My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel (56 page)

The 2007 mission also seemed impossible: to destroy the nuclear reactor that the North Koreans were building for the Syrians without provoking war. Yadlin will not talk to me about the details of the operation attributed to Israel by non-Israeli sources, but much has been published abroad about Operation Orchard by foreign journalists and experts.

This time the challenge was not technological but conceptual. It was not so much about the planes and the bombs, but about getting the right information and making the right decisions in time. In 2006, Meir Dagan, the head of the Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, known as the Mossad, argued that there was no sense in investing intelligence resources in Syria, for it was a dead horse that did not threaten Israel in any way. Amos Yadlin begged to differ. He remembered that three years earlier, Israel had failed to detect the Libyan nuclear project, and he asked his lieutenants to scan all possible sources to see if any surprises were hidden anywhere. In the late summer of 2006, one of his men raised the possibility that the enormous cement structure in Deir ez Zor concealed a North Korean plutonium reactor. By autumn there was some evidence supporting this seemingly wild hypothesis. According to non-Israeli sources, Yadlin shared his concern with the prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and an American intelligence chief, who dismissed him. Both were under the influence of Dagan, who insisted that there was no Syrian reactor. But in March 2007, an intelligence breakthrough totally changed Dagan’s position. According to non-Israeli sources, the head of the Mossad now demanded immediate action—before the reactor could be activated and before the Syrians realized that their great secret had been discovered. In the late spring of
2007, Yadlin’s role was that of a moderator. Non-Israeli sources claim that he was the one who advised the prime minister and the chief of staff to plan a low-key operation that would not embarrass the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and would enable him not to launch a full-scale retaliatory war. In a sense, the Israelis would give Assad cover to pretend that nothing had ever happened. The non-Israeli sources claimed that Yadlin’s military intelligence also made the point that there was enough time to plan the highly risky air raid properly: the window of opportunity would close only in a few months’ time, when the reactor might turn critical. In retrospect, Yadlin would be proven right: the precise timing and nature of Operation Orchard would achieve the two essential goals of no core, no war.

According to the American journalist and analyst David Makovsky, just after midnight on September 5, 2007, four F-16 bombers took off for the Syrian nuclear reactor from the same Yizrael Valley air force base that was used twenty-six years earlier to bomb the Iraqi reactor. In a long piece published in
The New Yorker
in 2012, Makovsky writes that the four F-16s were escorted by four F-15s that took off from the desert air force base situated close to Yadlin’s childhood kibbutz, where he later served as commander. The eight Israeli planes, equipped with advanced electronic warfare devices, flew along the Mediterranean coast and along the Turkish-Syrian border. After midnight they dropped seventeen tons of explosives on the plutonium plant and flattened it.

For another seventy-two hours, tensions ran high: Would Syria respond with a devastating missile attack that would set Tel Aviv ablaze? Would a war break out that would claim the lives of thousands? Just as Yadlin predicted, an overwhelmed Syria did not react. Israeli might, deterrence, and stealth caused Syria to bow its head in defeated silence. The second implementation of the Begin Doctrine was another remarkable success. When the world failed to prevent an Arab dictatorship from going nuclear, and when the United States failed to act, Israel seized the initiative, taking its fate into its own hands. Once again, one meticulous moment hovering over the target removed the threat of a second Holocaust.

But the Iran mission is far more complex and difficult than the missions impossible of 1981 and 2007. The Iranians are much more sophisticated and cunning than the Iraqis and the Syrians. Their strategic
goal is not to build a bomb quickly but to build one safely. That’s why they advanced along many tracks: they built a reactor in Bushehr, a reactor in Arak, a military complex in Parchin, a uranium enriching facility in Natanz, an underground bunker in Fordow. That’s why they try to do most of their work under the umbrella of international legitimacy. They are very careful not to be caught red-handed and do not provide smoking guns. They do their utmost not to take provocative steps that will so enrage the West that it will be forced to act. Just as Yadlin was being nominated to head the IDF intelligence in January 2006, the Iranians began to enrich uranium in Natanz. First they obtained a few centrifuges, then dozens, then hundreds. In early 2007, they had only a thousand centrifuges. By 2013 they had more than fifteen thousand centrifuges, some of them highly sophisticated. Accordingly, the amount of enriched uranium the Iranians piled up grew from only fifty kilograms in early 2008 to more than seven thousand kilograms in mid-2013. Although the international community (weakly) protested and although it imposed (limited) sanctions, the Iranians patiently and persistently marched on toward their goal. From his spacious office on the thirteenth floor of the IDF headquarters, General Yadlin monitored the situation as the Iranians fooled the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and fooled the UN and fooled the Western powers, inching closer and closer to their coveted atomic bomb.

