Did air-defense win hide a staggering intel fail?

Why was the Mossad left out of the loop?

On April 1, there was a staggering intelligence failure by Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate.

It assessed that killing Mohammed Reza Zahedi, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force for Lebanon and Syria, right in the heart of Damascus within a diplomatic compound (though not in the embassy) would not lead to a major direct attack on Israel by Iran.

This was dead wrong. Iran’s attack was direct and massive, the first in 45 years, following decades of a shadow war via proxies.

The only reason there are not yet calls for a commission of inquiry about the colossally inaccurate intelligence assessment is that the IAF, combined with the US, UK, France, Jordan, and others, managed an impressive shoot-down rate that even surpassed the failure.

Due to this miscalculation, Israeli losses on April 1 could have been greater than on October 7. The only difference was the effectiveness of the IAF and the allied forces.

The question is: Why is that October 7 didn’t teach us enough to not underestimate Israeli adversaries, especially when it comes to intelligence?

First of all, most of the core Israeli defense officials who underestimated Hamas on October 7 have still not resigned and were in place on April 1.

Maj.-Gen. Aharon Haliva, head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, has essentially committed himself to quitting. But more than six months after October 7, he still has not done so.

The same is true about IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi.

While Brig.-Gen. Amit Saar, head of the Military Intelligence

Directorate’s Research Division, resigned on April 4 due to health issues, he was still officially in place on April 1.

The IDF declined to clarify who exactly was the top IDF analysis official who gave the final prediction for the operation, given that Saar was already sick leading into April 1.

Intelligence “pluralism,” which was created by the 1973 Yom Kippur failures, did not function properly. After that, the Mossad was given additional resources to establish its own larger analysis division to compete with that of the IDF.

Although the Mossad was consulted on the question of Iran’s potential response, Yediot Aharonot’s Nadav Eyal reported that the agency was not told where the assassination would take place – let alone that it would be in a diplomatic compound.

Nevertheless, this report raised questions about how the Mossad could not have requested to know such critical information before issuing an opinion.

The Jerusalem Post subsequently learned that the Mossad was not consulted at all about its views regarding the assassination on April 1, or even the week before. Rather, it was consulted in a much more general way along with a variety of other potential theoretical scenarios around a month before.

In other words, IDF intelligence failed to properly consult the Mossad in the fullest possible fashion to get a second opinion once the more exact circumstances of the assassination became clear.

A second opinion a month before without full knowledge of the circumstances is more of a check-the-box cop-out than showing a real readiness to be challenged by an outside informed voice.

In fairness to IDF intelligence, the circumstances of assassinations of top terrorist targets are often developing real-time events, and it is not always possible to consult with every level and authority who might weigh in before pulling the trigger without risking losing the opportunity.

In today’s technological age and with the tight multilevel coordination between the IDF and Mossad, however, it is hard to argue that there would not have been a few minutes to do a last-second check.

Another defense for IDF intelligence is that it was right in December 2023 when it assassinated top IRGC commander Sayyed Reza Mousavi, also in Damascus. At the time, Iran decided to stick to the shadow war and only retaliate through proxies or terrorism against Jews overseas.

But one of the vital lessons of October 7 was to not assume that even highly consistent patterns of thought and operation will never wildly change.

One of the reasons IDF intelligence underestimated Hamas’s readiness to risk a larger conflagration was that the Gaza terrorist group had consistently avoided doing so since 2009, leaving Palestinian Islamic Jihad alone in its fights against the IDF in 2022 and 2023.

Overcoming the “bias” that past patterns will always remain consistent was supposed to be one of the great lessons of October 7. but it appears to not have fully taken hold.

Of course, Halevi or the war cabinet could have questioned the conclusion of IDF intelligence analysis. But lacking a second opinion with which to challenge it can make it difficult for such officials to second-guess “the experts,” especially where there is no obvious political interest involved, and the question is based on professional expertise.

The Post received a response from the IDF, Shin Bet (Israel

Security Agency), and the Mossad that said: “According to the convention for cooperation and divisions of responsibility signed in 2005 between the defense establishment bodies, all operational actions in Israel and worldwide have been carried out for years with full cooperation between the Shin Bet, the IDF, and the Mossad.”

“The IDF is prepared for every scenario and prepared for an Iranian attack accordingly,” the statement said.

According to defense sources, IDF intelligence had predicted that Iran would not attack directly but by using proxies, and that this evaluation was accepted and endorsed by Halevi as well as the political echelon, although they could have questioned it.