Mossad: Cover Story (2017): Season 1, Episode 4 - Episode #1.4 - full transcript
During your time in Mossad,
did you ever feel like
you could change reality,
or history?
I never thought about
trying to affect history.
Never.
With time, as you...
As you realize what you're dealing with,
and also,
the higher you get up the chain,
the more you influence decisions,
and you realize you have
an insane amount of influence
on what's going on,
and...
you can even prevent
bad things from happening.
Very bad things.
Can you tell us about
a decision you made
that had far-reaching
consequences in the region?
I think, really...
You know what? No.
He wanted to talk about
the nuclear reactor, but he can't.
You know what? No.
The Mossad was involved
with almost every
major thing that happened here
in the past 50 years.
It influenced almost every decision,
almost every war, almost every...
thing that could have happened and didn't,
which is its real contribution.
Ever since Joshua's twelve spies,
spying hasn't been
a typical Jewish pursuit.
But after the Six Day War,
something phenomenal
happened in the world:
Less than 20 years after
the founding of the Jewish state,
at a time when Jews were,
until then, considered good merchants,
good money people,
suddenly, they became known around
the world as excellent soldiers and spies.
And then we started getting requests
from all sorts of strange,
sometimes god-forsaken places:
"Help us. You're supermen."
The Christians in civil war-era Lebanon,
the Kurds in Iraq,
the Christians in South Sudan
who fought Sudan's Muslim government,
and other strange
and surreal requests that...
really,
were the result of Israel's
great reputation
as a country that's capable
of pulling off absolutely anything,
and has intelligence services
unlike any in the world.
We took advantage of that.
We trained their armies
and their intelligence forces.
We occasionally even got involved
in intelligence operations.
We had a common interest in gathering
intel about those countries
that were just as hostile towards them
as they were towards us.
How did the cooperation with Sudan start,
for instance?
The head of the South Sudanese rebellion
came and knocked
on the door of the Israeli
embassy in an African country and said,
"Help me.”
So...
OK. How do we decide?
the head of Mossad,
Zvi Zamir, brought him in
to a meeting with Golda Meir,
the Prime Minister,
and she was impressed.
She became convinced that...
he had a case.
And as the only minority in the region
that had gained independence,
we've got a moral obligation to help him.
I came to South Sudan in '69.
Were you happy to take part
in that operation?
Was I happy, you're asking?
Have you heard of the word ‘joy’?
I was elated.
What was behind the Christian rebellion
in South Sudan?
The northern Arabs
had control of the area,
and they were planning to
transfer 1.5 million Arabs to the South.
The idea was to turn the South
into a Muslim region.
I also saw, with my own eyes,
what they had gone through.
What they were doing to them.
The northerners would do
anything they pleased.
They would go in, kill, murder, rape,
burn the food...
And no one knew, and no one cared.
The interest of the South Sudanese was:
"Give us weapons
so we can defend ourselves,”
and our interest was
to help build up the rebel army,
so that they would keep the
Sudanese army busy in the southern woods.
That was the mission.
This would keep some
30,000 Sudanese soldiers
away from the Suez Canal where they
could join forces with Egyptian divisions.
So the goal was
to weaken the Egyptian army,
not to provide humanitarian aid
to the Sudanese.
Your naïveté...
This wasn't...
a charitable endeavor.
Intelligence services,
around the world,
aren't charitable endeavors.
They think, "What's my interest
and how do I achieve it."
It’s a rotten game.
I was tasked with being the press officer
of the Anyanya underground in South Sudan.
I created the Anyanya newspaper.
We collected the addresses
of diplomats, journalists.
We distributed the paper
in order to tell the world
about the uprising.
The mission was to create
a thousand-man battalion,
build a landing strip,
create a medic's course,
a signalling course,
arm them, equip them,
and head out on missions.
The doctor, the signaller and I
went on a mission
whose aim was to make
the northern army's life harder,
by blowing up bridges.
And listen, this was absolutely amazing.
Really amazing.
Three Israelis,
in the forests of South Sudan...
Three!
No divisions, no planes, no tanks.
Just three people,
with two cameras and three pistols.
And what a deterrent it was,
for both Egypt and Sudan,
that the Israelis,
are sitting on their backs, on the Nile...
On their backs, on the Nile.
Amusing?
Perhaps.
But the reality is
they took it very seriously.
Africa was very important
to us at the time,
because it was our first opportunity
to really break through
the ring of hostile Arab countries
surrounding us.
During that time
I also went on
fact-finding missions in Africa,
under a foreign identity.
I don't want to go into
the details of my cover.
I traveled extensively,
in West and East Africa
I attended international conferences,
and hobnobbed with people
of all stripes and kinds.
Creating those connections
was very important.
We’re talking about connections
that are built over time.
Take Morocco, for instance.
Our ties to the King of Morocco
started in the 1960s.
That's a classic example
of the Mossad playing a central role.
A central role.
I think I'm the first Israeli
to sit with the King of Morocco.
I initiated contact
between Morocco and Israel.
The Moroccans had received intelligence
that Nasser felt that
the King of Morocco needs to be replaced,
that he was "too western,”
and that he was planning to have
the King of Morocco assassinated.
The King of Morocco asked himself,
"Who can help me?"
They told him: "The Jews, the Israelis.”
We met with them
and decided on a course of action
for protecting the King.
Did protecting the King
include political assassinations?
Ben Barka's, for instance?
Next question.
Founder of Morocco's second-largest party,
the National Union of Popular Forces,
Mehdi Ben Barka, was sentenced to death
in absentia in November 1963,
for "Harming the State's
external security.”
Ben Barka was
a Moroccan opposition leader.
At the time, the Mossad had managed
to create a very tight relationship
with Moroccan intelligence.
At some point, the Moroccans
decided to assassinate Ben Barka.
In this house in Fontenay-le-Vicomte
in Île-de-France,
Ben Barka wasn't just accidentally killed
by a member of the French security forces,
but cruelly tortured for over an hour,
with one objective: His murder.
And who held the instruments of torture?
This man: General Oufkir,
together with General Ahmed Dlimi.
It's been made public that you'd met
with the heads of Moroccan intelligence,
Dlimi and Oufkir,
who asked you to help
with the assassination of Ben Barka.
They... were behind it?
So ask them.
- The Moroccans?
- Yes, Dlimi and Oufkir.
That would be difficult.
They're no longer with us.
Oh, really?
So what do you want from me?
I don't want to get into it.
Ben Barka went to Paris,
and there he was kidnapped by members
of General Oufkir's Moroccan intelligence.
He was interrogated very violently
and died during the interrogation.
We've been informed that Ben Barka may
have been drowned in a swamp around here,
and we think it's our responsibility
to verify this claim.
So Mossad was involved in an assassination
that was unrelated to Israel's security,
without any moral qualms?
This idea of introducing questions of
morality into the world of intelligence…
Not to say that it's immoral.
It's not immoral,
but you make considerations…
what you want to achieve,
what you're willing to risk for it,
and sometimes, you collaborate
with the devil himself.
What did Israel stand to gain
from this collaboration?
Obviously, if you have
ties to a country that...
is part of the Arab League,
is sometimes even the host
of Arab League deliberations,
that's a great connection to have.
