June 19, 2015 13 News & Analysis Israel

How Mossad passed on killing Khomeini in 1979

Gareth Smyth few months later, I’d have said it’s tant Islamism. worth the risk,” Alpher said. “I’m “Today if you want to define a not saying the head of Mossad hostile ring, it’s more amorphous: London would have decided differently had first and foremost non-state actors, I offered a different opinion but it’s Hezbollah, Hamas; and now poten- wenty-three years after an incident that stays with me.” tially Daesh [Islamic State] and Jab- he left Mossad, Israel’s hat al-Nusra,” Alpher said. “There’s external intelligence arm, There’s a fluid, a fluid, revolutionary situation all one memory sometimes around us that requires us to be on T revolutionary wakes Yossi Alpher at 4 in our toes, to look at the area as a mo- the morning: What if Mossad had situation all around saic and be ready to jump from one agreed to a request in early 1979 to square to another to exploit our in- kill Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini? In power, the revolutionaries terests. “It’s impossible to answer,” Al- quickly revealed their intentions. “Further afield we find Iran and pher told The Arab Weekly. “But “We saw how they dealt with the Turkey — Iran definitely as a sup- there is a case to be made for the rest of the opposition, all the execu- porter of Hezbollah, while Turkey’s centrality of very charismatic lead- tions, and we got an appreciation of more difficult to define as part of a ers and so for the consequences of their determination,” said Alpher. hostile ring.” Facing the ring, Israel their disappearance.” “They made no bones about their has built links with Azerbaijan, Ro- Alpher relates the incident in plans to export revolution … Bakh- mania, Greece and Cyprus and has his recent book Periphery: Israel’s tiar had apparently understood all expanded trade with Russia, China Search for Middle East Allies. He this but we didn’t know Bakhtiar and India. was summoned, along with Mos- and we certainly didn’t know the sad’s Tehran representative Eliezar clergy. We just didn’t get it.” There is a case to be Shafrir, by Mossad director Yitzhak Alpher’s book surveys a “periph- made for the Hofi and told of a plea to assassinate ery doctrine” developed in 1957-58 centrality of very Khomeini from Shapour Bakhtiar, in the office of prime minister David appointed caretaker prime minister Ben-Gurion through which Israel charismatic leaders by the shah to head off revolution. found regional allies against the Shafrir’s reply was negative: If hostile “Arab core” of states led by This reflects Israel’s strength com- Khomeini, in exile in Paris, returned Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser. pared to the 1950s when the periph- to Iran, he’d be dealt with by the Mossad operatives like Alpher ery doctrine evolved, said Alpher: army and the shah’s security police, courted both countries and ethnic “We have more options. We no long- Savak. Alpher took a deep breath or religious minorities within them. er have our backs to the wall.” and suggested, “We simply don’t These included Ethiopia, Sudan, Alpher is downbeat about Iran. know enough about what Khomeini Morocco and Greece as well as Leb- His book has a chapter on what he stands for and what his chances are anese Maronites, Iraq’s Kurds, the calls “periphery nostalgia”, the be- to justify the risk.” south Sudanese and Berbers. lief in Israel that better relations But the “flagship” was Trident, could return either by the authori- We have more an intelligence alliance with Turkey ties in Tehran changing or being and Iran from the late 1950s. With removed. This has faded since the options. We no Iran, this lasted until the 1979 revo- 1980s when Israel sent arms during Underestimating Khomeini longer have our lution, and with Turkey until Recep the war with Iraq, although Alpher backs to the wall Tayyip Erdogan, then prime min- detects an “equivalent” today with- ister and now president, split with in the Obama administration. nuclear weapon. But what bothers each other in Tel Aviv. “We meet at Underestimating Khomeini was a Israel in 2009. “They’re saying do this nuclear me is that they tend to translate this the swimming pool,” said Alpher. failure not just of Mossad but of the The periphery doctrine waned in deal … and it will empower them to into a tolerance on the ground for “And, yes, we chat.” United States, Britain and Savak it- the 1980s with progress in peace moderate Iranian political life to the Iran’s drive for regional hegemony, self. talks with core Arab states and ap- benefit of everyone, Iranians and in Iraq, in Syria and perhaps in Yem- Gareth Smyth has covered Middle Knowing what he knows now, parently the Palestinians, before non-Iranians,” Alpher said. en.” Eastern affairs for 20 years. what advice would Alpher have of- re-emerging after 2010 in a different “I hope they succeed. I don’t ob- Perhaps it could all have been dif- He was chief correspondent for fered? guise as Israel confronted not hos- ject to having ten years without ferent. Shafrir, Mossad’s former the Financial Times in Tehran in “If the conversation had been a tile Arab states but strains of mili- having to worry about an Iranian man in Tehran, and Alpher live near 2003-07. The other Army of God: Israel’s Orthodox infiltrate military

