National interest takes back seat to basking in credit
Are the IDF and the Mossad fighting over control of Iran policy as well as who should take credit for certain covert and less-covert operations?
If they are, does some of this derive from personal animus between IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi and Mossad Director Yossi Cohen?
And after that, could this rivalry end up costing Israel dearly regarding its security interests?
The immediate background is multiple attacks on Iranian targets that the Islamic
Republic or various reports are attributing to Israel.
Last week, The New York Times reported that Israel informed the US that it had carried out Tuesday’s attack on an Iranian cargo ship, which was a central pillar of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps intelligence apparatus in the region.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman also confirmed last week that the Saviz was slightly damaged in the Red Sea off the coast of Djibouti.
He said the event occurred around 6 a.m. on Tuesday due to an explosion, though
centrifuges.
Iran said there no injuries or pollution were caused by the incident on Sunday. Malek Shariati-Niasar, an Iranian MP and spokesman for a parliamentary energy commission, wrote that the incident was highly suspected as being “sabotage,” being that it occurred on Iran’s National Nuclear Technology Day and amid the renewal of talks between the Islamic Republic and Western nations on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal of 2015.
The Iranian parliament was following the details of the incident and would announce an opinion on the matter after receiving and summarizing the information, he said.
Earlier on Sunday, Iran said a problem with the electrical distribution grid of the Natanz site had caused an incident.
Iranian MP Ali Haddad placed the blame for the incident on Israel.
“Yesterday the assassination of a nuclear scientist and today the attack on the Iranian ship Saviz and the sabotage of the Natanz nuclear facility,” he tweeted.
Haddad called for deterrence and not restraint. “When commitment is translated as restraint, the Zionist enemy dares to strike more blows,” he said.
The attack against Natanz took place a day after Iran began injecting uranium hexafluoride gas into advanced IR-6 and IR-5 centrifuges at Natanz and was revealed as US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was visiting Israel.
It also came less than a month after the IAEA reported that Iran had restarted enrichment at the Natanz facility and less than a year after Israel was blamed by foreign reports for an alleged attack on the facility, which reportedly had significantly impacted Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran is still nowhere near having recovered to the point where it had been before that July 2020 explosion in terms of its capacity for assembling new advanced centrifuges, the Post recently reported.
In the alleged attack last year, Iranian reports originally referred to the explosion as an “incident” without providing further details.
“The centrifuge assembly hall was blown up by the enemy a few months ago, but we did not stop and temporarily set up the hall that made up for the lost hall,” Iranian nuclear chief Salehi said Saturday, according to Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency. He did not specify which “enemy” was behind the attack last year.
Iran is working to move sensitive facilities at Natanz further underground and hopes the new underground halls will be ready next year, Salehi said.
Tensions are rising between Israel and Iran amid a number of attacks on Iranian and Israeli maritime vessels, with recent reports claiming that Israel has hit dozens of Iranian ships in recent years.
On Tuesday, a spokesman for the Iranian military blamed Israel and the US for causing an explosion on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Saviz vessel in the Red Sea, Sputnik news reported last Thursday.
“The United States undoubtedly has a hand in all attempts to undermine and harm Iran,” the spokesman said in a statement, adding that Tehran was not accusing any of the Gulf states of being involved in the incident.
Iran is meeting with European and American officials to discuss a possible return to the JCPOA.
Netanyahu has warned multiple times in the past week that Israel would defend itself against Iranian threats, stressing that Jerusalem would work to combat Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
contributed to this • they had not reached a definitive conclusion about the cause.
Revealing alleged Israeli involvement was unusual in that Jerusalem generally prefers to keep a low profile when it undertakes such attacks.
The goal of keeping a lower profile is to provide the attacked entity, here Iran, an alibi to save face and avoid needing to retaliate.
Following the revelation, there were calls over the weekend by Israeli defense officials to probe the leak to foreign media of an alleged sensitive IDF operation against Iran.
Some of the vibe coming out of these calls appeared to show IDF officials pointing the finger at the Mossad as making an unauthorized leak to grab some media glory – even in an operation that, if Israeli, would have been carried out primarily by the IDF and the Israel Navy.
This means there was anger both about the leak potentially thwarting IDF goals of keeping the operation clandestine and the possible endangerment of forces still in the field.
Another source of consternation seemed to be – once credit is taken – that anyone would take credit for the IDF’s alleged win.
From the Mossad’s point of
view is the flip side: that they have an arrangement with the CIA to give it short advance notice on certain operations so that the US is not overly taken by surprise, but with the understanding that Washington will keep the secret.
According to this narrative, the Biden administration broke the arrangement and leaked Israel’s role either to distance itself from the operation or to punish Jerusalem since Washington is trying to warm relations with Tehran to mutually return to the 2015 nuclear deal.
But before anyone could catch their breath from last week’s attack on a major Iranian asset being attributed to Israel, news broke in the middle of the night on Sunday morning that the ayatollahs’ key nuclear facility at Natanz had a power outage.
