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Part 2 - Inside Mossad’s Shadow War with Iran (INSIDE Call me Back sneak peek)
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- [00:00]
A
Hi, it's Dan. This is a sneak peek from the members only edition of our show, Inside Call Me Back. I hope you enjoyed this segment and if you want to get the full episode and support our mission at ARC Media, please become an Inside Call Me Back member by following the link in the description or by going to ark media.org that's ark media.org and to all our insiders, thank you. It's your support that keeps the lights on at ARC Media. You are listening to an art media podcast.
- [00:37]
B
In early 2008, a senior official from MI6, so His Majesty's Foreign intelligence Agency came to Israel and told the Mossad military intelligence a secret that only few people in the world knew. He said, we have a human source, an agent, a spy deep inside the highest ranks of the Iranian nuclear project. And that spy revealed to us something that all other measures of intelligence all fail to reveal, and that is that the Iranians are building a new secret enrichment facility in a place called Fordu, not far away from the holy city of Qom, underneath the mountain, for thousands of centrifuges for the secret enrichment up to military degree that could be used for a bomb. That was a shock. And the name of the spy was Alireza Akbari.
- [01:41]
A
Welcome to the inside edition of the CallMeBack podcast, where we pull back the curtain and have the conversations we typically have after the cameras stop rolling. Thank you for subscribing to the show and supporting the Call Me Back podcast and everything we do here at Arkansas. And also welcome to those of you who have recently joined us. Now, my guest today for the second part of this series, Inside Mossad's shadow war with Iran, is Ronen Bergman. Ronen, welcome back to Inside. Call me back.
- [02:12]
B
Thank you. Pleasure being here.
- [02:14]
A
We would have caved earlier, Ronen, but I know there are some challenges recording podcasts these days when you have to constantly run to a shelter while you're trying to record a podcast and when you are a busy journalist and analyst covering all matters in the intelligence community while Israel is, oh, by the way, in the middle of a very intelligence intensive war against Iran.
- [02:37]
B
Yes, indeed. The house I'm speaking from is in Ramata Sharon.
- [02:41]
A
Yeah, I've been there. I've met with you there.
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B
And it is exactly in the midway between Mossad headquarters and 8200, the Israeli NSA headquarters.
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A
Right.
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B
So like the two most popular sites for the Iranian or the Hezbollah Houthi bombs missiles.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So we feel the action, of course, in what I need to cover, but also very personally Sometimes every hour in the sirens and the less to go to the safe room.
- [03:07]
A
I remember the place well. Okay, so I want to jump right back into this conversation. We've received an overwhelming response from our audience from the first episode in this series, which was. Was excellent. And people were really just sending us messages and commenting, saying, there we left a real cliffhanger at the edge of their seats, and they can't wait for the next episode. So I just want to quickly update where we were last week. We told the story of Mayor Dagan, the former head of the Mossad, and his sabotage strategy against Iran's nuclear program, which ultimately proved to be effective at a tactical level, but failed strategically to end Iran's nuclear program. And we ended part one as tensions between the US And Israel were rising and as the Bush administration began to suspect that Israel was planning. Planning to strike Iran on its own. So let's recap. Ronan. The American approach towards an Israeli strike. There were two telling moments, according to what you shared with us last week. One with President Bush in 2008, and then there's one with President Obama in December of 2011. So can you just briefly remind us of those two exchanges?
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B
So maybe two moments with President Bush. The first one is where we left that last time. That's in May of 2008, when President Bush come to Israel for the anniversary of Israel.
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A
60th anniversary.
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B
60th anniversary. The day of Independence. And few months after, he was already in Israel.
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A
Right.
- [04:38]
B
So first he comes in May of 2008, allegedly for the Day of Independence. But the Israelis believe that there is something else. And indeed, after the dinner that Prime Minister Omid is holding for President Bush at his house, the three of them, meaning the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak, Prime Minister Ahmed, and President Bush, are going to the study of the Prime Minister, and they have scotch and cigars. And then Ehud Barak starts speaking with the President about the wish list of Israeli military procurement in America, that not all was authorized by the President. And he said, we are really looking to buy these V22. These are like choppers that can function as airplanes. And at a certain point, Bosch is getting a little bit impatient and says, Listen, Mr. Minister, I was a pilot. I know what you want this for. You want this in order to be able to have a strike in Iran. And I am not going to give that to you. I said no, and no is a no. And then he turns to Prime Minister Olmert and says, listen, this guy pointing at Barak scares the shit out of me. The Americans, I think, were too concerned. But it does reflect some kind of contradiction between the two administrations that when the US Feels they have time, and this is far from being the last resort, the last red line before attacking Israel, felt that they are on the verge of losing the control over the Iranian nuclear project. And just to shed a little more light on the Israeli concerns, in the previous visit of the President to Israel, when they meet in the office, Prime Minister Olmert asked all the aides to leave and let them be alone, the Prime Minister and the President. And then he pulls out a tape recorder and he plays an audio tape and he gives the President a transcript and a translation of the transcript and says, look, what you hear now is the voice of a person called Professor Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. He is the Iranian Dr. Strangelove. He is the brain behind the project. And what he is saying here in that recording is that they are planning to manufacture nuclear bomb, maybe 10 at the first layer, but many more others. So this is the smoking gun. He's talking very clearly on what they are planning. And Mr. President, please take all of that, the recording and the transcript, give it to your analyst and the CIA and ask them what they think about that. And the Israelis were concerned.
