Security Cooperation and Challenges

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Transcript Security Cooperation and Challenges

Dr Schmuel Bar Director of Studies, The Institute for Policy and Strategy, Israel

Dr Uzi Arad Former Chairman, Israeli National Security Council

Sir Richard Dearlove The Master, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge

30 March 2011

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Transcript: Security Cooperation and Challenges

Dr Uzi Arad: Good afternoon, I’ve been invited to come and reflect on the evolution of security cooperation and challenges between Israel and Britain in the past 60 years. But when reflecting on this it occurs to one, that when it comes to defence and security matters, one should look before those 60 years, actually to look at the past 90 years. That is to look at the 30 years that preceded the creation of the state of Israel, during the time of the mandate and the intervening years between the First World War and the Second World War there was a great deal of military and security cooperation and that forged much of what was to follow. And if I were to characterise the nature of that relationship, it is clearly a complex relationship that developed. It is fluctuating over time as we just said and if there is a qualifier that I would employ to characterise that relationship, it is one in which it is a suppressed dimension. Suppressed in all the connotations of this term. That is to say it is being kept for public knowledge, so much of it was secret, like arms supply, not just intelligence, which it should be, but also arms sales to Israel were kept secret over the years, as if this is something to be suppressed. But also it is suppressed in the sense that there is an inhibition from fully developing the potential that there is. That is why it is a study or observation of a suppressed relationship.

Now I said that the roots of that security relationship can be found in the years prior to 1947. What one should know is the fact that often shapes the relationships between nations, certainly from Israel's point of view, are the real vital things that come to their existence. War, or peace, security and things like that. As is well known from the First World War, the Jewish community in Palestine sided with the British and then, during the intervening years the mandate, the British mandate in Israel, did leave a great deal of legacy, which would account for much of Israeli sentiment after that. I am told that in one of those series in Britain, there is a reference to ‘what have the Romans done for us,’ that is presumably reflections that they must have done for you British. But we do know what the British have done for us. They have done a great deal in terms of what they left behind; by way of law, administration, government and many, many things that matter. Now there is a myth about the fact that the British were always pro-Arab and there is the myth of Lawrence of Arabia and the like. But in our mythology, the Israeli, we also remember other British eccentrics such as Orde Wingate who, in many ways had trained some of the early Israeli military leaders to come, meet Dayan, possibly Yigal Allon and others. That was the Second World War. Of course during the Second World War the story was untold in its fullest form that, to this day the extent of collaboration between the Israelis, the Israelis- www.chathamhouse.org.uk 2 Transcript: Security Cooperation and Challenges to-be and the British has been much wider than thought. I once looked in to which agencies during the war were doing what with whom. It turns out that the Special Operations Executive (SOE) was one that was working with the Haganah, and that was why Dayan went on those raids to Vichy, that’s why some of the parachutists were dropped over Eastern Europe, they were all SOE. MI6, Sir Richard, you would like to know worked with Irgun, and managed Irgun out of his station in Istanbul and collecting intelligence on Eastern Europe. It is interesting to see that division of labour, all of them of course cooperated and trained and worked: intelligence, military, covert activities everything, with the various Jewish organizations much against or behind the knowledge of the police authorities of the mandate. Which shows you the ambivalence that prevailed not only between the British agencies, but so there was between the Israeli and the Jewish agencies and so forth. And then there was the large number of Jewish volunteers to the British brigade, to the Jewish brigade that fought the war itself. Although Palestinians were also called upon to volunteer, none had volunteered. It was an all Jewish volunteered force that fought during the war alongside the British.

And then after the war, we had those years in which there was a battle over immigration to Palestine, if we are to talk about contradictory policies or ambivalent policies, we should always remember that Israel had been first to practice it. Because the golden formula that Ben Gurion struck on the dilemma what to do at that time. He leveled what any Israeli would recognise, that said we would ‘fight the British white paper as if there was no war against Germany and we would fight the Germans as if there was no British white paper.’ And that was an exercise in conflicting policies if there is to be one, and it is reiterated ever since.