That's the art of...
covert diplomacy,
which is a long-distance race.
It started to look like
the Moroccan King
wanted to create a dialogue
between us and the Egyptians.
The Mossad director at the time,
the late Yitzhak Hofi,
had an extraordinary relationship
with the ruler of Morocco.
Moshe Dayan was sent to Morocco,
to meet with the
Deputy Prime Minister of Egypt.
That was the beginning of a back-and-forth
between Cairo, Israel and Morocco,
all under the auspices of the King.
- What was Mossad's role in these talks?
- Mossad...
- Was it a full partner?
- Mossad coordinated everything.
The Mossad was responsible.
These political-strategic ties
were created by Mossad.
Where were the Americans
during these preliminary talks?
I've got another story for you
that we haven't talked about.
The whole peace deal was concocted
unbeknownst to the Americans.
President Carter's aim, at the time,
was to bring us back
to what was known as
the Geneva Conference,
a conference where the Soviets,
the Americans, the Israelis,
all the Arab states, and the PLO,
would come together to create
a regional peace deal. That was his dream.
And then along came Sadat
and got in his way.
He wanted to negotiate
a bilateral peace with Israel.
May the peace and mercy
of Allah be with you,
and may peace be upon us all, God willing.
Sadat came to Israel on November 9th,
and when he left
neither side was sure
what the next step would be.
How would the relationship continue?
On November 30th,
I get a call from
the director of Mossad, Haka:
"Come to the office."
He says: "Sadat asked for Israel
to send an emissary to Egypt,
to manage our relations.
He'll be based at the American embassy,
and will appear American,
for all intents and purposes.”
Sadat saw this move
not just as peace with Israel,
but more importantly as a peace
between Egypt and the US.
He'd already kicked the Soviets out
and he wanted to get the Americans in.
How do you get the Americans in?
You stick an Israeli
in the US embassy in Cairo,
and if they agree to that,
they're in.
So Sadat wanted to reach
a deal with the Americans,
- and used Israel in order to get it.
- Definitely, yes.
Exactly.
So Haka said,
"Go and make your arrangements.
“Come back here tomorrow at noon. I'll get
you in to see Begin and send you off."
The next day, I went with my wife
to see a Mossad-affiliated lawyer,
made a will,
gave her power of attorney...
I was preparing to leave her
with three small kids at home.
I get there at noon.
"Haka, I'm here."
He says "Wait.”
A day passes. Then another.
And another.
Finally he says, "You're not going.
President Carter didn’t approve it."
But history crowned Carter as the one
who brought peace with the Egyptians.
The Americans had no choice
but to go along with it.
But they did it unwillingly.
Of course, later,
Carter was the hero of Camp David.
But it took him a long time
to get used to it.
And I, unfortunately,
missed what was possibly
the chance of a lifetime.
What did you do with the will?
I tore up the power of attorney,
so my wife wouldn't go nuts with it.
The peace deal with Egypt
was achieved using covert diplomacy,
in a move that turns Mossad into a tool
of the state, a political tool even.
For obvious reasons,
such a move can't be done out in the open.
It must be done in secret.
And, for obvious reasons,
because of the way governments are
structured in Arab and Muslim countries,
the head of intelligence
is, at the end of the day,
the ruler's main confidante.
If you could reach
the head of intelligence,
and have secret communication with him,
you were basically
in contact with the ruler.
So, even when we talk about Iran...
Mossad operated there extensively, yes.
Please explain.
We established a strategic
relationship with the Iranians.
They sold us oil.
We sold them all sorts of things,
in an area that was very important
for them, that we had experience in.
Regime security or state security,
in the wide sense of the term.
At that time, for instance,
the Shah marked the 2,500th anniversary
of Iran's independence,
and the main Israeli representative at
that event was Mossad director, Meir Amit.
I was aboard an Arab ruler's plane once.
After an hour and a half,
I had to say the
"Asher Yatzar" blessing.
"Who formed man with many openings..."
A very wise Jewish blessing
that you say after
performing your bodily functions.
So I asked, "Where's the bathroom?"
They said,
"See there? There's a door in the wall."
I look at the wall.
It's all gold-plated.
The toilet, the mirror,
the sink, everything.
And I look at myself and think,
“I, Reuven Merhav,
son of Dr. Walter Markowicz from Haifa,
I should sit on a thing like this?"
And when I stood up, I saw that...
There was no difference.
It was exactly the same.
That gave me perspective on life.
People shouldn't take something fleeting
and think that it's theirs.
It's not theirs. It's all on loan.
During your years as
the Mossad representative in Tehran,
could you feel the Shah's regime
losing its grip?
What happened was...
In my last year in Iran,
I could feel the rise in tensions,
and there were all sorts of little
incidents that sort of went unnoticed.
A cop was stabbed and wounded...
We knew that the gaps
between the rich and poor,
between the standing army that guarded
the Shah and all those spoiled rich people
who lived in fancy villas and had food
flown in from Paris on Concordes…
That couldn't go on.
Up until that moment,
we had very close ties with the Shah
and with Iranian intelligence.
And we, of course,
knew nothing of the opposition,
not even the most moderate opposition.
The nature
of working with a dictatorial regime
is that you have to be very careful
about talking to the opposition.
So we took special care
not to know them.
All in order to keep from angering
the Shah and having him kick us out.
When I arrived in Tehran,
I spent ten days with Reuven.
I went to the airport, to see him off,
and he made me sign a piece of paper:
"Received: one Iran, intact."
Neither of us knew
that it came with a lit fuse.
Because already on the way back
from the airport to Tehran,
I heard on the radio
that there were riots in Isfahan,
in Tehran and in ten other cities.
That's how the snowball started rolling.
Six months later, it was all over.
Things were obviously headed
in a bad direction,
so the head of Mossad said
to the head of SAVAK,
"Please let Geizi have some
background about what's going on,
because he will also be in charge
of the Israeli diplomats' safety."
The Shah left Iran in mid-January.
All the cars were honking their horns
and flashing their lights. It was...
a shocking, frightening sight.
Suddenly, I got a terrible headache.
"What do we do, now that the Shah left,
"and they've been telling us
that he would restore order?"
A huge crowd, hundreds of protestors,
stormed the embassy
with pickaxes and crowbars
and started digging through the walls
of the Israeli embassy.
Shortly thereafter,
on the embassy balcony,
stood Ahmad Khomeini,
the Ayatollah Khomeini's son,
and Hani Al Hassan,
the PLO representative.
It was clear
that the embassy had been taken.
Arafat, Khomeini!
Arafat, Khomeini!
And we stood there, trying
to figure out what to do next.
We were spotted by a Jew,
in a nearby house,
and he came out, with his kids,
and they dragged us, by force,
into their home.
He took incredible care of us.
When we came out...
He went out, and his kids went out,
and he went back to Tehran,
even though they told him not to.
He went back and they caught him.
Sadly,
that man was later executed.
The strategic lesson to be learned
is that even if you have relations
with a tyrant
in a dictatorship,
where you have investments and assets,
and you don't want to lose those assets,
even if that dictator leaves the picture,
you have to employ all
your sophistication,
you have to get to know the opposition.
