Spies Against Armageddon (3 page)

Sharon—later followed as prime minister by Ehud Olmert and more robustly by Benjamin Netanyahu—repeatedly declared that Iran was not only Israel’s problem, but an international one. Dagan absorbed that credo and, in the very private battle he was waging, tried to muster as much support as possible from other nations’ security services.

The Mossad director did have a problem, however, persuading the intelligence agencies of other nations that Iran was racing to create nuclear weapons. That was a tough mission. Military analysts at Aman had cried wolf, several times, in their annual National Intelligence Estimate. In the mid-1990s, the Estimate predicted that Iran would have nuclear weapons by the dawn of the new millennium. That date was postponed to 2003, and later modified to 2005.

The Israeli case—that Iran’s nuclear program was a huge and urgent matter—was severely dented by another Estimate, the NIE that America’s intelligence community delivered to President George W. Bush in 2007. It said, with high confidence, that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, perhaps in a somewhat frightened reaction to the U.S. invasion of Iraq that year.

So why should the world believe that the Israeli analysis was more accurate? Governments everywhere were skeptical of everything that touched on Middle East secrets. American and British espionage agencies were burned by declaring with certainty in 2002 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction—and thus faulty intelligence was one of the building blocks of the costly, unpopular war in Iraq.

Dagan laboriously deepened the Mossad’s liaison relationships with numerous intelligence agencies in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. He wanted first to persuade them that the Iranian danger was real, and he laid out the latest evidence with detailed data. Unlike in the past, with Israel’s reputation for being very stingy with information—wanting to get a lot, without giving much at all—Dagan was showing a broad array of facts that added up to an Iranian nuclear program far bigger than anything Tehran could claim was required for peaceful purposes.

The Mossad chief frequently flew to meet counterparts in countries that had intelligence relationships with Israel, urging them to accept that causing problems for Iran’s nuclear program was something that they all should want to do and could do. Dagan hit it off especially well with the four directors of the Central Intelligence Agency who were his American partners during his eight years: George Tenet, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, and Leon Panetta.

To strengthen the approach of compiling—and then acting upon—the most current intelligence available, the Mossad teamed up with Aman’s technology unit and the Israel Atomic Energy Commission. They compiled a list of all the components that Iran would need to build a nuclear bomb.

The IAEC was able to utilize experience gained by acquiring everything that Israel’s nuclear program—a secret project that officials refused ever to speak about—had required. They came up with 25,000 items, from tiny screws to missile engine parts: an amazingly wide range including specialized metals, carbon fiber, valves, wiring, fast computers, control panels, and so much more.

Iranian purchasing networks, operating on five continents in a systematic effort guided by the masters of the nuclear program, were trying to get their hands on everything the program needed. As a first action move, Dagan urged his counterpart agencies to find legal ways in all their respective countries to stop the shipments to Iran. He had an easy time with the CIA, MI6, the German BND, the French DGSE, and a few others who understood the danger and had been monitoring Iran’s nuclear project.

Soon, even the relatively small secret services of countries such as Poland joined this informal coalition of intelligence agencies. Joint steps included halting and seizing cargos. Based on tips from the Mossad, the CIA, and MI6, dozens of Iranian purchasing networks were exposed. Iran-bound shipments from such nations as Tanzania, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan were confiscated by European and other state authorities.

The Mossad strengthened its liaison relationships with intelligence agencies in former Communist countries in Eastern Europe, as they had contacts in Middle Eastern countries that were different—and often more useful—than Western agencies had. When a businessman or other traveler from the ex-Soviet bloc was in Iran, the authorities seemed to be less suspicious than they were when Westerners arrived. Israel was able to share in some of the intelligence gleaned by the visitors, who included undercover spies.

Friendly liaisons were illustrated when Dagan received awards from several countries, including an honorary citizenship bestowed upon him by formerly Communist Poland. The gesture was poignant, in light of his family’s tragic history on Polish soil, and also saluted joint operations with the Mossad in the present.

Iran started feeling the pinch, because of disruptions to its supply chain, but the nuclear program was not deterred.