The result of that was, when the state was formed, there was a huge legacy of experience, work and cooperation with the British that mattered when it came to key personalities. The Ambassador mentioned today that three Israeli Presidents served in the British Army in British uniform. But when I look at the rest of them, the entire leadership of the Israeli Army that fought in 1948-49 and who managed the Israeli, were all trained or served in the British Army. The Foreign Office was staffed by many who were educated here, Abba Eban even comes to mind but he was not the only one. When it comes to the military I can think of more; Laskov, Yadin, Makleff all the major commanders of the Israeli Army had much British in their training. And what is little known, but I will tell you even here, that when you think of the people who led the Mossad in its early years, and in the first twenty years, all of them were influenced by their background with the British. Reuven Shiloah the first,

www.chathamhouse.org.uk 3 Transcript: Security Cooperation and Challenges the late David Kimche having been an anglophile, Nahum Admoni, former head of the Mossad and anglophile and even Efraim Halevy, known to you, I think many, British born. So you have that huge presence of people who worked, served, cooperated on things military with the British over the years. That must have left its imprint on the Israeli attitude, and it was very much against that backdrop that one must look at the evolution of that relationship.

But when you skip over that first period, you see the ambivalence that developed. A primary matter for Israeli-British diplomacy in the sixties and seventies was the question of arms supply. Interestingly enough, now that there is a full embargo, and there has been a full embargo for a number of decades, it is not remembered that in the sixties and seventies Britain supplied Israel with its tanks, with airplanes and with submarines. And that supply was done on a matter of selling, but also there was some leveraging of the influence that came with it. But there was a steady supply of major weapons systems and that was at the core of the military diplomatic cooperation in the sixties. That was stopped in the seventies. Since then there’s been nothing of the kind. What did develop instead were the things that we now recognise as the many streaks in British policy; on the one hand, you have the famous tilt in foreign policy in favour of the Arabs, which had been codified. And I remember coming to this city in 1974, hearing that first hand from James Craig, to whom that doctrine is referred that Britain should always exhibit its higher degree of sensitivity to its interest in the Arab world rather than to Israel. It was therefore a position that was well articulated, and that to this day, I believe to be the dominant feature of the diplomacy. But at that time it was referred to as the Craig doctrine. In terms of other areas of cooperation, the security deepened but it became submerged.

The Cold War dictated that much of the intelligence activity centered on counter-Soviet activities. And when I first came into this town as a representative of the Mossad that was the primary thing that we worked - mostly counter-Soviet activities. Later on it became counter-terrorism. Obviously Britain has always been fighting terrorism of all kinds and clearly supplied its own share. Over the years this has grown in to other areas, counter-proliferation to which my colleagues here will be eluding, in the future, as we go. But by that time Israelis also had some of the more bittering experiences with Britain, because you can say that we’ve tested war and we’ve tested peace. And we can say that each one left a sense of uneasiness. We had four wars that Israel got into: 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973. In 1948 the British were not even sure about Israel’s vitality as a state, under the Arab attack.1956, mind you, was a sad story as far as Israel goes, whether

www.chathamhouse.org.uk 4 Transcript: Security Cooperation and Challenges you like the collusion or not, Britain did not exactly act as it committed itself to. I still remember Nicholas Elliott who was then the MI6 representative in Israel during the Suez, telling me years later his shock when he received the cable from Eden telling him to abort everything that was agreed on. So ’56 left a sense of betrayal. 1967: indifference in the face of Israel being encircled. 1973: embargo and also a sense of indifference to Israel’s plight, not even the supply of warning in advance of what was to be a surprise attack against Israel.