That ability to be clever and cynical,
and to work with everyone on the sly,
was something we hadn't learned.
At the time, we were very
sympathetic towards our allies,
and often ignored the other side,
to our detriment.
That is, when we made contact
with some minority group,
we identified with their struggle
wholeheartedly, as if it were our own.
For instance,
in our dealings with Lebanon.
It’s our tendency to pick a minority,
the one that's supposedly
closest to our interests.
In this case, the Lebanese Christians.
Again, it would have been wiser
to work with other groups as well:
the Shi'ites, the Druze.
But the situation was more complicated.
There's a rule
in the Middle East that says
that if there's
a festive meal taking place,
and you're not invited,
then it's quite possible
that you'll soon find yourself
served as one of the main courses.
That is, if there's something going on,
you'd better be aware of it,
with your finger on the pulse,
so you won’t be taken by surprise.
I spent many years in Lebanon.
When you say "in Lebanon"...
Did you live there?
In Beirut.
Did you feel unsafe there?
Look, Beirut is...
The Wild West.
At any moment,
you might walk past a car bomb,
either meant for you or for somebody else.
When did the cooperation
with the Lebanese Christians start?
In early '76,
when it became obvious that
the Lebanese army would disband.
I suggested, in a letter to
the head of Military Intelligence,
that we help Christian groups in Beirut,
based on the principle of
"My enemy's enemy is my friend."
The Christians, at the time, were fighting
the Palestinians, who were our enemies,
so I thought we should help them.
They would help us gather intelligence.
They would help us fight the Palestinians.
The Palestinians were starting
to base their operations
in Lebanon and to make trouble for us.
Palestinians who left Jordan...
In Jordan, they were guests, refugees,
and started acting
like they owned the place.
When they got stronger in Lebanon,
they behaved the same way in Lebanon,
like they owned the place.
They ran protection rackets.
They raped women.
They ran afoul of the Christians,
who were the main group
in Lebanese government at the time,
and it was obvious that things
were about to turn violent.
It started with
the Ain el-Rammaneh incident.
Palestinians used to set up checkpoints.
They would identify Christians,
based on their names,
and shoot them.
The Christians would do the same,
sometimes without even checking IDs.
They would show a person a tomato,
called a "bandura" in the Palestinian
dialect, and "banadura" in Lebanese.
Anyone who answered "bandura"
would be shot.
That was essentially the opening volley
of the Lebanese civil war.
In '76, you wrote a letter
to the head of Military Intelligence
and that's essentially what started our
whole ill-fated involvement in Lebanon,
right?
Look, when we...
I went over the principles
that I took into consideration
when I recommended
helping the Christians in Lebanon,
and none of those principles included
the IDF physically entering Lebanon,
or the IDF cleaning out Beirut.
I recommended we help the Christians
help themselves, defend themselves.
Yesterday, Arafat invited
Arik Sharon to Beirut.
Be careful, Arafat!
Arik Sharon could still
accept the invitation.
The main driver
behind the shift was Sharon.
After Sharon became defense minister
it was clear that he had an agenda.
To disgrace the PLO,
to curb Syria's power,
to force the PLO out of Beirut
and back to Jordan,
to turn Jordan into a new Palestine,
which would solve our Palestinian problem.
From then on,
he used the Mossad
in order to realize his agenda.
He was really focused
when it came to these things.
When Sharon focused on something,
nothing could stand in his way.
Ariel Sharon said he'd bring about
a new order in Lebanon,
and help get Bashir Jemayyel
elected president,
and in exchange, Lebanon would sign
a separate peace agreement with us.
The time is 10:53.
IDF armored units
entered 50 minutes ago,
marking the beginning of the operation.
No one can foretell
how a military operation will develop.
Could the Mossad have prevented that war?
The Mossad doesn't make
those kinds of decisions.
Mossad, in this case, was supposed
to act in an advisory capacity.
But, I think, the advisor
wasn't knowledgeable enough
about the problem, and...
did not advise.
A family photo.
It all looks so ideal.
24 hours after the elections,
the new President, Bashir,
with his family.
Prime Minister Begin hopes for peace
between Israel and Lebanon.
You're going to be the president
of Lebanon for the next six years.
Do you think there will be peace
between Israel and Lebanon?
We hope to have peace
with the whole world,
because eight years
of nightmares and destruction,
eight years of people losing their homes,
living at the mercy of snipers and bombs,
threatening to kill us, at home
or at work... All this must stop.
The plan to achieve peace with another
Arab country was unsuccessful.
What went wrong?
The first reason
was ignorance.
Our guys in Lebanon,
who dealt with the Lebanese,
were totally ignorant about Lebanon.
They lived in Lebanon,
and had no idea where they were living.
They didn't know the country,
they didn't know the mentality...
Lebanon is a complicated country.
It's a place where if you ask a boy,
"What's one plus one?"
he doesn't answer, "Two."
Because it’s not necessarily two.
"It depends," he'll tell you.
"Are you buying? Are you selling?"
It's not...
And in a country like this, to bring in
a group of amateurs... It doesn't work.
In Lebanon,
"OK" doesn't mean you've got a deal.
It's not a done deal.
It's just “OK.”
After that...
“It depends.” Like I said.
What did the Mossad fail to understand?
The political wing of Mossad, apparently,
who thought an OK meant a done deal.
The head of the department should have
gone to Sharon and Begin and told them,
"Fellas, there's no such thing
as a new order in Lebanon.”
There's no such thing
as a president of Lebanon
who can truly sign a separate
peace agreement with you,
because the day after he announces it,
if not the very same day,
he would be assassinated.
In the case of Bashir Jemayyel,
he never even had a chance
to sign a peace agreement.
The moment the Syrians felt he’d become
too independent in dealing with Israel,
they assassinated him.
The entire 3-story house collapsed
due to the blast from
a 400 lb. explosive device.
The assassination was meticulously planned
and cleanly executed.
As we film here, under special permission,
nobody yet knows
that Bashir Jemayyel has been killed.
The war broke out on June 6th.
Bashir Jemayyel was elected,
I think, in July or August.
He was assassinated in September.
A few days later, on the eve of the Jewish
New Year, came Sabra and Shatila.
The day Bashir was murdered,
I was in Beirut.
That day, I went to the base
of the Mossad's political department
that handled our connections there.
It was a base for
some of the Phalangists' people,
their intelligence base.
I saw them sitting there,
sharpening their knives.
They came and told me,
"Today we're going to use white weapons."
"White weapons" in Lebanese means knives.
From there they head out
to Sabra and Shatila.
When you heard about the horrible
massacre that happened there,
how did you react?
Listen, I'm not...
a bloodthirsty person.
I don't like it when civilians get hurt,
and innocent women and children.
But that’s part of the
rules of war in Lebanon.
Lebanon is a country that's held together
by telephone lines from the outside
and by wallpaper from the inside.
It's got 17 sects,
each with its own education system.
Once every few years they fight,
then some foreign actor comes along,
promising to bring order to the place,
then the locals screw them over, and then
the whole process starts over again.
They've been fighting for 1,000 years.
