Why everyone walked back Dagan's statement
Outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan told reporters that Iran wouldn't obtain a nuclear weapon before 2015. That set off a fury. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took issue with it. Prime Minister Netanyahu disagreed with it. And eventually even Dagan himself walked it back. So was Dagan right when he said 2015? Technically, no. First, Dagan was censured on the professional level. Iran already has enough fissionable material for one or two nuclear bombs. If the Ayatollahs resort to desperate measures and opt for high-grade uranium enrichment instead of low-grade, they can make the change in less than a year. Dagan says the Iranians don't intend to do so before 2015. But there's a difference between intention and capability. Iran might obtain a military nuclear capability within a year or two. Dagan the intelligence man made a misleading statement that produced an erroneous intelligence interpretation.If that's the case, why did he make the statement? Here's one theory - and frankly it's the most plausible one.
Dagan probably thinks Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are dangerous people. He is afraid they might make some foolhardy move in Iran. But the things he said around the end of his term have not neutralized the military option. Rather, they damaged the attempt to impose a diplomatic-economic siege on Iran. So Dagan did not remove the possibility of an attack on Iran, but brought it closer.If that sounds familiar to a lot of you, it should. Remember the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran at the end of 2007? The one that kept George W. Bush from taking care of the problem? Well, that's what this was.
Senior American, British and French officials compared the damage done by Dagan to the damage caused by the complacent, unfounded American intelligence evaluation released at the end of 2007.At least Dagan was forced to openly walk back his assessment, whereas the authors of the American assessment in 2007 were all anonymous and it took months for anyone to even start to admit they were wrong. And at least this time, even the Left (the Obama administration, for example) recognizes that Dagan was playing politics. But how much damage Dagan did is difficult to quantify. This much is certain: He's tainted his own reputation. He's shown that he has an enormous ego. He's likely killed his chance to enter Israeli politics unless he wants to join Meretz. And he made have made the club of nations trying to stop Iran into a lonely one.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Barack Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear program, Meir Dagan
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:41 PM
1 Comments:
There is an alternative explanation to Dagan's unprecedented press conference. That he dislikes Bibi and Barack does not make sufficient sense to me. The alternative thesis is Israel wants to telegraph to Iran that "we are letting our guard down because we covertly stopped you guys" and are waiting and even hoping Iran moves onto their own plan b, perhaps infecting their new machinery with another virus. Also, even if you don't buy that, Dagan's statements put pressure on the hardliners in Iran who are bankrupting their country to build the bomb. Can the Mullah's shoot straight? Can the Mullah's guard their own scientists? Can the Mullah's guard their most secret machinery? The answer appears no to each of these questions. This might provoke some dissent in the ruling circles within Iran. Finally, the unusual explanation that is possible would be that Israel wants the sanctions to fall apart so they can move to strike a key facility? If the western countries drop their sanctions efforts, Israel would then be justified to move onto their own plan b.
Dagan is a hero to me. I think he's done a masterly job. But old spies should shut their mouths and move to the country to become bee keepers and silent eccentrics... and not hold press conferences when they depart! Sadly, ego must be considered in his rationale.
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