Those wars have left a scar on Israeli psyche and in spite of cooperation that went on years after, the fact is that during those incidences - which a true cooperation is being tested - the experience was not one that we could fall back comfortably on. The question is whether we had another experience, which is perhaps better, on the peace-making side. Well presumably peace has been one activity that Britain had been involved all those years, and it was. But mind you it was not peace-making for the sake of peace. It was peace so as to take a position along the Craig doctrine, that would signal to the Arab countries that Britain is not oblivious to its interests in the Arab world. It was leveraged peace making; in so doing it didn’t help much the peace making effort, but it did help British interests. A person that was a very shrewd observer of that relationship was Moshe Dayan who in the early seventies said the following things: first said that he understands fully why Britain acts the way it does, of course he understood it was realpolitik. Second he had a good feeling towards Britain, he said everybody in Israel has an affection towards the way the British are doing things, that is the legacy I was talking about and Dayan was not ignorant of that. But then he added to say something that is relevant when it comes to peace-making; that at the end of the day, starting from the seventies Britain is a very small part of that process. The US is. Peace-making in the Middle East has predominantly been an American preoccupation, where America was involved. Britain was, at best, a fellow traveller to things American, with a streak of appeasement on its part too. And then when it came to acquiring weapons, Dayan told his British listener, that Israel would probably build its own tanks and added that they might be better. I don’t know whether the Israeli Merkava is any better than the Chieftain that was then being discussed but it clearly annoyed his listener, who noted the following thing. He said about Dayan, that was a crude mixture of bluster and dismissiveness, laced with a degree of condescending charm toward the British, a vintage Dayan. True, vintage Dayan. Dayan was always known for his directness.

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But since then the relationship evolved and, on many, many common [inaudible], we’ve seen the cooperation on intelligence primarily and on counter-proliferation as well as on counter-terrorism deepen and be broadened. Not on peace-making, and not on other matters, but on these ones. The question is if you look now, at the current agenda, do you see the difference? Do you see an emergence of the British policy from its suppressive mode to a more normalised mode? I’m afraid, not yet. If one looks for example at the recently published National Security Strategy, issued by the government, the National Security Council, my counterparts here in November, in there you find very interesting phrases. For example, in the section about responses to terrorism, the clause that talks about the prevention of terrorism, there is this phrase how Britain would be preventing future acts of terrorism. It would be addressing grievances highlighting to others the fact that Britain is actively supporting the Middle East peace process. So the support for Middle East peace process is a way to prevent terror, one wonders and if it is to prevent terror, then clearly it is not peace- making for its own sake, and if it is to prevent terror then it has to be of a certain colouring. But that is the official policy, and it is so phrased twice in other place it says the same thing. Highlighting, it should be demonstrated not only practiced, highlighting the positive work overseas including support of the Middle East peace process, to challenge the violence, the extremist narrative and to address grievances and challenges. This gives you an uneasy feeling on what motivates certain positions on settlements, on issues which do not really contribute to negotiating peace, something that should really be negotiated between us and Palestinians, but certainly are addressed to serve the goals as pronounced here. And whether it is to be suppressed or overt and come to light, there too you get a disquieting feeling from that strategy paper there is reference there to who Britain should be working with addressing those battles. It says the US, Europe, the Commonwealth, the Islamic world; Israel is never mentioned. Not mentioned, not in a word.

So I conclude with this sense, that although the commonalities in the challenges as noticed by the same paper which specifies which other challenges for security in Britain for the future and puts in first place counter- terrorism, second place counter-proliferation, and third place all kind of bizarre other events, I don’t know, tsunami is not there, but practically everything else is. But on the major issues, although Israel is a natural partner, and has been a willing partner, and a contributing partner, and a partner that has the highest regard and I think that is a common bond - for British professionalism in these matters, this is the British real virtue, its professionalism in things military, intelligence, defence and security. This is www.chathamhouse.org.uk 6 Transcript: Security Cooperation and Challenges where Israel might also seek to provide its own input in those areas that cooperation is still suppressed and what is brought to light are the poseur positions on peace-making so to assume are other matters that have nothing to do with security and therefore the relationship as it is now cast remains slightly skewed as it has been for the last 60 years.

Schmuel Bar:

Thank you. Since I am not a politician, I’m not going to go in to all sorts of areas of the reasons that we assume that there should be or shouldn’t be good relations, security relations, between Israel and the UK. The community of interests, some sort of common Western-Judeo Christian tradition et cetera. Democracy.