You think you'll put their lives in order?
The idea they had back then,
that we could go in
and call the shots in an Arab country,
or conquer an Arab capital,
was unbelievably stupid.
On the other hand,
Mossad...
failed as a gatekeeper, in my opinion.
So you're saying that the head of Mossad
should have told the Prime Minister,
“Don’t go any further.
This is a terrible mistake.”
Look, on June 6th,
when they went to war,
Haka told the government
some harsh things.
But Mossad didn't push back hard enough
on this.
The big question is:
Can a Mossad director influence
a prime minister's decision-making process
in strategic geopolitical matters?
In my opinion, the answer is "No.”
The Mossad learned,
through its own channels,
about meetings in Europe
between Israelis and PLO officials.
So the head of Mossad
rushed over to Rabin and told him,
"Sir, something's going on in Europe..."
And so forth.
Rabin's answer was:
"Drop it. I'm aware of it.”
Without sharing.
Without telling him what was going on.
Rabin decided on the Oslo talks without
consulting the intelligence services.
He decided to go for it,
because his gut told him
it needed to be done.
Peres used to say,
"What do intelligence services know?
What did they know about Barbarossa?
What did they know about...
"Munich?"
What did they know about
Pearl Harbor, for instance?"
Therefore, he didn't need to hear
from them. He didn't need them.
Did Peres have contempt for Mossad?
- For the director of Mossad?
- I wouldn't say contempt, but he had...
disdain.
When it came to strategic geopolitical
matters, he certainly didn't listen.
Didn't listen and didn't care.
In operational matters he did,
of course, because he depended on them.
What causes differences between
a head of Mossad and a prime minister?
A prime minister has a much broader
set of factors to deal with.
The ideology he came up in,
his political maneuvering,
ensuring his political longevity...
Did you personally encounter this kind
of tension with the executive branch?
I've only served under
one prime minister directly,
Prime Minister Netanyahu,
and, on one occasion,
I was giving a presentation,
and, about three minutes
into my presentation,
the prime minister disagreed with me.
Disputed what I had said.
I went down that road with him,
and held a debate with the prime minister.
The prime minister was undaunted.
He saw that I was debating him,
so his voice went up an octave.
His voice goes up an octave,
so what am I supposed to do now?
I think he's wrong.
And I know,
as much as humanly possible,
that I’m not the only one who thinks so.
So the dispute gradually escalates.
Israel's interest is to prevent a nuclear
arms race in the region. That's clear.
And if you lose the Iranians,
you’ve lost the whole Middle East.
You're under constant threat,
and it would be difficult to run
your country properly under such a threat.
All of today's nuclear technology,
is in the hands of Iranian scientists
It's no wonder we're at the top.
Iran is a Shiite country.
It's in a serious conflict with
the Sunni Arab nations that surround it.
In contrast to this regional power,
whose interests run contrary to ours,
there are other Arab countries
whose interests, believe it or not,
run parallel to ours:
Saudi Arabia, the UAE,
Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman.
Now, you could say that
these countries and Israel
are in the same boat, and you'd be right.
Meir Dagan was the new Mossad director.
He told me we needed
to focus on the Arab world.
That we need to invest in countries
that don't have official ties with us.
So, in the Dagan era,
- you undertook operations...
- I don't want to go into detail,
but any action that would stave off
the need to scramble our jets,
he was for.
According to foreign media outlets,
a number of Iranian nuclear scientists
met unnatural deaths.
Operations were happening all the time,
not just ones...
run by the State of Israel.
Also, the fight against Iran wasn't waged
using the old intelligence methods,
like gunshots at point blank range,
but also using new weapons, like cyber,
and Stuxnet.
Limited measures,
that don't reveal their point of origin,
don't require retaliation,
and don't require escalation.
I was a proponent of using
these measures, and...
So, were these regional alliances
enough to realize our strategic goals?
Depends when.
The fact is that the threat
has not been removed completely.
Were Netanyahu and Dagan
on good terms?
I was present in all of his meetings
with Netanyahu that concerned me.
They were on reasonable terms.
It was nothing special,
neither good nor bad.
Eventually, Dagan's relationship with the
prime minister took a turn for the worse.
You know, when the relationship between
two people sours, you can feel it.
Even when little is said,
you can sense it.
But they had a major disagreement.
Netanyahu talked about bombing Iran.
Why did Dagan oppose it so strongly?
I think that Dagan,
had an absolute belief
that before going to war,
and who knows where it might lead,
there are many steps you can take.
You have to do the best you can
before you go to war.
Mossad director, Meir Dagan, says
that attacking Iran's nuclear reactors
from the air is a harebrained idea.
"It offers no advantage.”
So the Prime Minister was going
to defy the Mossad director.
Did he really have intensions to attack?
He intended to have intentions. And...
And he prepared, and invested,
and he said, with great conviction:
"Should history leave us by ourselves,
"we are capable
of defending ourselves on our own."
In 2012, it came to a head.
There's the famous account
of that meeting.
At that meeting,
the relevant persons said
it was operationally feasible.
But what happened then?
It turned out the Americans and Iranians
were in a steamy tango of negotiations.
Now, the question in Israel is:
What do we do about it?
Two options.
Option one: Israel says,
"We're going to enter the negotiations,
in order to influence them from the inside
with our expertise and knowledge."
But the government decided
to do the opposite,
to denounce these talks
as a historic mistake,
and to declare a feud.
What do we see today?
First of all,
I don't know why he didn't act.
It remains a great historical question.
- Why didn't the Prime Minister act?
- Do you think he was afraid to?
That he suddenly realized
it might be a terrible mistake?
I told you, history will...
I don't know what happened or why.
I'm just saying that in my opinion,
he let himself down as well.
The fact that the whole world,
practically,
agrees that the deal that they reached
is the thing that will slow Iran down
the most, for the longest time... right?
Because attacking the Iranian
nuclear facilities
would have pushed them back...
What, two years? Three? Four?
But it would've united the Iranian people
and given them a reason to attack Israel.
It would be up there with the huge mistake
the Japanese made at Pearl Harbor.
Admiral Yamamoto, who led the attack
on Pearl Harbor,
was opposed to it.
He was ordered to attack,
and he carried it out perfectly.
And it led to the destruction of Japan,
and to the US joining
the war against Japan.
I think that unlike Lebanon,
the Mossad directors in the Iran period,
both Dagan and his successor,
made it clear
to the prime minister that...
this would be a move that,
in their professional opinion,
would not be beneficial, but only cause
great damage, and maybe even a world war.
Look at what's going on
in the world today.
All the conventional wars
always end very, very badly.
Look at the process the U.S. went through
after Iraq and Afghanistan.
Look... at us, even.
You initiate some kind of war,
you have a plan for how it'll turn out,
or what it'll look like,
and 98% of the time,
it ends differently
from what you expected.
It costs a ton of money,
and loss of human life.
Many of the objectives
can be obtained by other means.
By covert means.
That's why using organizations such as...
The CIA, MI6,
and the Israeli organizations,
can produce, at a much lower cost,
similar results without having to invest
lots of resources, and suffer casualties.
That's why these organizations
are flourishing right now.
It would be preferable
if we didn’t even need
these organizations.