Though Iran initially tried to play down the event as an accident, by mid-morning The Jerusalem Post reported that the event was intentional and had caused far graver damage than what the Islamic Republic would admit.
WITH REPORTS that Israel may have been involved using its cyber prowess, many turned their attention to the Mossad, which had been credited by foreign reports with a major cyber sabotage of Natanz, together with the US, in 20092010.
Before anyone’s attention stayed focused long on the Mossad, Kohavi himself gave a speech with a much heavier hint to Israeli involvement than one normally hears from the IDF.
Suddenly, observers were getting whiplash reeling their heads from wondering who was taking credit in Israel and for which operation, and then back again to figure out who was trying harder to keep things low-profile or to purposely ratchet up the noise in the media, perhaps in an effort to intimidate Iran.
THIS WEEK is far from the first one where Kohavi and the Mossad’s Cohen have butted heads.
Though publicly both may proffer their mutual respect and point to their joint value of good relations, behind the scenes many say there is a tone of competition and outright anger.
In mid-February, it was leaked in Yediot Aharonot that Cohen showed frustration with the IDF chief when Israel’s defense establishment met with top political decision-makers.
According to the leak, Cohen was upset that Kohavi went public with an uncoordinated and spirited speech against the US rejoining even a partially improved nuclear deal and for
getting more concrete about potential Israeli attack plans on Iran.
The Post learned that Cohen was unhappy with the public leak about suggested differences between him and Kohavi, and would have downplayed such differences.
But even if he would have preferred that his closed-door comments had been kept private, there is no denying the presence of tension between the two.
Following that event, senior IDF officials started leaking opinions that they were unhappy with the idea that Cohen would represent Jerusalem to Washington on the Iranian issue, because they considered him too aggressive and uncompromising.
A third front even appeared in which Cohen and National Security Council Chief Meir Ben-Shabbat were competing for being the lead Israeli representative to the US regarding the Iran issue.
Of course, Kohavi and Ben-Shabbat have advantages over Cohen at this point.
Cohen’s term ends in midJune.
Kohavi is around until at least January 2022, with a decent chance at getting an extension until January 2023.
Ben-Shabbat could leave the Iran issue if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is toppled, but that is still a long shot – and short of that, he is not term-limited.
All of the above is not just based on interpersonal differences.
Kohavi may be closer to Netanyahu’s aggressive view on Iran than his three IDF-chief predecessors, who were more conservative about risking scraps with the ayatollahs.
But Cohen, who will forever be remembered for the stunning 2018 Mossad raid of Iran’s nuclear secret files, is still viewed as the one most ready to take brazen risks to hold down the Islamic Republic.
The most important question for Israeli citizens though is not why the IDF and the Mossad are at loggerheads or who gets the most credit, but whether or not these tensions are negatively impacting Israel’s broader security interests.
And if Israel ever goes back to a more clandestine style of covert warfare with adversaries like Iran, it might be easier to see what that national interest is – since there will be no spectator game of tussles over taking credit. •
IRAN Continued from Page 1
hard-pressed to believe the ayatollahs’ regime in light of its aggression across the Middle East and its calls to wipe Israel off the map. Those are the legitimate defensive aims of a possible attack on the uranium enrichment machines in Natanz.
Israel and others in the region, as well, certainly have been eyeing the talks in Vienna with concern that the US and Iran may truly return to the 2015 nuclear deal, which would lift nuclear limitations on Tehran in 2030, and not make it “longer and stronger” as Washington has promised it would.
Now, when it comes to nuclear negotiations, it looks like someone got Iran’s goat. •
PERMITS
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change, the Population and Immigration Authority of the Interior Ministry relaxed
these restrictions.
And Israelis – olim (immigrants) for the most part – are now reporting that requests by parents and children are being approved.
Activists dealing with the issue, as well as applicants for such entry permits, are also reporting that the application process, while complex and relatively burdensome, is actually working and applications are being approved.
According to former MK Dov Lipman, who has played an outsized role in assisting Israelis and their foreign-national relatives to enter the country in recent months, the system for obtaining approvals for non-Israelis to visit their relatives is working relatively smoothly.
Lipman said that most Israeli consulates are processing the applications efficiently and , leading to entry permit approvals issued in a timely fashion for those who qualify.
Likewise, branches of the Population and Immigration Authority in Israel, where Israelis can submit the documentation of their relatives, are also for the most part dealing efficiently with the applications.
In some situations, Lipman said that the authority’s branches are more efficient and streamlined in their application approval process than the consulates abroad.
Deena Moskowitz-Hikri, an immigrant from the US who is pregnant and has a twoyear-old child, filed an application with a local branch of the Population and Immigration Authority on Thursday through the New York consulate for her parents.
On Saturday night, their entry permits were already approved.
Moskowitz-Hikri, a resident of Tel Aviv, said she was very happy with the speedy processing and approval of the request, but noted that the amount of documentation required to apply was extremely burdensome, likening it to applying for college in the US.