I would like to, since Uzi already mentioned going back to the pre-state era. One of my hobbies is to go into the state records office every once-in-a while and I found a document there, dealing with the formation of the Jewish brigade. And the War Office was very adamant that we recruit these Jews because they know, they have a high motivation to fight the Nazis, they know languages, they are pre-trained by the Haganah et cetera. The Foreign Office was absolutely against it, and their reasoning was that if Jews fight Nazis on European soil, this will cause anti-Semitism in Europe, we are talking about the 1940’s by the way. This will cause anti-Semitism in Europe and, the document goes on to say the Jews who will survive the extermination camps will not want to settle in Europe, they will want to come to Palestine which will cause demonstration and unrest in Palestine, which may spread to India and endanger British interests in India. This came to Churchill and in typical Churchillian, in the margins of the document he writes, ‘Bollocks.’ And this is, I think the dissonance between leadership and bureaucracy, by the way. Now there’s no doubt that the British tradition and the relationship between Israelis who had been trained in the UK in intelligence and the military had an impact. I have read documents dating back to the 1950s from both archives, and they are amazingly similar in the way they approach issues, the way they approach collection, not only the terminology but we are talking about a methodology of thinking. Over the years it’s been very clear that when Israelis who are trained in Israeli methodology speak with people around the world, we are much more comfortable talking with the British because the methodology of intelligence is very similar. More so even than the methodology of the Americans. I would add that the Singaporeans are very similar because they were also trained.

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But let’s go now to the community of interests. There is something, which I think is in the community of interests, which is stability. Even though there is a tradition that we don’t talk to friends about friends, I think this is a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Because when the issue at stake is the security or the stability of a friendly country then you do and that usually was the excuse to talk about friends. Again, going back to the question of stability, yes there was a dissonance, for example in 1962 King Hussein comes to the British, with whom he was speaking within the Embassy at the time, and says, ‘I have decided that the Palestinian problem is going to be a festering wound for decades that will bring down stability in the region. Therefore I have decided on an initiative to make peace with Israel based on the Palestinian refugees being settled where they are.’ 1962, the British Ambassador was informed of this and he went berserk, and he wrote to the Foreign Office, we must convince the King to abandon this ridiculous idea. This will destabilise Jordan, this will bring Nasser to intervene et cetera, and he goes to the Jordanians and to then to Hazza’ al-Majali who later on was murdered and he said, ‘You realise that this is going to make things even worse?’ And Majali says to him, ‘Sir I don’t think you understand what’s going on, things can’t get any worse.’

Israel at the time had an inkling of what was going on and actually it was, even though this could stabilise it could also bring benefits. And so I think here the status quo attitude towards the Middle East over the years, sometimes was certainly detrimental to possible processes which could have taken place. But we never know in history, ‘if’ is not a word that we should use as historians.

But I want to go on to counter-terrorism. Strangely enough there is definitely a community of interests between Israel and the UK. Neither of us like people blowing up in our streets. Now there maybe countries which do like it, we don’t like it the British don’t like it, and with all due respect to the political correctness in which people in Whitehall say, ‘Well, you know with terrorists: you have to understand the causes and root causes et cetera and the grievances et cetera.’ But when it comes down to saying with all due respect to the grievances, but we’ve got to care about this. I think this was the basis for quite a lot of cooperation, because I think that in the end the two sides, certainly not on the security and the intelligence level did not deal with the grievances and the causes but they had to deal with how to prevent people from blowing up. Definitely there were issues, for example, Israeli law is different to British law. The acceptability of information acquired through intelligence, or through interrogation, is different in the two sets of laws and

www.chathamhouse.org.uk 8 Transcript: Security Cooperation and Challenges this has caused problems, but these were always problems that had to be surmounted. Down deep I think there is a broad community of interests on that.

The other thing where I think there is a broad community of interests is WMD. Now, no matter how much British politicians might say, ‘Well a world free of nuclear weapons and we are work for a free of nuclear weapons, and a Middle East free of nuclear weapons,’ but I think they realise here, more than in America (well in America I’m not sure how much of the reality as we see it is seen in Washington) but here it’s very clear that a nuclear Iran would be a disaster. I think it’s clearer here than it is across the Atlantic. And I think here it is a very strong area of cooperation, and I think the less said about that the better.

Now, another area that I think is important in relations between the two countries, is an area which I think is going to become more and more important in following years. It actually is an area where countries very high in technological infrastructure are inching towards in cooperation. I think there will be no way to deal with these problems except through cooperation; that is cyber-security. We now know how susceptible our societies are to possible cyber attacks. We also know since the cyber attacks are cross-border, they are something that countries desire stability of their technological system, stability of their financial systems and their airports et cetera - they are going to have to cooperate on this. Even though this is an area which, ostensibly, would warrant closing borders and every country doing what it can on its own, eventually I think this is going to become an area for broad cooperation between the technological countries, countries, advanced countries who realise this is one of the areas in which they are most susceptible to attack by terrorists.

