An alliance with Syria was in Iran’s best interests. Tehran could offer cash, which Damascus desperately needed, and advanced military technology, such as solid-fuel rocket engines for long-range missiles. In return, Syria could provide direct access to Iran’s principal adversary and, more important, a bridge to the wider world. Iranian imports and exports could be filtered through Syrian seaports and airports, lessening Iran’s international isolation.
At the same time, Iran was running a proxy militia in Lebanon, where Syria maintained large military and intelligence operations. To keep Hezbollah supplied and functioning, the Iranians required freedom of movement, which the Syrians could not only allow but also facilitate.
But the young Assad did more than merely choose a side.
For decades, his father had been allowing the Iranians to fly shipments of arms into Damascus and then truck them overland to Hezbollah. But Hafez al-Assad assisted the Iranians only by letting them operate unencumbered—he carefully and cautiously avoided any close ties with the jihadists themselves. Bashar al-Assad, however, saw an opportunity. Hezbollah’s victory over Israel and the doctrine of Hassan Nasrallah, the organization’s secretary general, who likened Israel to a “spiderweb”—strong from afar but soft up close—made an impact on him.
The younger Assad decided to wholeheartedly throw his lot in with both the theocrats and the jihadists, and put all of Syria’s resources at their disposal. Starting in early 2002, Assad opened his own army’s armories to Hezbollah, providing the organization with modern Soviet weaponry that even Iran lacked, and long-range surface-to-surface missiles. He also opened the gates of his palace to Nasrallah, whom he regarded as a role model.
Syria had practical motives for wanting to strengthen Hezbollah as well. Lebanon was an economic lifeline for Syria and for Assad’s generals, who enjoyed generous commissions from deals in which the state was involved. Recently, however, a number of powerful figures in Lebanon had risen and demanded that the Syrians leave. In response, Imad Mughniyeh, the Hezbollah chief of staff, began to assassinate those figures, one after another, on behalf of the Iranians and the Syrians. The assassination campaign peaked when Mughniyeh’s men killed Rafik Hariri, the most important politician in the Middle East, who had twice served as prime minister of Lebanon and had tried to mobilize the world to expel the Syrians from his country.
It became clear that there was a confluence of interests among Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria, and that the three of them were uniquely suited to work together and help one another in their times of need. Thus, an alliance—which Israel’s intelligence community called “the Radical Front”—was born.
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THE ALLIANCE OF A terrorist organization, a pariah theocracy, and a modernized nation-state allowed a sprawling network of guerrillas, self-styled revolutionaries, and criminal thugs to operate with an unusually robust level of military efficiency. The leaders of the countries and the organization developed strategy and supplied matériel for an otherwise disparate collection of operatives, spread across the length and breadth of the Middle East.
At the network’s highest operational level were three men: Qassem Suleimani of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Imad Mughniyeh of Hezbollah, and General Muhammad Suleiman of Syria. Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shalah, who operated in Damascus under the auspices of Iran and Syria, was also brought into the alliance and invited to some of the discussions.
Their lieutenants included Hassan al-Laqqis, Hezbollah’s R&D chief, and Mahmud al-Majzub, the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Lebanon. Hamas had no official role in the Radical Front—Sheikh Yassin, a Sunni, despised the Shiite Iranians—but Khaled Mashal, the leader of Hamas outside of Palestine, thought otherwise and instructed one of the organization’s operational commanders in Damascus, Izz al-Din al-Sheikh Khalil, to be in close contact with the other members of the front.
With a web of connections and transport lines, the Radical Front began channeling more and deadlier aid for the struggle against Israel. From Beirut, Hezbollah supported and armed Palestinian terrorists, paying bonuses for each Israeli killed in suicide bombings. Rockets were dismantled in Syria or Iran, smuggled, in pieces, over land or by sea into the Gaza Strip, and then reassembled by Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters. Majzub arranged to have the Revolutionary Guard ship missiles in the same manner to PIJ guerrillas in Lebanon. Mashal and Sheikh Khalil received substantial monetary assistance from Iran (perhaps without Yassin’s knowledge), as well as considerable know-how that was transferred to Gaza and helped in the production of homemade rockets.
