Another Israeli expert has contradicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear program.
“The Iranian nuclear program will only be operational in another 10 years,” said Uzi Eilam, the former head of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, during an interview with Ronen Bergman published today in the Israeli daily, Ynet.
“The main issues are still ahead of us, but it is definitely possible to be optimistic. I think we should give the diplomatic process a serious chance, alongside ongoing sanctions,” said Eilam, who has held senior roles in the Israeli defense establishment.
“And I’m not even sure that Iran would want the bomb — it could be enough for them to be a nuclear threshold state — so that it could become a regional power and intimidate its neighbors,” he added.
Netanyahu has implored the international community to set a “red line” on Iran’s nuclear program, which he says is aimed at a nuclear weapon. The Israeli PM used a “cartoon bomb” prop to make this argument during his Sept. 27, 2012 UN General Assembly speech. Two weeks earlier, Netanyahu had said that Iran was 6-7 months from being 90% of the way to building a bomb during an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” program.
The next year, during his Oct. 1 2013 address to the UNGA, Netanyahu admitted that Iran had not crossed the line he had drawn on his diagram, but said Tehran was still positioning itself to be able to create a bomb and that this “vast and feverish effort has continued unabated” under Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
Netanyahu has also called the interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program that was reached on Nov. 24, 2012 between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany) a “historic mistake.”
The Israeli PM, who has been warning about an impending Iranian nuclear bomb for almost 20 years, has been relatively quiet during this year’s round of talks toward a comprehensive deal with Iran, which are set to resume on May 13 in Vienna Austria.
US officials have also detected a shift in Tel Aviv’s position toward a somewhat more reasonable stance, according to a report in Al-Monitor.
Several current and former Israeli defense and intelligence officials have cast doubt on Netanyahu’s statements on Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, insists is peaceful.
“[Israel's leadership] presents a false view to the public on the Iranian bomb, as though acting against Iran would prevent a nuclear bomb. But attacking Iran will encourage them to develop a bomb all the faster,” said Israel’s former Internal Security Chief, Yuval Diskin, at an Israeli forum on Apr. 26, 2012.
“[Iran] is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn’t decided to go the extra mile,” noted the head of the Israeli military, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, during an interview with Haaretz on Apr. 25, 2012.
“I don’t think [Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei] will want to go the extra mile. I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people,” he said.
“[Attacking Iran is] the stupidest thing I have ever heard…It will be followed by a war with Iran,” said Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad, during a May 2011 Hebrew University conference.
“It is the kind of thing where we know how it starts, but not how it will end.” he added.
]]>A new twist was added to the longrunning media theme of a threat by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to go to war with Iran when news stories seemed to suggest Monday that Netanyahu had ordered the Israeli military to prepare for an imminent attack on Iranian nuclear sites in [...]]]>
A new twist was added to the longrunning media theme of a threat by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to go to war with Iran when news stories seemed to suggest Monday that Netanyahu had ordered the Israeli military to prepare for an imminent attack on Iranian nuclear sites in 2010.
Netanyahu backed down after Israeli Defence Forces chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Mossad director Meir Dagan opposed the order, according to the reports.
But the details of the episode provided in a report by Israel’s Channel 2 investigative news programme “Truth”, which aired Monday night, show that the Netanyahu order was not meant to be a prelude to an imminent attack on Iran. The order to put Israeli forces on the highest alert status was rejected by Ashkenazi and Dagan primarily because Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak had not thought through the risk that raising the alert status to the highest level could provoke unintended war with Iran.
All the participants, moreover, understood that Israel had no realistic military option for an attack on Iran.
Most stories about the episode failed to highlight the distinction between an order for war and one for the highest state of readiness, thus creating the clear impression that Netanyahu was preparing for war with Iran. The stories had to be read very carefully to discern the real significance of the episode.
The Israeli Ynet News report on the story carried the headline, “Was Israel on verge of war in 2010?” and a teaser asking, “Did Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak try to drag Israel into a military operation in Iran without cabinet approval?”
AFP reported that Netanyahu and Barak “ordered the army to prepare an attack against Iranian nuclear installations.”
The Reuters story said Netanyahu and Barak “ordered Israeli defence chiefs in 2010 to prepare for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities but were rebuffed….”
And AP reported that the order from Netanyau was for a “high alert for a looming attack on Iran’s nuclear program” and that the episode “indicated that Israel was much closer to carrying out a strike at that time than was previously known.”
Washington Post blogger Max Fisher certainly got the impression from the press coverage that Netanyahu and Barak had “attempted to order the Israeli military to prepare for an imminent strike on Iran but were thwarted by other senior officials….” Fisher concluded that Netanyahu was “more resolved than thought to strike Iran….”