To look at it, in going back to, where will British-Israeli relations go in the future, we are now entering and era of instability in the Middle East. I know that this isn’t accepted in this town, and certainly not in Washington, every one sees the thousand flowers of democracy blooming. But I would like to recall in 1989 everybody wanted democracy and not everybody got it, unless you call Russia and some other countries in that area democracies. Some got it, some didn’t. And I would like to recall that when the French peasants stormed the Bastille it took them about 100 years to get democracy, but they had Robespierre and they had the rein of terror and they had Madame Guillotine. They had Napoleon the first, they had Napoleon the third and then they got democracy. So in between now and when the Middle East stabilises, the issue of stability, the issue of terrorism and other threatening elements www.chathamhouse.org.uk 9 Transcript: Security Cooperation and Challenges which will accompany stability, all of these issues are going to become more and more common interests for Israel and the UK and other Western countries. And I think it’s going to be a broad agenda which there’s going to be broad cooperation on. Thank you.

Sir Richard Dearlove: I think I’m going to abandon my notes, and try and reply, to an extent to the previous speakers. I think Uzi’s really given us a masterly summary of the history of the relationship, the common roots, the common professional cultures, and let’s say the growing divergence in areas of policy and I really don’t disagree with anything that he’s said. What I thought I would attempt to do without being indiscreet is to try to give the audience some feel of the very sensitive issue of the security relationship that clearly exists between Israel and UK, which is really the specific topic of this discussion. And the way I would really summarise it is to say that there are clearly some important common security interests but against a background of significant policy diversion. But I think one of the experiences of my career in handling a number of these relationships is that what you see on a day-to-day basis in terms of foreign policy exchanges doesn’t necessarily reflect the reality of what’s going on behind the scenes. I would say though, as Uzi has hinted, though that the relationship with Israel is difficult, professionally difficult. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important, and it’s not as it were, given close attention both professionally and politically. And of course, what that means on a day-to-day basis in the UK is that there are a lot of hot potatoes being tossed in the direction of ministers, so that the professionals can have political cover for whatever they’re doing. And both speakers have hinted at the fact there are both legal and political differences in the way the UK approaches counter-terrorism and the way Israel approaches counter-terrorism. And there is no question that Israel plays by a different set of rules from the rules that we observe in the UK. I’m not going to expand on that, I’ll just have to leave it to your expertise and imagination, but I think you can understand the issue that I’m driving at. I won’t go in to detail, but I’ll just give you an example. I was quite frequently in discussion with Robin Cook, when he was Foreign Secretary, as to what should or shouldn’t be passed to our Israeli colleagues. And there are obvious reasons for that. Because we could never guarantee how the intelligence might or would be used by the state of Israel. That is something I entirely accept. But if you’re the originator of the material you do have strong views, perhaps, as to how it should be used. So that is the framework within which I would, sort of, charaterise the dealings. They are politically sensitive, but nonetheless important. www.chathamhouse.org.uk 10 Transcript: Security Cooperation and Challenges

The areas of overlap have been pretty clearly delineated, and I agree that they are the most important ones. Counter-terrorism is the first, proliferation the second, or counter-proliferation, and I think I agree that also cyber- security is the sort of area in future that is going to play much greater importance, and of course figures very strongly in the recent defense review here in the UK as a new priority to which more resources, in resource scarce times, should be devoted.

Let me say a little bit about the first two of those. On the counter-terrorism side, what you have to bear in mind is the UK’s primary concern is al-Qaeda and the terrorism of radical Islam. It is not the terrorism that has specifically Palestinian characteristics. Now of course that immediately is an artificial division, there are overlaps, there are surprising overlaps, and therefore there is a commonality of interest in the prevention of terrorism. It is not an area about which I really want to say very much because it is so sensitive, but believe you me, it does preoccupy a significant part of the relationship.