Hezbollah’s Laqqis, meanwhile, began constructing an enormous array of bunkers and missile silos in southern Lebanon that could confront an Israeli invasion or help launch an offensive. They were camouflaged so expertly that Israeli intelligence never saw them being built. Nor was Israel fully aware of the amount of lethal hardware being assembled. By 2003, according to one assessment, Hezbollah possessed the largest arsenal ever held by a guerrilla force.
Having enemies at the borders and in the occupied territories was not new for Israel, of course. But now it was surrounded by what was basically a single coordinated force—Hezbollah in Lebanon, the PIJ in the territories, Syria to the north—all funded with Iranian money and supplied with Iranian weapons.
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THE ISRAELI AGENCY RESPONSIBLE for gaining intel and countering such an external threat was the Mossad. But its efforts had been far from adequate, largely because it had not adapted itself to changing times. The Mossad’s inability to penetrate the jihadist organizations, its lack of technological capabilities in a world where everyone has access to a cellular device and encryption software, and a series of severe operational failures, led by the botched assassination of Mashal, were all indications that the Mossad had become deficient and ineffectual. Iran was a more sophisticated and original rival than any Arab state the Mossad had tried to penetrate, and Bashar al-Assad instituted strict field security measures in Syria as well.
Here and there, the Mossad tried to thwart dangerous projects undertaken by members of the Radical Front. It learned, for example, that General Anatoly Kuntsevich, a veteran of the Russian military industries, was helping Syria produce the deadliest chemical weapon, the nerve agent VX. Official protests to Moscow were ignored. So, in April 2002, Kuntsevich mysteriously dropped dead on a flight from Aleppo to Moscow.
But that was an isolated success. There was no consistent and steady strategy against the Radical Front, and the Israelis remained dangerously unaware of many of their adversary’s plans and actions. Compared with the successes of the Shin Bet and AMAN in the occupied territories, the Mossad was considered the weak link in the intelligence community.
Prime Minister Sharon was exasperated by the agency. The Mossad was too sleepy and effete for his liking, and too reluctant to take risks, after its earlier operational mishaps. Mossad chief Efraim Halevy’s approach was the exact opposite of Sharon’s, who always wanted to take the initiative and attack. As Dov Weissglass explained, “At a time when Israel found itself in one of the most difficult battles of its life, the Second Intifada, we could never understand why that magnificent body known as the Mossad was simply nonexistent. With Halevy, the diplomatic aspect was infinitely developed. The operational aspect was like an appendix to him, superfluous tissue that was dispensable.”
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THIS PERIOD COINCIDED WITH the peak of the intifada, and the initial and most urgent targets on the liquidation list were those who encouraged Palestinian terrorism.
Hezbollah, under Iranian control, had set up its Unit 1800 to provide the Tanzim terrorist group (established under the auspices of Arafat’s Fatah) with money and training for more suicide attacks. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in Lebanon, also supported the suicide terror activities of its members in the West Bank and Gaza with money, training, and guidance.
In the absence of any strong c
ounterinitiative on the part of the Mossad, AMAN tried to fill the gap. “The Mossad was not an operational partner,” said AMAN chief Aharon Zeevi-Farkash. “On the other hand, we in AMAN marked fifty Palestinians in the West Bank who, with the funding and support of Hezbollah Unit 1800, in Lebanon, were toiling all the time to produce suicide attacks. The situation had become intolerable.” The idea was, therefore, “to hit a number of targets in Hezbollah in order to explain to its leaders that there was a price to be paid for these actions.”