The coverage of the story thus appears to have pumped new life into the idea that Netanyahu is serious about attacking Iran, despite clear evidence in recent weeks that he has climbed down from that posture.
The details of the episode in the original Channel 2 programme as reported by the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth suggest that none of the participants in the meeting believed that Netanyahu had decided on actual war with Iran.
The incident occurred, according to the programme, after a meeting of seven top cabinet ministers at an unspecified time in 2010. As Dagan and Ashkanazi were about to leave the meeting room, the programme recalls, Netanyahu ordered them to prepare the military for “the possibility of a strike” against Iran by putting the IDF on the highest level of readiness.
Netanyahu used the code word “F Plus” for the alert status, according to the Channel 2 programme.
Ashkenazi and Dagan reacted strongly to the order, and Netanyahu and Barak eventually backed down. But both Ashkenazi and Barak appear to agree that the issue was not whether Israel would actually attack Iran but the alert itself. Ashkenazi’s response indicated that he did not interpret it as a sign that Netanyahu intended to carry out an attack on Iran. “It’s not something you do if you’re not sure you want to follow through with it,” Ashkenazi was quoted as saying.
Barak sought to downplay the order for the high alert status, asserting that raising the alert level “did not necessarily mean war”.
“It is not true that creating a situation in which the IDF are on alert for a few hours or a few days to carry out certain operations forces Israel to go through with them,” the defence minister said.
Ashkenazi was not asserting, however, that Netanyahu would be forced to attack. Rather, he feared it would have the unintended consequence of convincing Iran that Israel did intend to attack and thus trigger a war.
The former IDF chief highlighted that danger in commenting, “This accordion produces music when you play with it,” according to “sources close to” Ashkenazi – the formula usually used when an official or ex-official does not wish to be quoted directly.
Barak also said Ashkenazi had responded that the IDF did not have the ability to carry out a strike against Iran. “Eventually, at the moment of truth, the answer that was given was that, in fact, the ability did not exist,” Barak is quoted as saying on the programme.
Significantly, Barak made no effort to deny the reality that the Israeli Air Force did not have the capability to carry out a successful attack against Iran. Instead he is blaming Ashkenazi for having failed to prepare Israeli forces for a possible attack.
Ashkenazi angrily denied that obviously political charge. “I prepared the option, the army was ready for a strike but I also said that a strike now would be a strategic mistake,” he is quoted as saying.
Israeli military leaders are still saying publicly that the IDF can carry out a strike. But while Ashkenazi is quoted as saying the army was “ready for a strike”, that is not the same as claiming that Israel had a military option that had any chance of success in derailing Iran’s enrichment programme. And in February 2011, he told then Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen that references to such a military option were “empty words”, because “Israel has no military option,” according to an earlier report by Yedioth Ahronoth.
Despite the public political feud between them, both Barak and Ashkenazi implied that the purpose of the high alert was to achieve a political effect rather than to prepare for an actual attack.
Both Ashkenazi and former Mossad director Dagan were apparently shocked that Netanyahu and Barak would be so irresponsible as to run the obvious risks of feigning preparations for a war with Iran. Dagan concluded that Netanyahu is unfit for leadership of the country – a point that he had made repeatedly since leaving his Mossad post in 2011.
Netanyahu sought to manipulate the supposed threat of military force against Iran to put pressure on U.S. President Barack Obama to adopt harsh sanctions against Iran and even get him to pledge to use force if Iran did not yield on its nuclear programme. The firm rebuff to that ploy by Obama last summer brought that phase of the Netanyahu military option ploy to an end, as indicated by his failure to include any implicit threat in his U.N. address in late August.
Netanyahu continues to insist publicly, however, that he is considering the military option against Iran. In an interview for the Channel 2 programme, he said, “We are serious, this is not a show. If there is no other way to stop Iran, Israel is ready to act.”
Israeli political observers have suggested that Netanyahu’s belligerent posture has now become primarily a theme of his campaign for reelection as prime minister. But as the coverage of the 2010 episode indicates, the news media have not yet abandoned the story of Netanyahu’s readiness to go to war against Iran.
*Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
]]>Meir Dagan, the former director of Israel’s Mossad, has received a liver transplant in Belarus. Reports from the Israeli press that have now made their way into western media sources state that Belarus’ president, Alexander Lukashenko, announced at a press conference on Oct. 16 that the operation had taken place [...]]]>
Meir Dagan, the former director of Israel’s Mossad, has received a liver transplant in Belarus. Reports from the Israeli press that have now made their way into western media sources state that Belarus’ president, Alexander Lukashenko, announced at a press conference on Oct. 16 that the operation had taken place ten days earlier and had been completed successfully.