But that's still a long way off.
Subtitle translation by
did you ever feel like
you could change reality,
or history?
I never thought about
trying to affect history.
Never.
With time, as you...
As you realize what you're dealing with,
and also,
the higher you get up the chain,
the more you influence decisions,
and you realize you have
an insane amount of influence
on what's going on,
and...
you can even prevent
bad things from happening.
Very bad things.
Can you tell us about
a decision you made
that had far-reaching
consequences in the region?
I think, really...
You know what? No.
He wanted to talk about
the nuclear reactor, but he can't.
You know what? No.
The Mossad was involved
with almost every
major thing that happened here
in the past 50 years.
It influenced almost every decision,
almost every war, almost every...
thing that could have happened and didn't,
which is its real contribution.
Ever since Joshua's twelve spies,
spying hasn't been
a typical Jewish pursuit.
But after the Six Day War,
something phenomenal
happened in the world:
Less than 20 years after
the founding of the Jewish state,
at a time when Jews were,
until then, considered good merchants,
good money people,
suddenly, they became known around
the world as excellent soldiers and spies.
And then we started getting requests
from all sorts of strange,
sometimes god-forsaken places:
"Help us. You're supermen."
The Christians in civil war-era Lebanon,
the Kurds in Iraq,
the Christians in South Sudan
who fought Sudan's Muslim government,
and other strange
and surreal requests that...
really,
were the result of Israel's
great reputation
as a country that's capable
of pulling off absolutely anything,
and has intelligence services
unlike any in the world.
We took advantage of that.
We trained their armies
and their intelligence forces.
We occasionally even got involved
in intelligence operations.
We had a common interest in gathering
intel about those countries
that were just as hostile towards them
as they were towards us.
How did the cooperation with Sudan start,
for instance?
The head of the South Sudanese rebellion
came and knocked
on the door of the Israeli
embassy in an African country and said,
"Help me.”
So...
OK. How do we decide?
the head of Mossad,
Zvi Zamir, brought him in
to a meeting with Golda Meir,
the Prime Minister,
and she was impressed.
She became convinced that...
he had a case.
And as the only minority in the region
that had gained independence,
we've got a moral obligation to help him.
I came to South Sudan in '69.
Were you happy to take part
in that operation?
Was I happy, you're asking?
Have you heard of the word ‘joy’?
I was elated.
What was behind the Christian rebellion
in South Sudan?
The northern Arabs
had control of the area,
and they were planning to
transfer 1.5 million Arabs to the South.
The idea was to turn the South
into a Muslim region.
I also saw, with my own eyes,
what they had gone through.
What they were doing to them.
The northerners would do
anything they pleased.
They would go in, kill, murder, rape,
burn the food...
And no one knew, and no one cared.
The interest of the South Sudanese was:
"Give us weapons
so we can defend ourselves,”
and our interest was
to help build up the rebel army,
so that they would keep the
Sudanese army busy in the southern woods.
That was the mission.
This would keep some
30,000 Sudanese soldiers
away from the Suez Canal where they
could join forces with Egyptian divisions.
So the goal was
to weaken the Egyptian army,
not to provide humanitarian aid
to the Sudanese.
Your naïveté...
This wasn't...
a charitable endeavor.
Intelligence services,
around the world,
aren't charitable endeavors.
They think, "What's my interest
and how do I achieve it."
It’s a rotten game.
I was tasked with being the press officer
of the Anyanya underground in South Sudan.
I created the Anyanya newspaper.
We collected the addresses
of diplomats, journalists.
We distributed the paper
in order to tell the world
about the uprising.
The mission was to create
a thousand-man battalion,
build a landing strip,
create a medic's course,
a signalling course,
arm them, equip them,
and head out on missions.
The doctor, the signaller and I
went on a mission
whose aim was to make
the northern army's life harder,
by blowing up bridges.
And listen, this was absolutely amazing.
Really amazing.
Three Israelis,
in the forests of South Sudan...
Three!
No divisions, no planes, no tanks.
Just three people,
with two cameras and three pistols.
And what a deterrent it was,
for both Egypt and Sudan,
that the Israelis,
are sitting on their backs, on the Nile...
On their backs, on the Nile.
Amusing?
Perhaps.
But the reality is
they took it very seriously.
Africa was very important
to us at the time,
because it was our first opportunity
to really break through
the ring of hostile Arab countries
surrounding us.
During that time
I also went on
fact-finding missions in Africa,
under a foreign identity.
I don't want to go into
the details of my cover.
I traveled extensively,
in West and East Africa
I attended international conferences,
and hobnobbed with people
of all stripes and kinds.
Creating those connections
was very important.
We’re talking about connections
that are built over time.
Take Morocco, for instance.
Our ties to the King of Morocco
started in the 1960s.
That's a classic example
of the Mossad playing a central role.
A central role.
I think I'm the first Israeli
to sit with the King of Morocco.
I initiated contact
between Morocco and Israel.
The Moroccans had received intelligence
that Nasser felt that
the King of Morocco needs to be replaced,
that he was "too western,”
and that he was planning to have
the King of Morocco assassinated.
The King of Morocco asked himself,
"Who can help me?"
They told him: "The Jews, the Israelis.”
We met with them
and decided on a course of action
for protecting the King.
Did protecting the King
include political assassinations?
Ben Barka's, for instance?
Next question.
Founder of Morocco's second-largest party,
the National Union of Popular Forces,
Mehdi Ben Barka, was sentenced to death
in absentia in November 1963,
for "Harming the State's
external security.”
Ben Barka was
a Moroccan opposition leader.
At the time, the Mossad had managed
to create a very tight relationship
with Moroccan intelligence.
At some point, the Moroccans
decided to assassinate Ben Barka.
In this house in Fontenay-le-Vicomte
in Île-de-France,
Ben Barka wasn't just accidentally killed
by a member of the French security forces,
but cruelly tortured for over an hour,
with one objective: His murder.
And who held the instruments of torture?
This man: General Oufkir,
together with General Ahmed Dlimi.
It's been made public that you'd met
with the heads of Moroccan intelligence,
Dlimi and Oufkir,
who asked you to help
with the assassination of Ben Barka.
They... were behind it?
So ask them.
- The Moroccans?
- Yes, Dlimi and Oufkir.
That would be difficult.
They're no longer with us.
Oh, really?
So what do you want from me?
I don't want to get into it.
Ben Barka went to Paris,
and there he was kidnapped by members
of General Oufkir's Moroccan intelligence.
He was interrogated very violently
and died during the interrogation.
We've been informed that Ben Barka may
have been drowned in a swamp around here,
and we think it's our responsibility
to verify this claim.
So Mossad was involved in an assassination
that was unrelated to Israel's security,
without any moral qualms?
This idea of introducing questions of
morality into the world of intelligence…
Not to say that it's immoral.
It's not immoral,
but you make considerations…
what you want to achieve,
what you're willing to risk for it,
and sometimes, you collaborate
with the devil himself.
What did Israel stand to gain
from this collaboration?
Obviously, if you have
ties to a country that...
is part of the Arab League,
is sometimes even the host
of Arab League deliberations,
that's a great connection to have.
