that no attack on Iran now is warranted, though he says military action may be needed if all else fails to convince Iran to halt its nuclear program.
Dagan also says that President Ahmadi-nejad is an intelligent man who should not be dismissed as a dense oaf.
Dagan, 67, served as head of the Mossad intelligence service from 2002 to 2010. It was under Dagan that Israel created its program to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists.
Dagan has gotten much attention in recent weeks for criticizing all the talk in Israel about a need to attack Iran in the near future.
Recently Dagan sat down with The Jerusalem Post and spoke at length about Iran.
He said the problem with military action is that it cannot disarm the core component of the Iranian program—human knowledge. One can bomb the centrifuges, but the people who worked years to build the centrifuges will still be around and will be able to build more of them and much faster the second time.
“Knowledge on the nuclear issue is something that you are not able to prevent because knowledge is something that remains in the brains of people. You are not capable really of eliminating knowledge from people.”
Dagan explained, “What you can do in some cases is eliminate the industrial infrastructure on the ground that is producing some part of the project. The question is not whether Israel is capable of doing so. Israel no doubt has the ability. We have a unique air force that can launch whatever is going to be needed. This is not the issue; it’s not the military issue. It’s what will be the outcome of such an attack.”
Dagan believes that the outcome would be a regional war conducted mostly through Tehran’s proxies – Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and perhaps even Syria, which, he says, may choose to divert attention from its internal problems by focusing on a “threat outside the country.”
“When you are going to be involved in a regional war and in a best-case scenario you are able only to delay the project, not to stop it, you can raise the question of whether such an attack is the right and the best solution for it,” he said. “I believe that such a solution should be a tool available to the political level, but I’m not sure it should be the first option. It should be the last option.”
In any event, he said, the Iranian problem is better off left in the hands of the international community. It would be, he said, a mistake to make it a question of Israel versus Iran. “The Iranian issue is not an Israeli issue. I agree that in our case they are stating that they want to see the State of Israel destroyed, and we have to take such threats very seriously in our region. We are living in a rough neighborhood, and in a rough neighborhood, when somebody is threatening, you have to take it very seriously.”
But Iran, he continues, is not only a threat to Israel. It has also attacked American targets, in Iraq and elsewhere, through its proxies and, seeking to gain influence, he said, it has played on Shiite-Sunni sectarian tensions in the Persian Gulf countries, in Iraq and in Yemen. Worst of all, from the international community’s perspective, Iran armed with a nuclear capability would be a menace to all the oil-producing countries of the region. “I don’t think that anybody has a real interest in Iran being the one to dictate the prices and the policy in the region,” he says.
This description of the Islamic Republic as a global problem, not an Israeli problem, was first framed more than a decade ago by Shimon Peres, now the president of Israel, when he was foreign minister and fearful that Europe was consciously ignoring Iran, assuming that Israel would bomb it and eliminate the its nuclear program, allowing the rest of the world to simultaneously condemn Israel for the attack and benefit from its action. That produced a posture until recently under which Israel told the rest of the world it had to handle Iran. Dagan is here clearly trying to restore that approach.
But what if the world powers lack the political and military will to make Iran back down from its nuclear ambition? What if a few years down the road Israel finds itself facing an intelligence estimate that it can wait no longer? “I never said that such an option [a military strike] should not be an available option.” Dagan told The Jerusalem Post. “I think that such an option should always remain, but you have to understand what you are doing by this. Let’s say that you do it too soon, then what you are going to create is something unbelievable because today Iran is suffering from internal problems as a result of the international economic crisis.
“Add to this the problem of sanctions, add to this the different ethnic minorities existing in Iran, who are really now, let’s call it an opposition to the current regime in Iran. And suddenly we are going to unite all of them behind the leadership. And not only are we going to unite all of them behind the leadership if we attack, but we are going to provide them with a justification for going to a nuclear weapon.
“Why? Very simple. They will say, ‘Look, we were attacked by what is claimed by the international media is a nuclear state. Until now we were aiming to produce a peaceful project that was observed by the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] in Vienna, and suddenly we are attacked by a state that attacks a facility that is already under observation of the international community. Now we are going to produce a nuclear capability as a deterrent and protection for ourselves.
“Not only are we not going to stop the project, we are going to provide the right justification for it,” Dagan argued. The question of a military strike is a question of when such an option should be put on the table, he emphasized. “I think it’s like in the theater when you are seeing a gun appearing in the first act, probably someone is going to shoot in the last act. I prefer that such a weapon be used as a last opportunity.”