Dagan has been among the most outspoken opponents of an Israeli military strike on Iran in Israel’s intelligence community. During a March 2012 interview with CBS’s Sixty Minutes he told Lesley Stahl that an Israeli attack on Iran would not only trigger a regional war, it would be ineffective. Hardly a dove, Dagan much prefers that a war against Iran be launched by the US, and believes that sabotage and other efforts to effect regime change in Iran can stave off Iranian nuclear capability until the US is ready to take action.
Why would a prominent Israeli, a citizen of a country whose medical system is renowned for its sophisticated and cutting edge medical research and groundbreaking innovations in liver transplants, choose to surreptitiously go to a third world European backwater, which boasts that it now ranks 53rd out of 190 countries in the world, for lifesaving treatment?
According to the Jerusalem Post:
“Lukashenko said that surgeons in several countries, including the US, Germany and Sweden, had refused to operate on the patient after learning of his former career as a spymaster, though he didn’t mention Dagan by name. The president added that doctors in these countries had recommended the Belarusian Transplant Center as the best place for the man to undergo his operation.”
Y-Net, the English language news site of the Israeli Daily, Yediot Acharonot, offered no grounds for the refusal, but cited sources close Dagan who claimed “Sweden was never asked to operate and the US did not fulfill criteria for the transplant”. UPI, citing Y-Net as its source, says ”because of his condition, Dagan was found to be unsuitable for a transplant in the United States.”
Based on details provided to Al-Monitor by Israeli journalist Yossi Melman, Laura Rozen reports that Dagan had gone to Sloane Kettering hospital in New York two months earlier hoping to find a compatible organ but could not. “He returned to Israel and his health was deteriorating,” Melman said.
“Dagan’s illness, cancer, was known for a couple of months to a small group of confidants and colleagues and me, but it was decided for reasons of not invading his privacy not to report it,” Yossi Melman told Al-Monitor by email Tuesday. “Tonight the Belarus President Alexander Lukaschenko revealed it in a press conference trying to gain for himself and his pariah regime.”
Although Israel is among the most medically advanced countries in the world, organ transplants are subject to intense bureaucracy. At least part of that bureaucracy stems from religious concerns of many orthodox Jews about desecrating a human body after death by autopsy or organ removal. Defining “death” has also proven to be a religious obstacle, since once the standards of total brain death and respiratory death have been fully satisfied according to Jewish law, certain organs cease to be viable. Despite efforts to boost the number of available organs for transplants by promising would-be donors a slot at the top of the donor list should they need a transplant, only 12% of Israelis are registered organ donors. Bloomberg News reports that desperate Israelis are among the biggest clients for organ transplants abroad, which are often acquired by respectable hospitals from black market sources.
The US has a waiting list of nearly 17,000 patients for liver transplants, about 10,000 of whom have been awaiting a donor for more than a year. Whenever a prominent person like Steve Jobs receives a transplant, the question of “jumping the list” arises. It is more likely that Dagan would have been asked to wait his turn, rather than turned down because of his prominent role in Israel’s intelligence community, as Lukashenko claimed.
This, however, does little to address the question of “Why Belarus?”
Belarus, against which the EU renewed its sanctions the other day for persistent human rights violations, has much less stringent criteria for consent of organ donors than Israel, the US, and most western countries. These lower standards of consent allow it to promote “medical tourism” and advertise the ease and economy of organ transplants performed in Belarus. According to the website MedTravel Belarus:
Transplantation of organs taken from cadaveric donor is forbidden in many countries of the world and this is a reason for considerable increase of the list of those who need this operation because the amount of donors decreases significantly.
The problem of the removal of cadaveric organs is primarily related to the issues of legal and ethical qualities. For example, in the USA and many European countries, the principle of “consent of the requested” works, this means that the usage of a person’s organs without his legally formalized permission is forbidden, so the doctor is not entitled to do the removal. A presumption of consent to the removal of organs works in our country so the law permits the removal of cadaveric organs, but on condition that the deceased person during his lifetime, or his relatives have not expressed their opposition to it.
That is why Belarusian clinics are so popular among people all over the world. The transplantations of bone marrow, kidney, heart, liver are performed in our country, tissue transplantations and stem cells transplantations are performed as well. It also should be taken into consideration that the prices for this type of medical service in our country are much lower than in other countries.
In other words, Belarus is not bound by some of the bio-ethical constraints on transplants that apply in the US and Israel, and much of Europe. MedTravel Belarus claims that 70 liver transplants have been performed in the country since 2010.