That's the art of...
covert diplomacy,
which is a long-distance race.
It started to look like
the Moroccan King
wanted to create a dialogue
between us and the Egyptians.
The Mossad director at the time,
the late Yitzhak Hofi,
had an extraordinary relationship
with the ruler of Morocco.
Moshe Dayan was sent to Morocco,
to meet with the
Deputy Prime Minister of Egypt.
That was the beginning of a back-and-forth
between Cairo, Israel and Morocco,
all under the auspices of the King.
- What was Mossad's role in these talks?
- Mossad...
- Was it a full partner?
- Mossad coordinated everything.
The Mossad was responsible.
These political-strategic ties
were created by Mossad.
Where were the Americans
during these preliminary talks?
I've got another story for you
that we haven't talked about.
The whole peace deal was concocted
unbeknownst to the Americans.
President Carter's aim, at the time,
was to bring us back
to what was known as
the Geneva Conference,
a conference where the Soviets,
the Americans, the Israelis,
all the Arab states, and the PLO,
would come together to create
a regional peace deal. That was his dream.
And then along came Sadat
and got in his way.
He wanted to negotiate
a bilateral peace with Israel.
May the peace and mercy
of Allah be with you,
and may peace be upon us all, God willing.
Sadat came to Israel on November 9th,
and when he left
neither side was sure
what the next step would be.
How would the relationship continue?
On November 30th,
I get a call from
the director of Mossad, Haka:
"Come to the office."
He says: "Sadat asked for Israel
to send an emissary to Egypt,
to manage our relations.
He'll be based at the American embassy,
and will appear American,
for all intents and purposes.”
Sadat saw this move
not just as peace with Israel,
but more importantly as a peace
between Egypt and the US.
He'd already kicked the Soviets out
and he wanted to get the Americans in.
How do you get the Americans in?
You stick an Israeli
in the US embassy in Cairo,
and if they agree to that,
they're in.
So Sadat wanted to reach
a deal with the Americans,
- and used Israel in order to get it.
- Definitely, yes.
Exactly.
So Haka said,
"Go and make your arrangements.
“Come back here tomorrow at noon. I'll get
you in to see Begin and send you off."
The next day, I went with my wife
to see a Mossad-affiliated lawyer,
made a will,
gave her power of attorney...
I was preparing to leave her
with three small kids at home.
I get there at noon.
"Haka, I'm here."
He says "Wait.”
A day passes. Then another.
And another.
Finally he says, "You're not going.
President Carter didn’t approve it."
But history crowned Carter as the one
who brought peace with the Egyptians.
The Americans had no choice
but to go along with it.
But they did it unwillingly.
Of course, later,
Carter was the hero of Camp David.
But it took him a long time
to get used to it.
And I, unfortunately,
missed what was possibly
the chance of a lifetime.
What did you do with the will?
I tore up the power of attorney,
so my wife wouldn't go nuts with it.
The peace deal with Egypt
was achieved using covert diplomacy,
in a move that turns Mossad into a tool
of the state, a political tool even.
For obvious reasons,
such a move can't be done out in the open.
It must be done in secret.
And, for obvious reasons,
because of the way governments are
structured in Arab and Muslim countries,
the head of intelligence
is, at the end of the day,
the ruler's main confidante.
If you could reach
the head of intelligence,
and have secret communication with him,
you were basically
in contact with the ruler.
So, even when we talk about Iran...
Mossad operated there extensively, yes.
Please explain.
We established a strategic
relationship with the Iranians.
They sold us oil.
We sold them all sorts of things,
in an area that was very important
for them, that we had experience in.
Regime security or state security,
in the wide sense of the term.
At that time, for instance,
the Shah marked the 2,500th anniversary
of Iran's independence,
and the main Israeli representative at
that event was Mossad director, Meir Amit.
I was aboard an Arab ruler's plane once.
After an hour and a half,
I had to say the
"Asher Yatzar" blessing.
"Who formed man with many openings..."
A very wise Jewish blessing
that you say after
performing your bodily functions.
So I asked, "Where's the bathroom?"
They said,
"See there? There's a door in the wall."
I look at the wall.
It's all gold-plated.
The toilet, the mirror,
the sink, everything.
And I look at myself and think,
“I, Reuven Merhav,
son of Dr. Walter Markowicz from Haifa,
I should sit on a thing like this?"
And when I stood up, I saw that...
There was no difference.
It was exactly the same.
That gave me perspective on life.
People shouldn't take something fleeting
and think that it's theirs.
It's not theirs. It's all on loan.
During your years as
the Mossad representative in Tehran,
could you feel the Shah's regime
losing its grip?
What happened was...
In my last year in Iran,
I could feel the rise in tensions,
and there were all sorts of little
incidents that sort of went unnoticed.
A cop was stabbed and wounded...
We knew that the gaps
between the rich and poor,
between the standing army that guarded
the Shah and all those spoiled rich people
who lived in fancy villas and had food
flown in from Paris on Concordes…
That couldn't go on.
Up until that moment,
we had very close ties with the Shah
and with Iranian intelligence.
And we, of course,
knew nothing of the opposition,
not even the most moderate opposition.
The nature
of working with a dictatorial regime
is that you have to be very careful
about talking to the opposition.
So we took special care
not to know them.
All in order to keep from angering
the Shah and having him kick us out.
When I arrived in Tehran,
I spent ten days with Reuven.
I went to the airport, to see him off,
and he made me sign a piece of paper:
"Received: one Iran, intact."
Neither of us knew
that it came with a lit fuse.
Because already on the way back
from the airport to Tehran,
I heard on the radio
that there were riots in Isfahan,
in Tehran and in ten other cities.
That's how the snowball started rolling.
Six months later, it was all over.
Things were obviously headed
in a bad direction,
so the head of Mossad said
to the head of SAVAK,
"Please let Geizi have some
background about what's going on,
because he will also be in charge
of the Israeli diplomats' safety."
The Shah left Iran in mid-January.
All the cars were honking their horns
and flashing their lights. It was...
a shocking, frightening sight.
Suddenly, I got a terrible headache.
"What do we do, now that the Shah left,
"and they've been telling us
that he would restore order?"
A huge crowd, hundreds of protestors,
stormed the embassy
with pickaxes and crowbars
and started digging through the walls
of the Israeli embassy.
Shortly thereafter,
on the embassy balcony,
stood Ahmad Khomeini,
the Ayatollah Khomeini's son,
and Hani Al Hassan,
the PLO representative.
It was clear
that the embassy had been taken.
Arafat, Khomeini!
Arafat, Khomeini!
And we stood there, trying
to figure out what to do next.
We were spotted by a Jew,
in a nearby house,
and he came out, with his kids,
and they dragged us, by force,
into their home.
He took incredible care of us.
When we came out...
He went out, and his kids went out,
and he went back to Tehran,
even though they told him not to.
He went back and they caught him.
Sadly,
that man was later executed.
The strategic lesson to be learned
is that even if you have relations
with a tyrant
in a dictatorship,
where you have investments and assets,
and you don't want to lose those assets,
even if that dictator leaves the picture,
you have to employ all
your sophistication,
you have to get to know the opposition.