Colonel Ronen Cohen, the head of counterterrorism in AMAN, drew up a list of targets (dubbed the Twelve Musketeers) that included operatives of Unit 1800 in Hezbollah, along with a number of names from Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
One of the names on the list was Kais Obeid, who once was an agent for the Shin Bet but had defected to Hezbollah’s Unit 1800. Obeid managed to lure a senior IDF reserve officer to Dubai. The officer had become enmeshed in debt, and Obeid promised to get him out of his financial troubles. He walked into a trap and was drugged, placed in a crate, and sent by diplomatic mail from the Iranian embassy in Dubai to Beirut. During his interrogation, he revealed important military secrets to Hezbollah and the Syrians. After that, Obeid, who knew a lot of Israeli Arabs and spoke fluent Hebrew, began to recruit suicide bombers.
Obeid was an Israeli citizen, and there was an unwritten rule among the country’s intelligence agencies that forbade killing fellow Israelis. But under the grave menace of suicide terror, this rule was suspended. Nevertheless, Cohen’s list of “Musketeers” did not include the top Hezbollah officials, Mughniyeh and his two deputies, or Secretary General Nasrallah. “We feared that this might start an all-out war,” said one of the men involved in the operation.
In Zeevi-Farkash and Cohen’s meeting with Sharon to discuss the operation, they argued that, while the Shin Bet was doing excellent work in eliminating the highest-ranking terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza, no one was acting against the heads of the organizations providing support from outside Israel’s borders. Sharon hardly needed persuasion. “It’s a pity that there are no initiatives like this coming from your friends,” he said sourly, referring to the Mossad.
The first target was Ramzi Nahara, a drug dealer and Israeli intelligence agent who had switched allegiances when Israel withdrew from Lebanon, and who was one of Obeid’s colleagues in the abduction of the Israeli officer. On December 6, 2002, he was traveling with his nephew Elie Issa to their home village of Ain Ebel, in southern Lebanon. At the entrance to the village, a large explosive device camouflaged as a rock blew up as their car passed by. They were both killed.
Next in line was Ali Hussein Salah, registered at the Lebanese Interior Ministry as a driver for the Iranian embassy in Beirut, but actually an operative of Unit 1800. On August 2, 2003, he was in his black BMW luxury sedan with its diplomatic license plates, on his way to work at Unit 1800 headquarters, in the Dahiya neighborhood of Beirut. At 8:32 A.M., a large explosive device that had been concealed in the backseat of the car detonated, ripping the car in two and hurling it fifty feet from the large crater the blast made in the road. “The explosion tore Salah’s body into two, one in each part of the car,” AMAN’s report on the incident stated.
After the death of Salah, Hezbollah no longer concealed his true occupation, and Al-Manar, the movement’s TV station, reported, “Hezbollah mourns the death of one of the greatest mujahideen [holy warriors].”
On July 12, 2004, Ghaleb Awali, who had replaced the slain Salah in Unit 1800, left his home in the Haret Hreik Shiite neighborhood of Beirut. He entered his Mercedes and turned the key in the ignition. Seconds later, the car exploded. He was severely wounded and rushed to the hospital, but pronounced dead on arrival.
A new group, making its first and last appearance in Lebanon, took responsibility for the killing. Calling itself Jund al-Sham (“Soldiers of the Levant”), the Sunni group declared, “We have executed one of the symbols of treachery, the Shiite Ghaleb Awali.”
Hezbollah had no doubt that this was an Israeli disinformation stunt and that Israel was behind the assassination. In his eulogy at the magnificent funeral staged for Awali, Hassan Nasrallah noted that the deceased had belonged to a special unit dedicated to supporting the Palestinians’ struggle. “He is a shahid on our way to Palestine, a shahid for Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the confrontation with the Zionist entity,” Nasrallah declared over Awali’s coffin, draped in the yellow Hezbollah flag. He accused AMAN commander Zeevi-Farkash of being responsible for the killing.
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SHARON WAS APPRECIATIVE OF Zeevi-Farkash’s efforts, but he realized that more was needed to counter the Radical Front, and that radical change within the Mossad was necessary.
Sharon wanted Halevy replaced, and several names, including Mossad veterans and IDF generals, were suggested. But Sharon really had only one person in mind: Meir Dagan, his good friend who had served under him in the army. Dagan was tough and aggressive, exactly the kind of person Sharon needed to fight back against the Radical Front.
