Seeker Blog

Other Israeli sources tell Inquirer the new US assessment contradicts not only Israel’s intelligence judgments but also those of the Germans, the French and the Dutch.

Shavit echoes this point. “There were differences in emphasis. One party would tell you that Iran will have the first bomb in 2009. Another will say 2010 or 2011.

But no one in the West said anything similar to the (American) statement,” he says.

Greg Sheridan on Israel’s intelligence view of the now-famous NIE:

THE US intelligence assessment that the Iranians have abandoned, for the moment at least, their nuclear weapons program has burst like a clap of biblical thunder over troubled Israeli skies.

Frankly, there is hardly a senior Israeli who believes the US.

One sceptic is Shabtai Shavit. He was for seven years the head of Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad. Now in his late 60s, he has a range of commercial affiliations but just recently has been called back by Israel’s security ministry to advise the Government on Iran.

I spent a morning this week at his modestly sized but beautiful Tel Aviv villa. He was frankly shocked at the American assessment, which he does not believe is correct, and at its public release.

The new US view, that Iran is acquiring the nuclear technology that could produce weapons but has given up its specific weapons program, and in any event probably could not produce a weapon until 2015, is the opposite of the Israeli assessment. Jerusalem believes Iran will have enough nuclear fuel for a weapon by 2010 at the latest.

Says Shavit: “I believe we should be very hesitant in accepting this (US assessment). First, intelligence exists to err. Second, American intelligence time and again has made mistakes in the past. Three, we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that often intelligence is being used for political purposes and hidden agendas.”

This is a perfect circle of irony and history. The international Left believes the Bush administration misused intelligence to justify striking Iraq. Now Israelis suspect the Bush administration may be misusing intelligence because it doesn’t want to strike Iran.

Other Israeli sources tell Inquirer the new US assessment contradicts not only Israel’s intelligence judgments but also those of the Germans, the French and the Dutch.

Shavit echoes this point. “There were differences in emphasis. One party would tell you that Iran will have the first bomb in 2009. Another will say 2010 or 2011. But no one in the West said anything similar to the (American) statement,” he says.

Shavit outlines some of the difficulties in scrutinising the Iranian program: “Countries all over the world, when they go for a nuclear capability, they at first put civilian agencies in charge, not the military. These agencies pursue scientific capabilities, not military ones, such as enriching uranium, producing plutonium. It’s always in civilian hands.

“When a country then decides to use nuclear technology for military purposes, a military body comes and does it on a separate track. From an intelligence point of view, following any country’s nuclear program, you have to look for research and development to enrich uranium. To know if they are going for the bomb you have to look in other places, especially in defence infrastructure. It is far harder to track the military track than the civilian track. The Iranians say every day, yes, they are pursuing the civilian track. The military track is entirely hidden: geographically, financially, it’s somewhere else.”

Other Israeli sources tell Inquirer that Israel has identified Iran’s military nuclear track and it is active. They point out how often the CIA has made fundamental mistakes in this kind of assessment. When Robert Gates, now US Defence Secretary, was deputy director of the CIA, it substantially overestimated Soviet strength. It did not know about India’s or Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in advance. It first underestimated, then overestimated, Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

For Israel, an Iranian nuclear weapon is a far deadlier proposition than for the Americans. Says Shavit: “Israel cannot live with the threat of Iran with a combination of a nuclear weapons capability and the present regime. It means to live under the threat of a leadership which is extremely religious, fundamentalist in its views, that believes its No1 duty, which came straight down from heaven, is to fight the infidels, and infidels is everyone who is not the right kind of Muslim, and to create the new world caliphate. It sounds like a fairytale but this is true. They say it, they believe it, they educate their kids about it.

“Israel is only 20,000sqkm. Most of its population is around Tel Aviv. What I am describing is an unbearable threat.

“So we should do everything we can to build an international coalition to deal with this. The threat is not only against Israel but against Europe, and soon, when Iran acquires ballistic missles, against the US. The international coalition should deal with it, first diplomatically. If that doesn’t work, then through sanctions. If sanctions don’t work, then it must deal militarily.”