That ability to be clever and cynical,
and to work with everyone on the sly,
was something we hadn't learned.
At the time, we were very
sympathetic towards our allies,
and often ignored the other side,
to our detriment.
That is, when we made contact
with some minority group,
we identified with their struggle
wholeheartedly, as if it were our own.
For instance,
in our dealings with Lebanon.
It’s our tendency to pick a minority,
the one that's supposedly
closest to our interests.
In this case, the Lebanese Christians.
Again, it would have been wiser
to work with other groups as well:
the Shi'ites, the Druze.
But the situation was more complicated.
There's a rule
in the Middle East that says
that if there's
a festive meal taking place,
and you're not invited,
then it's quite possible
that you'll soon find yourself
served as one of the main courses.
That is, if there's something going on,
you'd better be aware of it,
with your finger on the pulse,
so you won’t be taken by surprise.
I spent many years in Lebanon.
When you say "in Lebanon"...
Did you live there?
In Beirut.
Did you feel unsafe there?
Look, Beirut is...
The Wild West.
At any moment,
you might walk past a car bomb,
either meant for you or for somebody else.
When did the cooperation
with the Lebanese Christians start?
In early '76,
when it became obvious that
the Lebanese army would disband.
I suggested, in a letter to
the head of Military Intelligence,
that we help Christian groups in Beirut,
based on the principle of
"My enemy's enemy is my friend."
The Christians, at the time, were fighting
the Palestinians, who were our enemies,
so I thought we should help them.
They would help us gather intelligence.
They would help us fight the Palestinians.
The Palestinians were starting
to base their operations
in Lebanon and to make trouble for us.
Palestinians who left Jordan...
In Jordan, they were guests, refugees,
and started acting
like they owned the place.
When they got stronger in Lebanon,
they behaved the same way in Lebanon,
like they owned the place.
They ran protection rackets.
They raped women.
They ran afoul of the Christians,
who were the main group
in Lebanese government at the time,
and it was obvious that things
were about to turn violent.
It started with
the Ain el-Rammaneh incident.
Palestinians used to set up checkpoints.
They would identify Christians,
based on their names,
and shoot them.
The Christians would do the same,
sometimes without even checking IDs.
They would show a person a tomato,
called a "bandura" in the Palestinian
dialect, and "banadura" in Lebanese.
Anyone who answered "bandura"
would be shot.
That was essentially the opening volley
of the Lebanese civil war.
In '76, you wrote a letter
to the head of Military Intelligence
and that's essentially what started our
whole ill-fated involvement in Lebanon,
right?
Look, when we...
I went over the principles
that I took into consideration
when I recommended
helping the Christians in Lebanon,
and none of those principles included
the IDF physically entering Lebanon,
or the IDF cleaning out Beirut.
I recommended we help the Christians
help themselves, defend themselves.
Yesterday, Arafat invited
Arik Sharon to Beirut.
Be careful, Arafat!
Arik Sharon could still
accept the invitation.
The main driver
behind the shift was Sharon.
After Sharon became defense minister
it was clear that he had an agenda.
To disgrace the PLO,
to curb Syria's power,
to force the PLO out of Beirut
and back to Jordan,
to turn Jordan into a new Palestine,
which would solve our Palestinian problem.
From then on,
he used the Mossad
in order to realize his agenda.
He was really focused
when it came to these things.
When Sharon focused on something,
nothing could stand in his way.
Ariel Sharon said he'd bring about
a new order in Lebanon,
and help get Bashir Jemayyel
elected president,
and in exchange, Lebanon would sign
a separate peace agreement with us.
The time is 10:53.
IDF armored units
entered 50 minutes ago,
marking the beginning of the operation.
No one can foretell
how a military operation will develop.
Could the Mossad have prevented that war?
The Mossad doesn't make
those kinds of decisions.
Mossad, in this case, was supposed
to act in an advisory capacity.
But, I think, the advisor
wasn't knowledgeable enough
about the problem, and...
did not advise.
A family photo.
It all looks so ideal.
24 hours after the elections,
the new President, Bashir,
with his family.
Prime Minister Begin hopes for peace
between Israel and Lebanon.
You're going to be the president
of Lebanon for the next six years.
Do you think there will be peace
between Israel and Lebanon?
We hope to have peace
with the whole world,
because eight years
of nightmares and destruction,
eight years of people losing their homes,
living at the mercy of snipers and bombs,
threatening to kill us, at home
or at work... All this must stop.
The plan to achieve peace with another
Arab country was unsuccessful.
What went wrong?
The first reason
was ignorance.
Our guys in Lebanon,
who dealt with the Lebanese,
were totally ignorant about Lebanon.
They lived in Lebanon,
and had no idea where they were living.
They didn't know the country,
they didn't know the mentality...
Lebanon is a complicated country.
It's a place where if you ask a boy,
"What's one plus one?"
he doesn't answer, "Two."
Because it’s not necessarily two.
"It depends," he'll tell you.
"Are you buying? Are you selling?"
It's not...
And in a country like this, to bring in
a group of amateurs... It doesn't work.
In Lebanon,
"OK" doesn't mean you've got a deal.
It's not a done deal.
It's just “OK.”
After that...
“It depends.” Like I said.
What did the Mossad fail to understand?
The political wing of Mossad, apparently,
who thought an OK meant a done deal.
The head of the department should have
gone to Sharon and Begin and told them,
"Fellas, there's no such thing
as a new order in Lebanon.”
There's no such thing
as a president of Lebanon
who can truly sign a separate
peace agreement with you,
because the day after he announces it,
if not the very same day,
he would be assassinated.
In the case of Bashir Jemayyel,
he never even had a chance
to sign a peace agreement.
The moment the Syrians felt he’d become
too independent in dealing with Israel,
they assassinated him.
The entire 3-story house collapsed
due to the blast from
a 400 lb. explosive device.
The assassination was meticulously planned
and cleanly executed.
As we film here, under special permission,
nobody yet knows
that Bashir Jemayyel has been killed.
The war broke out on June 6th.
Bashir Jemayyel was elected,
I think, in July or August.
He was assassinated in September.
A few days later, on the eve of the Jewish
New Year, came Sabra and Shatila.
The day Bashir was murdered,
I was in Beirut.
That day, I went to the base
of the Mossad's political department
that handled our connections there.
It was a base for
some of the Phalangists' people,
their intelligence base.
I saw them sitting there,
sharpening their knives.
They came and told me,
"Today we're going to use white weapons."
"White weapons" in Lebanese means knives.
From there they head out
to Sabra and Shatila.
When you heard about the horrible
massacre that happened there,
how did you react?
Listen, I'm not...
a bloodthirsty person.
I don't like it when civilians get hurt,
and innocent women and children.
But that’s part of the
rules of war in Lebanon.
Lebanon is a country that's held together
by telephone lines from the outside
and by wallpaper from the inside.
It's got 17 sects,
each with its own education system.
Once every few years they fight,
then some foreign actor comes along,
promising to bring order to the place,
then the locals screw them over, and then
the whole process starts over again.
They've been fighting for 1,000 years.
You think you'll put their lives in order?