While Dagan has devoted most of his career in the Mossad to countering “the Iranian threat” to Israel, Belarus –formerly part of the Soviet Union, and now part of the successor Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) — is one of the very few European countries with whom Iran maintains good relations. In late June, Iran and Belarus co-sponsored an “International Conference on Modern Application of Nanotechnology” in Minsk. Ironically, Belarus, which apparently was Dagan’s best and perhaps only hope for obtaining a liver transplant, has been accused of aiding Iran in missile development and in evading western sanctions against its nuclear program:
Diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity that Belarus is beginning to act as a kind of middleman to help secure the Iranians access to Russian technology.
“Belarus is becoming a key element in Iran’s efforts to develop its SSM (surface-to-surface missile) and nuclear capabilities, especially with regard to navigation and guidance products, which are defined as dual-use,” a diplomat said.
Politics, indeed, makes for some strange bedfellows.
]]>Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s trip to the Middle East last week included reassuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in person, that the U.S. was committed to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon — the U.S.’s “red line” on Iran. Panetta reiterated the U.S.’s position, essentially point by point, at [...]]]>
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta’s trip to the Middle East last week included reassuring Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in person, that the U.S. was committed to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon — the U.S.’s “red line” on Iran. Panetta reiterated the U.S.’s position, essentially point by point, at a Pentagon Joint Press Conference with the Japanese Minister of Defense on August 3: “Bottom line is that we have common cause with them with regards to Iran. Our positions are similar. We will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon,” he said in response to a question about the likelihood of an Israeli attack against Iran.
When Panetta says that the U.S. and Israeli positions are “similar”, he is acknowledging that they’re not the same, a significant detail considering the growing pressure from Israel and various U.S.-based hawkish Israel advocacy groups and pundits aimed at reforming the U.S.’s policy.
The Israeli “red line” on Iran, at least according to public Israeli statements, is Iran’s acquirement of nuclear weapon building “capability” or Iran crossing into a so-called “zone of immunity” where it can create a nuclear weapon at Fordow, the underground uranium enrichment facility that’s impenetrable by Israeli air strikes. (The Israeli position is confusing according to Colin Kahl and other experts who argue that you can’t bomb knowledge and the Iranians already have nuclear weapon know-how.) Importantly, as the Iranians themselves insist — and U.S. and Israeli defense and intelligence as well as the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) reports confirm — the Iranians have not yet made a decision to build a weapon.
Israeli frustration and impatience with the U.S.’s persistent Iran policy may explain why some “Israeli officials” are allowing their press to report statements that hardly seem diplomatic (one might even say appear antagonistic) about their important ally. Just yesterday the English version of Ynetnews reported that
Senior officials on Sunday leveled severe criticism against the US, declaring that the American position on a date for a military strike against Iran was a “wretched red line.”
“The US’ stance is pushing the Iranians to become a country at the brink (of nuclear capability),” explained sources well versed in the nuclear issue. “The Americans are de facto allowing the Iranians to continue to enrich uranium and become a country at the brink. We are not prepared to allow that (to happen).”
Meanwhile, according to an August 3 Haaretz post, Netanyahu is getting very agitated over public scrutiny regarding his plans for Iran — chest-thumping, table-banging mad. But that may be part of a ploy:
Others present at the meeting, however, pointed out that Netanyahu’s comments seemed to be part of the “psychological warfare” campaign that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are conducting, in order to pressure the U.S. into attacking Iran itself.
At one point during the meeting, a participant asked Netanyahu what he thinks could possibly happen the day after an Israeli strike on Iran. According to one of the meeting’s participants, the question angered Netanyahu. “If an investigative committee is formed, I’ll go and say that I, I am responsible,” said Netanyahu, as he pounded the table, and his chest, with his fist.
The fuming Netanyahu didn’t stop there. “I’ve had enough of this atmosphere,” he said. “It’s also felt in other discussions [on Iran], people keep showing me presentations prepared as if for an investigative committee. I’ve told them to stop with these presentations, stop speaking on protocol, and get to the point,” said Netanyahu.
]]>Netanyahu made it clear to those present that he prefers that the U.S. “do the work,” though he admits that the U.S. is not prepared to pursue a military option at this point.
Yedioth writer Sever Plocker (no leftie, says Remez in comments on his translation):
Dagan, a suspicious super-cautious [...]]]>
Yedioth writer Sever Plocker (no leftie, says Remez in comments on his translation):
]]>Dagan, a suspicious super-cautious individual who routinely prefers to err on the side of pessimism, was quoted as having said: “Iran will not have nuclear military capability at least until 2015.” …
[On the day of the Dagan's proclamation], the world order was changed. The Iranian nuclear threat died. It keeled over. Because, if the director of the State of Israel’s Mossad is prepared to risk saying that Iran won’t have even a single nuclear bomb “at least until 2015,” that means that Iran is not going to have a nuclear bomb. Period.