…by Jonas E. Alexis

The Guardian nailed it. The British newspaper has recently published a serious article saying that the Mossad—one of the most covert and evil organizations on the face of the earth[1]—is having a hard time understanding Netanyahu’s crazy behavior.

It seems that the Mossad thinks Netanyahu is unpredictable, and no one basically knows what kind of crazy behavior he is going to display in public. The Guardian declared,

“Binyamin Netanyahu’s dramatic declaration to world leaders in 2012 that Iran was about a year away from making a nuclear bomb was contradicted by his own secret service, according to a top-secret Mossad document.

“It is part of a cache of hundreds of dossiers, files and cables from the world’s major intelligence services – one of the biggest spy leaks in recent times.

“Brandishing a cartoon of a bomb with a red line to illustrate his point, the Israeli prime minister warned the UN in New York that Iran would be able to build nuclear weapons the following year and called for action to halt the process.

“But in a secret report shared with South Africa a few weeks later, Israel’s intelligence agency concluded that Iran was ‘not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.’ The report highlights the gulf between the public claims and rhetoric of top Israeli politicians and the assessments of Israel’s military and intelligence establishment.

“The disclosure comes as tensions between Israel and its staunchest ally, the US, have dramatically increased ahead of Netanyahu’s planned address to the US Congress on 3 March…

“The Mossad briefing about Iran’s nuclear programme in 2012 was in stark contrast to the alarmist tone set by Netanyahu, who has long presented the Iranian nuclear programme as an existential threat to Israel and a huge risk to world security. The Israeli prime minister told the UN:

“‘By next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move[d] on to the final stage. From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.’

“He said his information was not based on secret information or military intelligence but International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports.

“Behind the scenes, Mossad took a different view. In a report shared with South African spies on 22 October 2012 – but likely written earlier – it conceded that Iran was ‘working to close gaps in areas that appear legitimate, such as enrichment reactors, which will reduce the time required to produce weapons from the time the instruction is actually given.’

“But the report also states that Iran ‘does not appear to be ready’ to enrich uranium to the higher levels necessary for nuclear weapons. To build a bomb requires enrichment to 90%. Mossad estimated that Iran then had ‘about 100kg of material enriched to 20%’ (which was later diluted or converted under the terms of the 2013 Geneva agreement). Iran has always said it is developing a nuclear programme for civilian energy purposes.

“Mossad had been at odds with Netanyahu on Iran before. The former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who left office in December 2010, let it be known that he had opposed an order from Netanyahu to prepare a military attack on Iran.

“Other members of Israel’s security establishment were riled by Netanyahu’s rhetoric on the Iranian nuclear threat and his advocacy of military confrontation. In April 2012, a former head of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, accused Netanyahu of ‘messianic’ political leadership for pressing for military action, saying he and the then defence minister, Ehud Barak, were misleading the public on the Iran issue. Benny Gantz, the Israeli military chief of staff, said decisions on tackling Iran ‘must be made carefully, out of historic responsibility but without hysteria.’”[2]

John Allen Gay—assistant managing editor at the National Interest and author of War with Iran: Political, Military, and Economic Consequences—has come up with a ridiculous defense of Netanyahu, saying things like Netanyahu was “not asserting that an Iranian nuclear device was coming soon…”[3]

Certainly this argument is not worth responding to in full. Hasn’t Netanyahu been producing these preposterous claims from time immemorial? Does Gay forget that Netanyahu made the same claim about Iraq? Has Gay been living in a cave?

In any event, the Obama administration seemed to have listened to the Mossad on this issue, for it has been reported that “The United States made some progress in talks with Iran,” and both sides seemed to be pleased with the result. More bad news for Netanyahu:

“The number of Democrats who feel more sympathetic toward Israelis than Palestinians has dropped 10 points in one year, according to a new poll.”[4]

If the so-called Republicans have enough guts to dissociate themselves with Netanyahu, certainly the man in Tel Aviv would be thinking twice about manipulating decent Americans.

[1] See for example Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Spies Against Armageddon: Israel’s Secret Wars (New York: Levant Books, 2012); Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal, Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli secret Service (New York: HarperCollins, 2012); Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars: A History of Israel’s Intelligence Services(New York: Grove Press, 1991).

[2] Seumas Milne, Ewen MacAskill, and Clayton Swisher, “Leaked cables show Netanyahu’s Iran bomb claim contradicted by Mossad,” Guardian, February 23, 2015.

[3] John Allen Grey, “Sorry, Al Jazeera: A Leaked Mossad Cable Doesn’t Reveal Netanyahu Lied to the UN,” National Interest, February 23, 2014.

[4] Kendall Breitman, “Gallop Poll: Democrats Losing Sympathy for Israel,” Politico, February 23, 2015.