which may be what convinced the Islamic Republic that the United States backs Jundollah despite numerous US denials.
President George W. Bush was described as going “absolutely ballistic” when he learned what the Israelis were up to.
Foreign Policy magazine this month carries a long article about the “false flag” operation that it says is drawn from a series of memos written in the closing years of the Bush Administration.
The memos say that the Bush Administration barred any contact whatsoever with Jundollah, which has been labeled a terrorist organization by the United States.
Jundollah has launched targeted killings of some officers of the Pasdaran. More commonly, however, it has killed indiscriminately. It has periodically sent suicide bombers into Shia mosques. On one occasion, it stopped cars along a highway by posing as police officers at a roadblock; Jundollah then shot dead everyone who was stopped but one young boy.
Foreign Policy magazine quoted one of its sources as saying, “It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with. Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn’t give a damn what we thought.”
The article describes one of many examples of friction between US and Israeli intelligence. Many American intelligence officers do not trust the Israelis.
Foreign Policy said that only weeks after Barack Obama took office in 2009, he “drastically scaled back joint US-Israel intelligence programs targeting Iran.”
Bush was described as furiuous because the Israeli operation potentially put Americans at risk for retaliation. “No matter what anyone thinks, we are not in the business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian civilians,” one source talking to Foreign Policy said.
Gen. Joseph Hoar, previously commander-in-chief of the Central Command, criticized the Israeli operation. “You’re basically using your friendship with an ally for your own purposes. Israel is playing with fire. It gets us involved in their covert war, whether we want to be involved or not.”
The article did not say why the Israelis pretended to be CIA agents. Presumably, it was because they calculated Jundollah would not talk to Israelis but would talk to Americans.