Israel was late in responding to Iran’s progress. In 2002, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called on Meir Dagan of the Mossad to defuse the Iranian threat. According to non-Israeli sources, the Mossad received generous funding and carried out a series of breathtaking operations—including cyberattacks and assassinations of nuclear scientists—that achieved impressive tactical results. But Dagan’s natural self-confidence turned into arrogance. In 2005 he promised his colleagues and superiors that Iran would not be able to spin even one centrifuge. Two years later, when more than a thousand centrifuges were spinning in Natanz, the IDF High Command began to worry that Dagan’s approach might lead to a dead end. As the diplomatic option and the sanctions option hadn’t yet yielded any concrete results, there was no other way but to consider the military option. According to non-Israeli sources, the head of intelligence, Yadlin, the air force commander, Eliezer Shkedi, and the deputy chief of staff, Dan Harel, insisted that Israel must prepare a
credible military option vis-à-vis Iran. Although some senior generals objected, the chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, instructed the air force to prepare an operational plan. Intelligence was gathered, and pilots trained just as they had in 1981 and 2007. The IDF prepared itself to implement the Begin Doctrine for the third time.

In November 2007, a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), representing the consensus view of all sixteen American spy agencies, asserted that there was no conclusive evidence that Iran was indeed trying to build a nuclear weapon. After Yadlin met his American counterpart in Rome, he realized what the shocking report was all about: following the trauma of the invasion of Iraq, based on false intelligence that was manipulated by the White House, the American intelligence community was determined to prevent President George W. Bush from acting precipitously in Iran and getting America into a third war against a third Islamic nation. But after Yadlin returned to Tel Aviv and instructed his staff to assess and reassess the U.S. NIE, they came to the conclusion that it did not hold water. Four different analysis teams in the Mossad and in military intelligence asserted that the Iranians were advancing toward military nuclear capabilities and that the Americans were grossly underestimating the state of the Iranian program.

Isolation was difficult. France and Britain were the only two powers that really understood Iran. Meanwhile, China, Russia, and India were partially collaborating with Iran. Many countries in Europe were still trading with Iran. The United States was paralyzed because of its entanglement in other wars. Even within Israel the political leadership was not quite focused on Iran. The idea that Dagan could thwart Iran’s progress was a widely held assumption. While in Iran centrifuges were multiplying and uranium was piling up, Israel was snoozing. Non-Israeli sources suggest that even the Shkedi-Yadlin military option was beginning to become irrelevant.

Enter Benjamin Netanyahu. When he arrived in office in April 2009, Prime Minister Netanyahu brought with him a totally new approach to Iran. As he saw it, Iran was the Nazi Germany of the twenty-first century; its combination of a nonconventional regime with nonconventional weapons was lethal. Weak and decadent, the West of the 2000s resembled in many ways the West of the 1930s. But the Jewish people would not be led again to some sort of nuclear Auschwitz. The
Jewish people now had a state, an army, and technological might. They would do whatever it took to prevent Tel Aviv from becoming a Hiroshima.

The new prime minister’s great contribution to the struggle against Iran was cognitive awareness. Unlike his predecessors, Netanyahu understood Iran, internalized Iran, was totally focused on Iran. From the day he took office, he knew that his life’s mission was to prevent Iran from going nuclear. To stop Iran he entered a strange coalition with Labor’s Ehud Barak, who was installed as minister of defense. To stop Iran he appropriated huge funds and assigned them to intelligence gathering and to air force buildup, while holding frank talks with the leaders of the West. To stop Iran he formulated an effective Israeli military option, and time after time he prepared to use it. As he readied the IDF for action, the United States became more and more apprehensive. Several times in 2009, 2010, and 2011, Israel acted as if it was about to strike. Both in Washington and in Tel Aviv there were tense moments when it seemed as if the Middle East was on the verge of war.