The international effort had to be stepped up. Hoping to benefit from having the United Nations as a central base for the pressure, Israel and cooperative foreign agencies needed more evidence to prove Iran’s true intentions. That was achieved by the coordinated intelligence efforts of the Mossad, CIA, MI6, and BND. They continually provided sensitive information to the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

It was the mandate of the IAEA, based in Vienna, to monitor Iran’s program. The agency bought satellite imagery from private companies, and it sent inspectors to several Iranian facilities where U.N. cameras were then installed.

Though the field work of the inspectors was quite good, they were stopped from telling the full truth. International bureaucrats led by the IAEA Director-General, former Egyptian diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei, drafted the reports and watered them down so that the conclusions were soggy rather than strong. Israeli officials felt that he was far too eager to broker a deal that would allow the Iranians to keep enriching uranium.

When quarterly reports were issued at IAEA meetings, Vienna was turned into a scene from the Orson Welles 1948 movie,
The Third Man.
The “U.N. City” neighborhood on the Danube River was teeming with Mossad, CIA, and spies of other nations—typically traveling with signals intelligence (sigint) technicians. They tried to recruit members of the Iranian delegation and listened in on their conversations. This was a somewhat rare opportunity to approach Iranian government employees outside their country’s very restrictive borders. Some of them were senior scientists and managers in Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.

ElBaradei, who genuinely feared that his agency was being manipulated by Western interests, was stubborn. He refused to succumb to their pressure or to rush to point an accusing finger at Iran. Among his international staff were around 20 Iranians, and the Israeli assumption was that the U.N. agency was penetrated by Iran’s spies and those of other countries. The IAEA was a body full of holes.

The Mossad put together a thick dossier on ElBaradei, alleging a cozy relationship with Iran, and gave it to Omar Suleiman, who was President Hosni Mubarak’s intelligence chief. Mubarak was no fan of Iran’s, and Suleiman was very cooperative with Israel on various projects. Still, there was no sign of ElBaradei being reigned in by his home government.

Mossad operatives considered several ideas for embarrassing the IAEA director, in the hope that he would have to resign. One such plan was to penetrate his bank account and deposit money there that he would not be able to explain. The psychological warfare department then would spread rumors to journalists that ElBaradei was receiving bribes from Iranian agents. In the end, that did not occur. In fact, his prestige only rose when he and the IAEA together were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

ElBaradei did become tougher on Iran, just around that time, when solid information provided by Western intelligence agencies left very little to the imagination. Now it was clear that Iran was deceiving inspectors. While enriching more uranium than would be needed to produce medical isotopes or generate electricity—the officially declared purposes—the Iranians were also trying to achieve the final stage of a nuclear program: weaponization. That would mean putting together all the components, including fissile material in precisely sized metal spheres, and detonators with high-speed switches.

They were also working on complex calculations of how to detonate a nuclear bomb, and what would be the optimum altitude from which to drop it.

This became clear—to Western officials, undeniably true—when a laptop computer that contained an incriminating, three-minute Persian-language video found its way to the IAEA. The computer had apparently belonged to an Iranian, who had loaded it with mathematical musings, photos of laboratories and workshops, and details of a mock-up of a warhead on a missile. There was one highly memorable feature: Whenever the video was viewed, it played the music from the Oscar-winning movie
Chariots of Fire
.

The Mossad had procured this smoking gun in 2004 and shared it with other Western intelligence agencies, which passed it to the international inspectors. There were some suspicions that the Mossad might have fabricated the
Chariots of Fire
files, but the CIA considered them genuine.

Equipped with that and other evidence, Western nations managed to persuade other members of the IAEA to pass a resolution in September 2005 that accused the Iranians of “non-compliance.” The official verdict now was that Iran failed to be transparent and refused to obey calls for a halt in uranium enrichment.

The agency then moved its confrontation with Iran to a higher level by referring the non-compliance report to the United Nations Security Council in February 2006. Strong reservations were expressed by China, which bought 15 percent of its oil from Iran, and by Russia, which had strong trade relations and was building an electricity-generating nuclear plant in the Iranian city of Bushehr. But, in December 2006, U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iran.

