iran

Interview with Meir Dagan, former chief of the Mossad

Lesley Stahl: You have said publicly that bombing Iran now is the stupidest idea you’ve ever heard. That’s a direct quote.

Dagan: An attack on Iran before you are exploring all other approaches is not the right way how to do it... The regime in Iran is a very rational regime.

Stahl: Do you think Ahmadinejad is rational?

Dagan: The answer is yes. Not exactly our rationale, but I think that he is rational.

Stahl: Do you think they’re rational enough that they are capable of backing down from this?

Dagan: No doubt that the Iranian regime is maybe not exactly rational based on what I call Western-thinking, but no doubt they are considering all the implications of their actions.

Dagan says the best solution is to push the mullahs out by supporting Iranian students and minorities. According to a leaked State Department cable, he told his American counterparts as early as 2007, more should be done to foment regime change.

Dagan: It’s our duty to help anyone who likes to present an open opposition against their regime in Iran.

Stahl: Has Israel done anything to encourage, help, support the youth opposition groups that have been marching against the regime?

Dagan: Let’s ignore the question.

Dagan: We are going to ignite, at least from my point of view, a regional war. And wars, you know how they start. You never know how you are ending it.

2007, in a closed discussion: Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion "Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel." She "also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.1"

2009: "A senior Israeli official in Washington" asserted that "Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation.2"

In 2010 the Sunday Times of London (January 10) reported that Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, war hero, pillar of the Israeli defense establishment, and former director-general of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission, "believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons."

Early last month, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a television audience: "Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No, but we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability.3"

A week later we could read in the New York Times (January 15) that "three leading Israeli security experts — the Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, and a former military chief of staff, Dan Halutz — all recently declared that a nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel."

Then, a few days afterward, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview with Israeli Army Radio (January 18), had this exchange:

Question: Is it Israel's judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?

• 1. Haaretz.com (Israel), October 25, 2007; print edition October 26
• 2. Washington Post, March 5, 2009
• 3. "Face the Nation", CBS, January 8, 2012

I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you’re too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don’t know." He said, "I guess they don’t know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it’s worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir."

SPIEGEL: Your optimism is admirable. When you were still the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, you even felt confident that you could solve the nuclear conflict between Iran and the international community. But that didn't work out.

ElBaradei: We were in fact on the verge of a solution on several occasions. The Iranians were willing in 2003, but the administration of then US President George W. Bush was not. Then, in 2010, when President Barack Obama extended his hand, the Iranians couldn't take it, because of domestic political power struggles.

SPIEGEL: In your soon-to-be-published memoirs, you describe how you were deceived in your attempts to investigate.

ElBaradei: I adhere strictly to the facts, and part of that is that the Americans and the Europeans withheld important documents and information from us. They weren't interested in a compromise with the government in Tehran, but regime change -- by any means necessary.

SPIEGEL: And the poor Iranians were completely innocent?

ElBaradei: No, they too engaged in trickery. But the West never tried to understand that the most important thing for Iran was getting recognition and being treated as an equal.

“The United States is strongly committed to the promotion of human rights around the world, including in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the White House said in an accompanying news release. “As the President noted in his recent address to the United Nations General Assembly, human rights are a matter of moral and pragmatic necessity for the United States.”

... Yet, President Obama has taken no action against US officials who under the direction of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld imprisoned without charge “war on terror” detainees at secret black sites and at Guantanamo Bay.

These prisoners also were subjected to beatings, solitary confinement and a denial of due process. They, too, were coerced into making false confessions under unbearable interrogations, which included torture, abuse, blackmail, and the threatening of family members.

President Obama has excused his failure to exact any accountability on complicit US officials by saying that he preferred “to look forward, not backwards.” It is apparently easier to look backwards in Iran and demand accountability than it is in Washington.