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A
And then 2011, just remind us again, refresh the Obama Ehud barak moment.
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B
So, December 2011, the President Obama and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak are meeting in some conference in D.C. and the president of the United States is trying to convince Ehul Barak not to strike and said, listen, we have your back. We will make sure, and we have the relevant armament, the relevant equipment, the relevant bombs to make sure that Iran will never become a nuclear military state. And then Ehud Barak answers. He says, I believe you, Mr. President. I believe you that what you say is totally sincere and that you feel obliged to fulfill your promise. But I also know that when time comes, you will follow American interest and not necessarily Israeli interest at that time. And this is a risk I cannot take, basically hinting that Israel needs to strike now. Now, meaning back then, in 2011, before the Iranian nuclear sites are becoming immune to the Israeli bombs.
- [08:15]
A
So there was disagreement between the US And Israeli sides with. But unlike today, where there's really just a very wide ranging virtual consensus among the Israeli security establishment about what Israel should do here, back at this time that you're describing, it wasn't just tension and disagreement between the US And Israel. There was also tension and disagreement within the Israeli security establishment, the heads of Israel's security establishment, some of Them were opposing an Israeli attack with or without the United States. And this opposition was shaped in part by the outcome of the 2006 Lebanon War. So tell me more about that.
- [08:52]
B
The 2006 Lebanon War between Israel, between the IDF and Hezbollah was to an extent a traumatic experience for Israel's defense leaders and defense forces. Minister of Defense Amir Peretz was basically fired or replaced by Ehud Barak, the new old leader of the Labour Party. Chief of Staff Khalutz was replaced by a new Chief of Staff that was not stained by the, I would say non victory of that confrontation. The chief of Mossad, Meir Dagan, was already all in, in what we discussed
- [09:26]
A
last time, the sabotage strategy.
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B
Yeah, but El Barak did not have a lot of faith in Dagan's strategy to an extent. Later, he was even proven right. Barak gave the example of the 1981 strike against the Iraqi nuclear site Tammuz Al Sirak as an example of a sabotage strategy that didn't work. When Iraq was trying to assemble a nuclear bomb. Mossad was launched for all kind of secret operations, killing the scientists, poisoning some of them, exploding the shipments from France. And at a certain point in 1980, the chief of Mossad, then someone called General Hofi came to Prime Minister Menachem Begin and said, Prime Minister, we have done everything we could. We have delayed the project significantly. But now they learned the lesson. They are far more sensitive to our possible operation. They have more guards, they have more security. It's up to you from here, Prime Minister, either to go for an aerial overt strike with all the caveats and all the risks, or just accept them, but we are done. And Ehud Barak making that equivalent, he said, Mossad did marvelous things on this secret sabotage campaign, but it has a reduced benefit. So while they can gain less, the Iranians are getting more advanced. And Barack said, soon it's just going to be too late.
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A
And can you just talk a little more about the relationship between Barak and Merdegan?
- [10:56]
B
I think that to put this in a very simple term, they didn't like
- [10:59]
A
each other, hated each other. It's more like it.
- [11:03]
B
Yeah, but there's also. There's history and people are people. It's not just about their debate on how to handle the Iranian nuclear project. Barak is the most decorated soldier in the history of the Israeli armed forces. The one officer that is most identified with Sayeret Matkal. That's High Elite Reconnaissance Unit, the one that was behind the Entebbe raid and many others.
- [11:27]
A
It's the most elite special operations force In Israel, it's like trying to compare it to, you know, like the Delta Force.