The idea they had back then,
that we could go in
and call the shots in an Arab country,
or conquer an Arab capital,
was unbelievably stupid.
On the other hand,
Mossad...
failed as a gatekeeper, in my opinion.
So you're saying that the head of Mossad
should have told the Prime Minister,
“Don’t go any further.
This is a terrible mistake.”
Look, on June 6th,
when they went to war,
Haka told the government
some harsh things.
But Mossad didn't push back hard enough
on this.
The big question is:
Can a Mossad director influence
a prime minister's decision-making process
in strategic geopolitical matters?
In my opinion, the answer is "No.”
The Mossad learned,
through its own channels,
about meetings in Europe
between Israelis and PLO officials.
So the head of Mossad
rushed over to Rabin and told him,
"Sir, something's going on in Europe..."
And so forth.
Rabin's answer was:
"Drop it. I'm aware of it.”
Without sharing.
Without telling him what was going on.
Rabin decided on the Oslo talks without
consulting the intelligence services.
He decided to go for it,
because his gut told him
it needed to be done.
Peres used to say,
"What do intelligence services know?
What did they know about Barbarossa?
What did they know about...
"Munich?"
What did they know about
Pearl Harbor, for instance?"
Therefore, he didn't need to hear
from them. He didn't need them.
Did Peres have contempt for Mossad?
- For the director of Mossad?
- I wouldn't say contempt, but he had...
disdain.
When it came to strategic geopolitical
matters, he certainly didn't listen.
Didn't listen and didn't care.
In operational matters he did,
of course, because he depended on them.
What causes differences between
a head of Mossad and a prime minister?
A prime minister has a much broader
set of factors to deal with.
The ideology he came up in,
his political maneuvering,
ensuring his political longevity...
Did you personally encounter this kind
of tension with the executive branch?
I've only served under
one prime minister directly,
Prime Minister Netanyahu,
and, on one occasion,
I was giving a presentation,
and, about three minutes
into my presentation,
the prime minister disagreed with me.
Disputed what I had said.
I went down that road with him,
and held a debate with the prime minister.
The prime minister was undaunted.
He saw that I was debating him,
so his voice went up an octave.
His voice goes up an octave,
so what am I supposed to do now?
I think he's wrong.
And I know,
as much as humanly possible,
that I’m not the only one who thinks so.
So the dispute gradually escalates.
Israel's interest is to prevent a nuclear
arms race in the region. That's clear.
And if you lose the Iranians,
you’ve lost the whole Middle East.
You're under constant threat,
and it would be difficult to run
your country properly under such a threat.
All of today's nuclear technology,
is in the hands of Iranian scientists
It's no wonder we're at the top.
Iran is a Shiite country.
It's in a serious conflict with
the Sunni Arab nations that surround it.
In contrast to this regional power,
whose interests run contrary to ours,
there are other Arab countries
whose interests, believe it or not,
run parallel to ours:
Saudi Arabia, the UAE,
Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman.
Now, you could say that
these countries and Israel
are in the same boat, and you'd be right.
Meir Dagan was the new Mossad director.
He told me we needed
to focus on the Arab world.
That we need to invest in countries
that don't have official ties with us.
So, in the Dagan era,
- you undertook operations...
- I don't want to go into detail,
but any action that would stave off
the need to scramble our jets,
he was for.
According to foreign media outlets,
a number of Iranian nuclear scientists
met unnatural deaths.
Operations were happening all the time,
not just ones...
run by the State of Israel.
Also, the fight against Iran wasn't waged
using the old intelligence methods,
like gunshots at point blank range,
but also using new weapons, like cyber,
and Stuxnet.
Limited measures,
that don't reveal their point of origin,
don't require retaliation,
and don't require escalation.
I was a proponent of using
these measures, and...
So, were these regional alliances
enough to realize our strategic goals?
Depends when.
The fact is that the threat
has not been removed completely.
Were Netanyahu and Dagan
on good terms?
I was present in all of his meetings
with Netanyahu that concerned me.
They were on reasonable terms.
It was nothing special,
neither good nor bad.
Eventually, Dagan's relationship with the
prime minister took a turn for the worse.
You know, when the relationship between
two people sours, you can feel it.
Even when little is said,
you can sense it.
But they had a major disagreement.
Netanyahu talked about bombing Iran.
Why did Dagan oppose it so strongly?
I think that Dagan,
had an absolute belief
that before going to war,
and who knows where it might lead,
there are many steps you can take.
You have to do the best you can
before you go to war.
Mossad director, Meir Dagan, says
that attacking Iran's nuclear reactors
from the air is a harebrained idea.
"It offers no advantage.”
So the Prime Minister was going
to defy the Mossad director.
Did he really have intensions to attack?
He intended to have intentions. And...
And he prepared, and invested,
and he said, with great conviction:
"Should history leave us by ourselves,
"we are capable
of defending ourselves on our own."
In 2012, it came to a head.
There's the famous account
of that meeting.
At that meeting,
the relevant persons said
it was operationally feasible.
But what happened then?
It turned out the Americans and Iranians
were in a steamy tango of negotiations.
Now, the question in Israel is:
What do we do about it?
Two options.
Option one: Israel says,
"We're going to enter the negotiations,
in order to influence them from the inside
with our expertise and knowledge."
But the government decided
to do the opposite,
to denounce these talks
as a historic mistake,
and to declare a feud.
What do we see today?
First of all,
I don't know why he didn't act.
It remains a great historical question.
- Why didn't the Prime Minister act?
- Do you think he was afraid to?
That he suddenly realized
it might be a terrible mistake?
I told you, history will...
I don't know what happened or why.
I'm just saying that in my opinion,
he let himself down as well.
The fact that the whole world,
practically,
agrees that the deal that they reached
is the thing that will slow Iran down
the most, for the longest time... right?
Because attacking the Iranian
nuclear facilities
would have pushed them back...
What, two years? Three? Four?
But it would've united the Iranian people
and given them a reason to attack Israel.
It would be up there with the huge mistake
the Japanese made at Pearl Harbor.
Admiral Yamamoto, who led the attack
on Pearl Harbor,
was opposed to it.
He was ordered to attack,
and he carried it out perfectly.
And it led to the destruction of Japan,
and to the US joining
the war against Japan.
I think that unlike Lebanon,
the Mossad directors in the Iran period,
both Dagan and his successor,
made it clear
to the prime minister that...
this would be a move that,
in their professional opinion,
would not be beneficial, but only cause
great damage, and maybe even a world war.
Look at what's going on
in the world today.
All the conventional wars
always end very, very badly.
Look at the process the U.S. went through
after Iraq and Afghanistan.
Look... at us, even.
You initiate some kind of war,
you have a plan for how it'll turn out,
or what it'll look like,
and 98% of the time,
it ends differently
from what you expected.
It costs a ton of money,
and loss of human life.
Many of the objectives
can be obtained by other means.
By covert means.
That's why using organizations such as...
The CIA, MI6,
and the Israeli organizations,
can produce, at a much lower cost,
similar results without having to invest
lots of resources, and suffer casualties.
That's why these organizations
are flourishing right now.
It would be preferable
if we didn’t even need
these organizations.
But that's still a long way off.
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