No doubt, Meir Dagan wins on points. The former Mossad chief’s remarks got bigger headlines than the ones on the Ofer family’s ships. But which is more threatening to Israeli security: the possibility that an Israeli company does business with Iran and pops the balloon of Iranian threats that Israel has done so much to inflate, or Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s categorical statement in a Haaretz interview that Iran will not attack Israel even if it acquires a nuclear bomb? Perhaps the real danger is the clash of Israeli security oracles, each one of them purporting to be a wizard who can cite the exact year when Tehran will gain a nuclear capability, never mind that not one predicted the mass demonstrations in Iran after the 2009 elections. These are analysts who feed the U.S. government and Israeli people information on each particle of enriched uranium, while not really understanding how the Iranian regime works. They’re the ones who bandy about the military option, while admitting that this option would be catastrophic for Israel. Maybe the strategic threat to Israel is precisely the confusion, the lack of clarity and, most importantly, the disputes between intelligence agencies about what poses an existential threat. Is it the Iranian bomb, whose assembly has now been deferred to 2015 (according to Dagan ) or 2013 (according to Israeli intelligence officials ). Or is it the demonstrators from Syria, Lebanon and Egypt who might today charge through… >>>