- [11:34]
B
There's like the creme de la creme that gave birth to also many leaders of the Israeli science and the political world. So Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett, Ehud Barak and many others all started there as officers in that unit. Now, Dagan, who came as the son of Holocaust survivors that lost everything in the world, Dagan wanted to be part of that unit, but he did not finish the training. The fact that he was not able to be more sub than the Sabra, the hero of the country, and the fact that he was not admitted to the unit, that left a stain that sort of led him in many of his senior jobs, including in the Mossad, had quite a bitter confrontation with anyone who came from that unit. And coincidentally, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense were both veterans of the unit that he hated so much. And maybe I have an audio I can share with you from a conversation I had with Dagan back in 2013. He died in 2016. Where he says, Bibi, so Benjamin Netanyahu has a certain quality that is similar to Ehud Barak. Both of them think they are geniuses and the world does not understand them. In this debate, he says the entire security establishment actually did not accept their position. Says, I have known many prime minister, none of them were pure or holy. And then I answer, otherwise he wouldn't be become a prime minister. Dagan replies, right, but when they reach the point where personal interests touch the national interest, the national interest always prevailed. I cannot say that about Netanyahu and Elu.
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A
So, Ronan, that is revealing of Dagan's tense relationship with both Prime Ministers, Netanyahu and Barak. But there was also a very complicated relationship between Netanyahu and Barak, which is relevant to this chapter of the Iran story. So tell me about the history between Netanyahu and Barak.
- [13:56]
B
So both of them also go back to Sayeret Matkal. Ehud Barak was the commander. Netanyahu was one of his soldiers. There's a famous photo of both of them after rescuing the passengers from the Sabena flight that was hijacked by Terrorists in 1972 at Belgurian Airport dressed as a maintenance guy for the airplane. Barak was the one that went to speak with Yoni Netanyahu's spouse, Benjamin brother, when he was killed. And he came to give the tragic news. And so they were connected, I think, in a good way. And when Netanyahu was appointed prime minister in 2009, he did something that is very, I would say, unusual for Netanyahu. And he took something from Prime Minister Olmert. He just offered Ehud Barak to continue to be the Minister of Defense. I think that this was a vote of confidence and trust and also the need of Netanyahu to have someone of the security establishment around, someone with experience. And for a very long time, Netanyahu trust Barack to hold the security establishment portfolio.
- [15:04]
A
But it's even more complicated than that because Netanyahu served as prime minister from 1996 to 1999. His premiership was cut short, his first tours being Prime Minister because he lost an election to Ehud Barak. And then Bibi comes back to power, gets elected about close to a decade later. And to your point, the first thing he does, or one of the first things he does when he forms a government is he brings this man into his government to serve as Defense Minister who had defeated him a decade ago, in order to do what you're explaining, to accomplish what you're explaining, which is to have a senior security establishment official, even if he's not from the same party, even if he's been a political rival in the past, to serve at the center of his government.
- [15:44]
B
So I think that Netanyahu realized that at that point, Barack is no longer a competitor for the Prime Minister. Or maybe at that time, he was less concerned for any kind of political competition and was more concerned to have someone that he believed to be the right guy sitting in the seat of the Ministry of Defense. But the bottom line remains the same. These two politicians worked closely together for most of the next five, five and a half years where Barak is taking upon itself the preparation for a possible aerial overt strike or on the Iranian nuclear project.
- [16:23]
A
Okay. So in 2007, Barak is defense Minister not yet of the new Netanyahu government. But obviously it's a position he continued in, as you're saying, because he continued in that position from the Olmert government into the Netanyahu government. But he ordered the development of an attack plan on the Natanz facility. It was his plan B to Dagan's sabotage strategy, which is we discussed earlier. He. Barack was very skeptical of the sabotage strategy and he wanted an attack plan. And the plan was being developed. And in 2008, everything changed in terms of Barack's development of the plan when the UK's Mi6 enters the stage.
- [17:08]
B
Yeah. So one of the first things that Ehud Barak did when he came to Minister of Defense was to renew thoughts and plan that were not adopted by Prime Minister Sharon, we spoke about this last time when the secretary enrichment facility in Natanz was discovered and that was put aside when Barack Beyon came to the Ministry of Defense. He said we should plan and seek for all different kind of solution because it's far away, because it's fortified, because some of it is underground, because there's air defenses. We should start planning seriously for the possibility that the sabotage campaign fails and we would need to resort to an aerial strike. Maybe they even start to think about the ground strike. But the whole thing was based on the assumption that Israeli intelligence and American intelligence working together very closely, they know everything. They know what the Iranians are up to, they know where centrifuges, they know what is the stream of products. Basically they understand what the Iranians are up to. And then in early 2008, it all changed when a senior official from MI6, so His Majesty's Foreign Intelligence Agency came to Israel and told the Mossad military intelligence a secret that only few people in the world knew. He said, we have a human source. We cultivated an agent, a spy deep inside the highest ranks of the Iranian nuclear project. And that spy revealed to us something that all other measures of intelligence seeking, cyber surveillance, satellite all fail to reveal. And that is that the Iranians are building a new secret enrichment facility in a place called Fordu, not far away from the holy city of Qom, underneath the mountain for thousands of centrifuges for the secret enrichment up to military degree that could be used for a bomb. That was a shock. And the name of this spy was Alireza Akbari.