Ed Blanche worldview, something that could had to accept Eizenkot because the dox and seen by some as his suc- and mid-level managers therefore have dangerous consequences in a generals warned the prime minis- cessor. see this as a model to emulate.” region undergoing potentially cata- ter he faced “an earthquake” with- Security expert Richard Silver- The head of the foreign intel- Beirut clysmic changes. in the army if the popular com- stein says the leadership of Isra- ligence service, the Mossad, is a “This is no longer Israel,” histori- mander of the elite Givati Brigade el’s security agencies “are, almost secular Jew, Tamir Pardo. He’s in ajor-General Gadi Ei- an Benny Morris lamented recent- was not appointed. without exception, Orthodox na- the fifth year of an extended term zenkot, the creator ly. “A profound internal, existential Had Naveh become the first Or- tionalists. In some cases they’ve and is expected to step down in the of the so-called Da- crisis has arrived.” thodox chief of staff, that would been settlers themselves.” next few months, largely because M hiya doctrine, which Left unchecked, the steady Or- have meant two of the three top Amir Oren, an influential col- he doesn’t get along with Netan- espouses indiscrimi- thodox infiltration of the military, security posts in Israel were held umnist and security specialist with yahu. nate attacks on Lebanese civilians rank-and-file as well as the officer by Orthodox Jews, the other be- the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz, ob- The leading candidate to replace aimed at deterring Hezbollah, was corps and especially elite combat ing Yoram Cohen, director of the served: “The situation in Shin Bet him is another Orthodox, Yossi sworn in as chief of the general units, may well ensure that no Is- General Security Service, known as …is worst of all, with three out its Cohen, a 30-year Mossad veteran staff of Israel’s armed forces on raeli political leader will ever be Shin Bet. four senior officials coming from a who once ran spies across the Mid- February 16th. able to return to the Palestinians Political insiders say Cohen got religious background and radiating dle East. He served as national se- That was the good news. In the land conquered in 1967, and the job because of intense pressure sympathy for a worldview that op- curity adviser to Netanyahu, who the run-up to the selection of the that more wars over Palestine lie from the ultra-right religious set- poses diplomatic compromise that appointed him head of Israel’s Na- Jewish state’s top soldier, politi- ahead. tler movement, which refuses to would involve the evacuation of tional Security Council in 2013. cal insiders said that Israeli Prime Naveh became deputy chief of surrender the West Bank. settlements. Much of the army’s officer corps Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a staff in October 2010, the first Or- Cohen’s chief of staff, Roni “Shin Bet’s leaders are recruiting — up to 50% by some estimates — right-wing hardliner, favoured a thodox Jew to reach the military’s Alsheikh, is also fervently Ortho- and promoting in their own image consists of men from hard-line reli- former deputy chief of staff, retired top echelon. He’s identified with gious groups. Major-General Yair Naveh. the political right. Like Netanyahu, Some army units, including key it advocates strong military action combat units in West Bank settle- Much of the against Iran’s nuclear programme, ments, are almost entirely made up army’s officer corps a strategy that has put Netanyahu of religious soldiers. at odds with his military and intel- With young secular Israelis less consists of men from ligence chiefs, as well as the United inclined to do military service, reli- hard-line religious States. gious-nationalist schools are send- groups In 2006, when Naveh was head ing growing numbers of young peo- of the Central Command, which ple into the military. Many answer Naveh, an Orthodox Jew, may covers the occupied West Bank, to extremist rabbis. not have become chief of staff, he was challenged by junior offic- In 2009, the liberal Haaretz daily the commander who determines ers over an assassination order he reported that the army rabbinate the fighting efficiency of Israel’s issued that they said violated Su- under its radical chief, General military — the most powerful in the preme Court guidelines. Avichai Rontzki, a hard-line settler Middle East. But his fellow Ortho- In early 2011, the court ruled that with links to far-right extremists, dox are systematically taking com- Naveh was unfit to lead the army, had effectively taken over the role mand positions throughout the even temporarily, when it was pro- of the military’s Education Corps. military and intelligence services, posed he take over as interim chief The Orthodox right’s influence which since 1948 have largely been of staff after a scandal-plagued in the military has reached such dominated by the secular Labour- contest eliminated the main con- proportions that Israelis fear this leaning kibbutz generation. tenders. deepening national split imperils Indeed, the developments reflect When the next change of com- the Jewish state itself, particularly the extent to which the right wing mand came in November, Netan- if soldiers refuse orders to remove has eclipsed the Labour-led left, yahu, who’s not supposed to be Israeli soldiers of the Jewish Ultra-Orthodox battalion “Netzah settlements to make way for a Pal- changing the face of Israel and its involved in such military matters, Yehuda” hold morning prayers. estinian state.