But this of course brings me on to counter-proliferation and Iran. And I see still as the most strategically most important issue in the Middle East, even in spite of recent events, because how the international community might cope with a nuclear-armed Iran is a conundrum, a policy conundrum, to which I do not see a very clear answer, either in the US or in the UK, or in Israel. And of course, I think this is just the moment, to tuck in the fact, in the policy areas which I am talking about, the US is the predominant player. The UK is a bit player, but we are an important bit player, particularly in the intelligence and security relationship, because of our reputation for professionalism, particularly because of the fact that this is an area which this country has developed special expertise, and let’s say a very high quality of performance in relation to the amount of resources that it puts in to the intelligence and security community. So, I would just sort of observe that this sort of exchange with Israel in relationship to Iran is immensely important, and it does sort of overflow in to the role of Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are largely - in terms of the way they behave in relation to Israel - Iranian surrogates. And it will be interesting to see as it were, how current events in Egypt and Syria effect Hamas on one hand and Hezbollah on the other.

Which brings me on to say something about current events. And it’s certainly not clear to me where present events might be taking us. For example what is exactly is the medium- to long-term threat from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? I mean I worry greatly about what may or may not happen in a semi-

www.chathamhouse.org.uk 11 Transcript: Security Cooperation and Challenges democratic Egypt, which is trying to change its constitution very fast, at a speed that is greater than it’s possible to create new political organisations. The most, by far the most political movement in Egypt is the Muslim Brotherhood. I for one have absolutely no illusions about what the Muslim Brotherhood is or can be. You know it can be a social organisation, it can be a political organisation, but it is at heart, in my view a terrorist organisation. And I’m happy to dispute that with anyone who disagrees with me. I worry about what might happen in Libya. Anyone who knows anything about Benghazi, will know that Benghazi is rather fundamentalist in character. So what will grow out of this possible regime change that we are witnessing in Libya? I guess I say be careful what you wish for and what the changes may bring. But in spite of all of this, I still think that the most crucial issue in the Middle East is Iran’s behaviour in relation to its weapons aspirations and weapons policy and obviously this is a crucial part of our professional security relationship with the Israelis. And maybe the events in the Middle East generally will spill over into Iran and maybe we will see new political agitation and social disintegration in Iran. But I think one has to be very cautious in making those predictions.

I hope my comments have characterised a little bit about what I feel I can speak about in front of an audience, I very much notice from the notes this is on the record. I don’t think I’m prepared to say a lot more in detail than that, so thank you.

Question one:

I wonder if the panel would like to comment. There is an old phrase, ‘hope for the best, plan for the worst,’ and whilst we all hope that is doesn’t take a hundred years, as Schmuel referred to in terms of the French, that the outcome of the uprising is democracy. What are we doing to make sure everything that, what Richard referred to in terms of inner cause of certain organizations, don’t triumph? And secondly do people think that, the panel, that there is a, I was going to say a sad irony, but I don’t mean a sad irony. Given all of a sudden Europe and Britain’s reassessment of the danger, threat, and opportunity that the near Middle East presents to us - shouldn’t that bring us closer together to Israel? And do you think we that we’ve really taken Israel’s concern about security enough, and isn’t it time we did now given that it’s in our vested interest?

Dr Uzi Arad:

Well, you know, talking about the current situation I would, I am cautioning myself, restraining myself from trying to understand what to my mind is an www.chathamhouse.org.uk 12 Transcript: Security Cooperation and Challenges incredibly complex situation to understand. It is so dynamic. So many of the things that are developing are developing with no precedent that we know of, some of the factors are, again, without precedent. And the pace of change is accelerating. So until such time that one would see such things coming to a certain equilibrium, one doesn’t know when this might end. And to make any predictions whether that is fro good or better is just impossible to know. So one should against that background be extremely cautious from making any sort of prediction but except to act very prudently, very cautiously, hedge against practically everything. And remember that these are years in which things are happening in the Middle East which is not necessarily monolithic in terms of the Middle East, things are happening differently in the Gulf, than they are happening in the Eastern Mediterranean than they are happening in Northern Africa and you have basically to re-examine many of the old premises before making new ones.