She also pointed out that the requirement for documents proving the relationship between herself and her parents for apostille, a legal tool to verify official documents, was onerous and unnecessary since Israeli marriage licenses and identification documents specify the details of a citizen’s parents, obtained through previously verified documentation.
Seth, an immigrant from the US who preferred not to give his full name, said he had also submitted an application for his parents through the New York consulate but without all the requisite documentation, and that the application was denied without information about what else is needed.
Seth said Lipman helped him complete the application which he then physically submitted via an authority branch in Jerusalem – and it was approved within 20 minutes.
One problem Lipman highlighted, however, was that the new criteria for entry permits means that it is currently not possible for grandparents to come to the wedding of a grandchild since they are not first-degree relatives, nor is it possible for an under-16 sibling of a bride or groom, or of new parents, to gain an entry permit since they cannot be vaccinated yet.
Previously, unvaccinated foreign nationals could get entry permits provided they quarantined for the requisite amount of time.
“So far the system is working
OK,” said Lipman.
“Most consulates are being responsive and people are getting approvals. The number of requests for help has actually increased as people seek help navigating the new rules,” he said.
“Those who want to apply in Israel should for sure reach out and I can guide them through the process,” Lipman said. There still are aspects which we are working to change – the apostille requirement, not allowing unvaccinated siblings to weddings, not allowing unvaccinated parents for births.
“But step by step. Progress has been made and we are continuing to work for better rules.” •
AUSTIN Continued from Page 1
about Israel’s perception of its own interests.
But here is where things get tricky, because what are Israel’s interests, and who articulates them?
Netanyahu, in a speech at Yad Vashem last Wednesday to mark the beginning of Holocaust Remembrance Day, made it clear what he thought about US efforts to renegotiate a nuclear deal with Iran.
“To our best friends I say, an agreement with Iran which paves its way to nuclear weapons that threaten us with destruction, an agreement like this will not bind us,” he said.
But Defense Minister Benny Gantz greeted Austin on Sunday with a different tune – that Israel would work together with the US to get a better agreement.
“The Tehran of today poses a strategic threat to international security, to the entire Middle East and to the State of Israel, and we will work closely with our American allies to ensure that any new agreement with Iran will secure the vital interests of the world, of the US, prevent a dangerous arms race in our region and protect the State of Israel,” Gantz said.
Had one not been aware of Israel’s fractured political landscape, and had one imagined that the country’s political leadership was reading from the same script, one could think this was a classic good-cop/bad-cop moment, with Netanyahu in the badcop role regarding the deal, and Gantz cast as the good cop for the high-level American guest.
But a good-cop/bad-cop routine takes coordination, and considering the degree of enmity now between Netanyahu and Gantz, such coordination is out of that question. Rather than a coordinated policy, these dueling messages seem nothing more than an example of a dysfunctional government unable to speak in a unified voice.
And unfortunately, it is on full display during the visit of a US secretary of defense, not something that happens every day.
When it took Biden 29 full days from the time he was sworn into office on January 20 to call Netanyahu, many in Israel started to fret.
This had to be a signal of displeasure, some opined. It was a sign that Washington was hitting a reset button with Jerusalem, others speculated.
The premise was that time matters, and that there must be meaning in the time span between major events, such as that swearing in of the president and his first phone call to an Israeli prime minister.
If that is the case, then the
meaning should be read into the fact that Austin arrived in Israel on Sunday on only the 82nd day of Biden’s presidency.
If Biden was sending a signal to Israel, the region and the world by waiting so long to call Netanyahu, then Washington was also sending a signal to Israel, the region and the world in dispatching Austin to Israel so quickly.
In fact, Austin’s visit came earlier in a president’s term than any other secretary of defense.
Trump’s defense secretary, James Mattis, came to Israel on April 20, nine days later in the month than Austin, and Obama’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, came in July of Obama’s first year in office.
That those visits happened so early in their respective presidencies illustrates the increasing importance and significance of Israel in America’s overall security doctrine. Up until the Obama administration, it took years for presidents to send their defense secretaries to Israel.
George W. Bush did not dispatch Gates, who was also his defense secretary, until his seventh year in office. Bill Clinton did not send William Perry until his third year. George H.W. Bush’s defense secretary, Dick Cheney, did not visit Israel until Bush’s third year, and it took Ronald Reagan two years to send Casper Weinberger to Israel in 1982.
The first US defense secretary to ever visit was Harold Brown, who arrived in the third year of Jimmy Carter’s presidency in February 1979. That it took 31 years until the top US defense official visited the Jewish state says something about how unimportant Israel was as a defense component of US policy during that period.
Israel rolled out the red carpet for Austin on Sunday, as well it should have, because this was only the 24th visit of a secretary of defense in the country’s 73-year history. As such, one would have assumed that Israel’s political leaders would be coordinating their message.
But such coordination – as the mixed messages on a new Iran deal proved – is too much to ask at a time when Netanyahu and Gantz are nothing less than political enemies. •