Dagan’s point of view contrasts sharply with the arguments being propounded in recent months by Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who say that time is running short to stop Iran from getting the bomb.
“I respect every point of view,” he says, “but I learned that the fact that somebody is a prime minister taking a decision does not necessarily mean that he is taking the right decision.”
Countering a recent comment made by his predecessor, Ephraim Halevy, that former heads of the Mossad should be careful with what they say because of how it can be interpreted, Dagan adds: “I don’t think I am creating any damage to the security of Israel because I am not taking the point of view of the Iranians. If someone like me is speaking against it [attacking Iran], then the Iranians have to understand that Israel is probably considering seriously doing so. Then, in a way, it’s helping those efforts, making it a reliable scenario.”
Dagan says the Iranian regime is rational. “Rational is somebody that has calculated, making an assessment about his decision. He is calculating advantage and disadvantage and making a rational decision based on the advantage and the disadvantage. In this aspect, the Iranian regime is very rational. Do they have different goals? The answer is yes. You cannot say it is not a rational regime. I agree that it is not exactly the rationale of Western countries. But if you are remembering what are their goals, what is their ideology and how they are organizing the process of thinking in Iran, it is a very rational process.”
Dagan does not buy into the school of thought that Iran’s Ahmadi-nejad and others in the Iranian regime are driven by an apocalyptic religious ideology.
“He is religious, but don’t take from him what he is not,” said Dagan. “He is a very smart man. He had very good capabilities in managing the city of Tehran. He was very capable in running a few provinces in Iran in the past. He has a PhD in engineering.
“He is not a stupid man. When he is referring to the public, he is not referring to the Israeli public. He is referring to the Iranian public. Does it sound rational to the Iranian public? The answer is yes. Does it sound logical from their point of view? The answer is yes. To claim that half of them are crazy people is a wrong description of those people.”
It would not be a stretch to say that Dagan admires the Iranians. “Those people are very serious people. They are very clever. Their ingenuities you cannot doubt. Their system of education is marvelous. To tell you the truth, in some cases I envy their system of education when I compare it to ours.”
Dagan discusses how the Islamic Republic works. “It’s not a regime that is taking a decision by itself. It’s a regime that is by definition conducting what I call, not exactly a public debate, but a discussion between different groups who are controlling and running the country. It’s a rational regime. They are not going to do something that is going to turn everyone in the country against the regime. Is it a rational regime? The answer is yes. Is it our kind of rational? The answer is no. Remember, their goals are different.”
Dagan’s understanding of the regime is that its ultimate goal is survival and the dissemination of its ideology. “If they were to face a situation where they would have to judge the survival of the regime versus the [nuclear] project, I believe they would choose the survival of the regime,” he said.
Asked what kind of compromise might convince the Islamic Republic to abandon a nuclear weapons program, Dagan argued for regime change rather than a pact with the current regime. “I think that Iran today is in a very serious situation,” he said, “and I would aim for a different goal. I would aim that such a regime be replaced by a much more open one that is much more keen on civil rights and a much more open society, and I believe that today many of the Iranians want to see Iran go in this direction.”
Dagan refused to discuss whether Israel and the West have done or are doing enough to encourage that option, but said sanctions are beginning to have the desired impact. “I think that the hardships are reaching almost every household in Iran. And they [the Iranian people] are putting the blame on the Iranian regime as a result of their behavior. I think that the direction that the international community is going is the right direction.”
Is he saying then that if enough time is bought, there could be a change of regime in Iran? “No,” he replied, “I’m saying that … when the president of the US says that he is not going to allow [Iran] to become a nuclear state and that nuclear military capability will be in the possession of the Iranians, I think I can trust his point of view…. Let me put it this way: if the US president says that he is not going to allow Iran to reach nuclear capability, if we are not going to trust him, then who are we going to trust?”
Relying on another country would be a departure from the traditional Israeli policy of retaining national security entirely in Israel’s own hands.
“I do not think we are leaving our fate to another country,” Dagan countered. “I think we are now in a situation where it’s the main interest of most of the countries in the region and the US and the international community. Personally, I think that it is a mistake to put it as a direct conflict between Israel and Iran. We never ever had anything against the people of Iran, and I think that such a problem that is creating such a great threat to the region and to the stability of the region, the economy of the region and every other aspect should be dealt with as an international issue.”
Again, Dagan was back to the Peres formulation that dominated Israeli policy for more than a decade until Netanyahu and Barak decided to put Israel in the forefront of countering the Islamic Republic.