Dagan had left the IDF in 1995 and later became the head of the Counter-Terrorism Bureau at the prime minister’s office. In that capacity, he’d set up a clandestine body called Spear, aimed at disrupting the enemy’s financial resources. “I attributed great importance to the economic warfare that had to be an integral part of our campaign against our main adversary,” said Dagan.
Spear’s investigations led Israel to outlaw all organizations that held funds on behalf of Hamas, some of them coming from wealthy Muslims abroad. (Spear also urged the FBI and its European counterparts to do the same in their respective countries, but this was before 9/11, and their warnings fell upon deaf ears.) At one meeting, the contrast in style between Dagan’s and Halevy’s Mossad was apparent. The Mossad presented information indicating that some of the money provided by Iran to Hamas was channeled through a European bank headquartered in Zurich.
“No problem,” said Dagan. “Let’s burn it.”
“Burn what?”
“The bank, of course,” Dagan replied. “We have the address, no?”
The participants explained that it wasn’t a matter of cash, but of electronic transfers through SWIFT, which were backed up elsewhere.
“So what?” Dagan said. “Let’s burn it anyway. The bank’s managers realize that this is not legitimate money. It won’t do any harm.”
Dagan ultimately accepted the counsel of his advisers and did not order the burning of the bank. In general, however, that was the approach Sharon sought: “a Mossad chief with a dagger between his teeth,” as the premier told some of his aides.
This did not mean, however, that he was eager to engage in a large-scale confrontation with the enemy. On the contrary, Dagan continued to argue that Israel should do everything to avoid a general military conflict with all of the states in the region, a conflict that would be impossible to win comprehensively.
“It’s the job of the Israeli defense establishment,” Dagan used to lecture his new subordinates at the Mossad, “to do whatever it can to put off the next war for as long as possible, using covert means to strike at the enemy in a focused manner.”
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DAGAN TOOK OVER THE Mossad in September 2002. Shortly afterward, Sharon put him in charge of covert efforts to stymie Iran’s nuclear program. Since the late 1990s, Iran had poured huge resources into its plan to acquire a nuclear weapon capability as rapidly as possible, buying equipment and expertise wherever it could. Both men saw a nuclear Iran as an existential danger to Israel.
Dagan was told that he would receive whatever he wanted—money, personnel, endless resources—as long as he stopped the ayatollahs from building an atomic bomb. He took it all and got down to work.
“Sharon was right to appoint him,” Weissglass said. “Meir arrived and began to work wonders.”
Dagan moved into his new office in the Mossad’s
main building and hung a picture of his grandfather, kneeling, staring in terror at the German troops around him, minutes before he was murdered. “Look at this photograph,” Dagan would say to Mossad operatives before sending them off on missions. “I’m here—we, the men and women of the Mossad, are here—to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Dagan decided to dismantle the Mossad and reassemble it in a way that suited him. First, he sharply focused the Mossad’s intelligence-gathering objective. Information was not to be collected for its own sake, catalogued, and filed into an impotent library—Dagan wanted intelligence that could be directly put to use against the enemy. He wanted information that led quickly to preemptive and preventive operations, to sabotage, ambushes, targeted killings, and assassinations. The Mossad, under the new director, would be a warrior agency.
“I told Arik [Sharon] that in my opinion, a deep change had to be made in the organization,” Dagan said. “ ‘But you have to decide,’ I warned him, ‘whether you’re ready to pay the price. Journalists will climb all over me and you and the Mossad. It won’t be easy. Are you ready to pay the price?’ He said that he was. Arik knew how to back someone up.”
Dagan frequently met in private with Sharon to get approval for covert operations. A former senior Mossad officer described the mood: “Those were days of hysteria. Dagan would arrive early in the morning, and until nightfall he never stopped yelling at everyone that they weren’t delivering the goods and that they were worthless.”
In Dagan’s view, it was particularly important “to straighten out” the personnel in the Junction division, which was in charge of recruiting and operating agents. This was “the real heart of the Mossad,” in his eyes. “Underlying every operation, however you put it together, there is HUMINT.”
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