In the years that followed, more rounds of sanctions were approved. They targeted Iranian military officers, Revolutionary Guard leaders, scientific experts, and corporations associated with the country’s nuclear and missile programs. Their travel was banned and bank accounts outside Iran frozen. The world was forbidden to trade with these individuals and companies.

Israeli and American intelligence agencies evaluated the restrictions, however, and determined that they were too soft. The assessment was that only stronger, crippling sanctions might have some effect on Iran’s leadership.

It seemed that the kind of steps required would include a ban on buying Iranian crude oil and its byproducts. China and Russia refused to lend a hand to that effort. Sanctions thus were not hobbling the determination of Iran’s leaders to keep up their nuclear work.

The Mossad realized that more drastic measures were needed. Dagan’s battle plan called next for sabotage. That took various shapes. As early as 2003, the Mossad and the CIA exchanged ideas for damaging utility services and lines feeding Iran’s nuclear facilities. Plans were drawn up to place bombs along the electricity grid leading to the uranium-enrichment site at Natanz.

Dagan—keen to tighten intelligence ties with the United States in light of the trauma America had suffered on September 11, 2001—encouraged more joint planning and, eventually, joint operations on the Middle East’s clandestine fields of battle.

Another CIA suggestion was to send a physicist, a Russian who had moved to the United States, to Iran to offer his knowledge to the Iranian nuclear program. The caper was ridiculously mishandled when the CIA altered a set of nuclear warhead plans that the physicist was carrying, but neglected to tell him. The Iranians would have received damaging disinformation. Unfortunately for this scheme, the ex-Russian noticed errors and told the Iranians that something was flawed. He simply did not know that the CIA wanted him to keep his mouth shut and pass along the materials.

Despite imperfect penetrations at first, the entire concept of “poisoning” both information and equipment was attractive; and the Mossad, the CIA, and the British kept doing it. These agencies set up front companies that established contact with Iranian purchasing networks. In order to build up trust, they sold Iran some genuine components. But at a later stage, they planted—among the good parts, such as metal tubes and high-speed switches—many bad parts that damaged Iran’s program.

The results of this international sabotage began to show. Iran found itself having trouble keeping control of the equipment that it had bought from overseas.

The peak of these damage operations was a brilliantly innovative computer worm that would become known as Stuxnet. Though its origin was never officially announced, Stuxnet was a joint project by the CIA, the Mossad, and Aman’s technological unit. The malicious software was specifically designed to disrupt a German-made computerized control system that ran the centrifuges in Natanz.

The project required studying, by reverse engineering, precisely how the control panel and computers worked and what effect they had on the centrifuges. For that purpose, Germany’s BND—very friendly to Israel, in part hoping to erase Holocaust memories—arranged the cooperation of Siemens, the German corporation that had sold the system to Iran. The directors of Siemens may have felt pangs of conscience, or were simply reacting to public pressure, as newspapers pointed out that it was Iran’s largest trading partner in Germany.

For a better understanding of Iran’s enrichment process, old centrifuges—which Israel had obtained many years before—were set up in one of the buildings at Dimona, Israel’s not-so-secret nuclear facility in the southern Negev desert. They were nearly identical to the centrifuges that were enriching uranium in Natanz.

The Israelis closely watched what the computer worm could do to an industrial process. The tests, partially conducted also at a U.S. government lab in Idaho, took two years.

Virtual weapons of destruction such as Stuxnet can be e-mailed to the target computer network, or they can be installed in person by plugging in a flash drive. Whether hidden in an electronic message or plugged in by an agent for the Mossad, the virus did get into the Natanz facility’s control system sometime in 2009. Stuxnet was in the system for more than a year before it was detected by Iranian cyber-warfare experts. By then, it was giving the centrifuges confusing instructions, which disrupted their precise synchronization. They were no longer spinning in concert, and as the equipment sped up and slowed repeatedly, the rotors that did the spinning were severely damaged.