- [19:16]
A
Can you tell us a little bit about Akbari's story, his background? Who is he?
- [19:20]
B
So he comes from a very strict religious background. The people knowing him later to speak with my colleague from the New York Times, Farhanas Fasih and myself, through her, they said that he had a. A stain here in the front part of the forehead.
- [19:36]
A
Yeah, like a dent.
- [19:37]
B
Because this is a sign of people who religiously strictly praying five times a day. And from the touching the carpet, it creates such a stain. So it's like a symbolic marking, honorable in Iran for someone who is very, very religious. So that person, he was a senior IRGC Revolutionary Guard commander that rose to the rank of the Deputy Defense Minister of Iran. He was very, very close with two people. One is Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the chief nuclear scientist. And the other one is the National Security Advisor of Iran, Ali Shamahani. Two very, very powerful people inside the Iranian defense establishment. Now, when the international Community started to suspect Iran, that Iran is not just having some kind of a peaceful research nuclear project. He was sent to foreign embassies to explain that Iran is not about nuclear military projects. This is all peaceful. And while doing that, he met with the British ambassador to Tehran. And the British ambassador presumably understood that this is someone that they can turn. He got him into a contact with the MI6. And these people, very slowly and very gradually throughout three years, were able at the end of that process to turn him to making him into an asset, to convince him to spy and make him, I would say, maybe the most important spy that the west was running inside that project. Later he moved to London. And then in 2009, President Obama makes a public announcement and reveal to the world the existence of fordu. We are here to announce that yesterday in Vienna, the United States, the United Kingdom and France presented detailed evidence to the IAEA demonstrating that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years.
- [21:47]
A
So the Iranian regime responds how to that announcement by Obama?
- [21:52]
B
So they denied publicly, but domestically they were looking for the traitor. They understood that they have a leak. They arrest few people, quite a lot, including Alireza. They interrogated him, but he convinced them he has nothing to do with it and they released him. Then in 2010, he moved to London with his family for what he describes as heart treatment that can be done only in London. But then he rotates. He goes to Iran from time to time freely, with no suspicion until 2019 when Iran gets a tip from Russian intelligence that it was Alriz Akbari who gave the information to MI6 back then about Fordu and about many, many other things. National Security Advisor Ali Shamahani calls Ali Akbari in London and says, listen Badi, I have something about national security that only you can solve. And Alireza travels to Iran. He thinks that he can again bring good information. But instead he is taken into custody horribly, horribly tortured and was forced to turn against his British handlers and using the codes to brief them with false information until at a certain point they realized that he was caught, that this is just a campaign of lies. He is sentenced to death and in 2023 he's executed by hanging. He's buried in an unmarked spot in very simple cemeteries of Tehran. The authorities, they let his family have some kind of a memorial meeting. So the family comes to this memorial meeting, they wait for people to come. You know, he was very well known and highly appreciated, but nobody comes.
- [23:41]
A
Okay, so Akbari's story Ends tragically, as you described in 2023. But I do want to. Ronan, wind the tape back to 2008 when MI6 tells the Israelis about Akbari's report on fordeau. How does MI6's transmission of Akbari's findings or knowledge, intelligence, how does this change the Israelis thinking?
- [24:09]
B
So everybody that were in position at that time, Barak, the Minister of Defense, chiefs of the intelligence, the military, they all recall the same kind of feeling, which is, you know, like a slap in the face, like real earthquake, real shattering of their confidence. Like if they didn't know about that. And this is a massive facility project. Digging the facility, bringing the equipment. They didn't know anything about that. So what else they don't know? And then I think that Barak, as the chief of the security establishment, he concluded that at that point, an airstrike by itself on all the main facilities, especially on Fordu, because it's so deeply underground, might not be effective because the underground tunnels were too complicated, were too complex and too deep, because visible targets above ground might not connect it to the bunker below. So the shafts and the ventilating pipes and all of that led to a conclusion that Israel now needs not just to prepare to strike on the known sites before. So the two sites, Natanz and Isfahan, but because the third site is so deeply underground, they might need to involve ground troops, commando raids, in order to ensure the destruction of the site.
- [25:31]
A
That's it for our sneak peek today. If you want to catch the full episode, please subscribe to Inside. Call Me Back by following the link in the description or by going to ark media.org that's ark media.org your support is what allows us to do what we do here at ARC Media. I hope to see you there. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Lon Benatar. Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin. Already our production manager is Brittany Cohn. Our community manager is Ava Wiener. Sound and video editing by Liquid Audio. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.