Amos Yadlin and his fellow generals didn’t know if Netanyahu and Barak really intended to strike or if they were playing an unprecedented game of strategic poker. The experienced pilot put his superiors to a test: he asked them to grant specific funds and authorize specific intelligence gathering that were needed only if a real strike was planned. Barak refused, but Netanyahu agreed. The IDF’s top intelligence officer reached the conclusion that while the defense minister might have a hidden agenda, the prime minister meant business. Benjamin Netanyahu really believed that the fate of the Jewish people was on the line. If all else failed, he would strike, come what may.

Washington reached a similar conclusion. 2009 was wasted on a futile engagement policy, and 2010 was wasted on a failed attempt to impose UN sanctions, but by 2011 the fear of a desperate Israeli move impelled the dovish Obama administration to take nondovish steps. First the president approved cyberwarfare against Iran, then, in coordination with the Europeans, he imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, and finally he instructed the Pentagon to prepare an effective American military option.

But while the Israeli military option proved to be a political success, within Israel all hell broke loose. Dagan refused to admit that clandestine
operations and cyberwarfare had bought precious time but could not achieve the strategic target of defeating the Iranians. Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi adamantly opposed the actual use of the military option he had devised. A titanic struggle evolved between Netanyahu and Barak on one side and Dagan and Ashkenazi on the other. Yuval Diskin, head of the Shin Bet national security agency, and most army generals sided with Dagan and Ashkenazi. While the prime minister and the minister of defense thought their subordinates lacked historical perspective and courage, the top army intelligence brass thought of their superiors as messianic, warmongering zealots. The fierce struggle between the two groups became personal, visceral, and ugly. To make the debate more pertinent and less personal, General Yadlin drafted a seventeen-point questionnaire designed to render decision making as rational as possible. Only if all of Yadlin’s questions were answered in the affirmative would there be justification to launch an Israeli attack on Iran.

As the internal Israeli debate spiraled out of control, various doomsday scenarios were bandied about. The doves argued that an unprovoked Israeli raid would endanger the alliance with America, trigger a regional war, and elicit a missile attack on Israel that might cost the lives of thousands or even tens of thousands. The hawks argued that inaction would lead to the establishment of a multipolar nuclear system in the Middle East, to the radicalization of the region, to endless conventional wars, and possibly to the dropping of a nuclear bomb on Tel Aviv. Yadlin tried to formulate a third way. On the one hand he agreed that an Israeli bombing that would prevent an Iranian bomb was strategically justified and would not bring about Armageddon. He trusted that the Israeli military option would be effective and he believed that both Israel and the West could withstand the limited price they would have to pay. If Israel shied away from taking action just because it was deterred by a few hundred Iranian missiles and a few thousand Hezbollah rockets, it had no right and no way to survive. But on the other hand, Yadlin argued that with no international legitimacy and without American backing, an Israeli bombing would be futile. If the United States refused to complement the Israeli offensive with paralyzing sanctions, only two years would be gained at an extremely high price. The challenge was not the operation itself but the decade after the operation, Yadlin
claimed. He urged Prime Minister Netanyahu not to quarrel with President Obama but to foster an intimate strategic bond with him. Only if the great American democracy and the small Israeli democracy worked shoulder to shoulder would they be able to stop the rising Shiite power.

Netanyahu ignored Yadlin’s advice. He didn’t make the occupation-related concessions that would win over Obama and improve Israel’s international standing. Rather, he provoked Obama’s anger. He turned Israel into a semipariah state. Netanyahu didn’t build up legitimacy for the dramatic operation within Israel or outside Israel. When the military option yielded impressive political results, Israel’s prime minister overplayed his hand. In the summer of 2012, he was perceived to be intervening in America’s presidential election, and by the autumn of that year it was clear that he had missed the moment and lost whatever political leverage he had had.