But against all that, when I ask myself about priorities, when I ask myself about priorities I think that the emphasis that Sir Richard has placed on Iran remains valid. That is to say even if you combine all the possible permutations about future outlook, good or bad in the Middle East, nothing is as decisive strategically than is the likelihood of Iran coming in to possession of strategic weapons. That, by far, weighs so much more than anything else, good or bad. And that should remain the priority and I’m struck by the fact, that I should say from the talking, gone is Iran. Iran is no longer on anybody’s agenda. You don’t hear it talked about, the distraction that the current events are causing are quite risky. They could divert our attention from what should be the single issue on what one should remain concentrated.

And when talking about dealing with Iran, although Sir Richard was cautious in saying he doesn’t know the answer to. Well one doesn’t know, but at least here we do have precedence, Israel by itself, mind you I didn’t talk about it. Israel has taken twice, pre-emptive strikes against countries suspected of developing nuclear weapons or nuclear capabilities. The first one was Iraq in 1981, was Iraq. And at that time Maggie Thatcher was quite surprised that a country which had a normal nuclear reactor plan should be deprived of that potential. Well attitudes change in Britain too, now I think that things are being looked at differently. Iran is not the only example, one should have another example that one should examine. Libya, now everyone is talking about Libya but nobody knows anything about Libya. But one does know that Libya did experiment with the acquisition of nuclear weapons several times in the past. Gaddhafi tried to purchase them from China, they had a project in Tajura and more recently they bought things from the Pakistanis and thanks to British

www.chathamhouse.org.uk 13 Transcript: Security Cooperation and Challenges and the Americans, but the British being at the forefront that things was stopped. And that shows, there is some room for optimism, when you combine intelligence, good intelligence, with good policy work to follow. One should keep that sense of optimism about the possibility of stopping Iran.

Chair:

Can I ask you, and Schmuel as well, just at this specific point, Sir Richard, this is on Libya, Sir Richard when he was talking about Benghazi, be careful what you wish for. How does the intervention that the UK, France look to you from the Israeli point of view. It is a humanitarian intervention, with humanitarian goals, but in national security terms, is it wise. What are the implications for national security?

Schmuel Bar:

I’ll give a try, I think that what happened here is jumping in to the fray without looking at who the parties were. Basically you have in the opposition people who were in the regime previously for the most part and who jumped the boat when they thought it was falling apart. You have a tribal society, where it’s not a twitter generation of the youth in Tahrir Square. We have something all together different.

The chances that, Gaddhafi will go and then suddenly you will have democracy in Libya or something that will resemble what you would like to see, the chances are very slim. Sir Richard mentioned the terrorist aspect, the fundamentalist, Islamic movements. I go back to the mid-1980s when I started looking at Osama bin Laden in Peshawar and in Afghanistan and then in Sudan and then in Somalia, and then back in Afghanistan. These forces are drawn to places which are non-governed areas, areas where you do not have law and order, where the regime is weak. I think that anybody who says that you are going to have next year, no matter what happens with Gaddhafi and Saif Al-Islam, and even if they do take away his doctorate, anybody who says that you’re going to have a stable Libya in another year, I think is being naive. I think it’s more likely that these forces will see an opportunity to go in there and you are going to have to deal with it. But as long as you don’t have boots on the ground you won’t really be able to deal with it. You’re not going to be dealing with terrorists from the air.

I think this is going to be a problem in other areas as well, because if Yemen disintegrates, Yemen will not turn into a democracy - it will disintegrate. And if Yemen disintegrates then what about Asil and the areas around it, which are basically the same type of tribal influences, and there you have a strong

www.chathamhouse.org.uk 14 Transcript: Security Cooperation and Challenges infrastructure of families who are related to Al-Qaeda and what are you going to do then? So I think that the major challenge which we are going to be facing in the next few years, isn’t how to promote democracy but how to deal with the instability which is breaking out in the region?

Chair:

So your advice to David Cameron two weeks ago, would have been don’t get involved. Leave Gaddhafi to...

Schmuel Bar:

Especially since Libya per se, in other words. I was struck when Hillary Clinton was asked, ‘Will the United States intervene in Syria?’ So the questioner said, ‘What if Bashar al Assad slaughters citizens on the streets of Damascus like his father did in Hamat and Hala?’ ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s not the same thing as Libya.’ ‘Well, why?’ She said, ‘Because with Libya we had an international consensus,’ she didn’t mention that Swiss banks had blocked his bank accounts, and there was a United Nations Security Council Resolution and the Arab League asked us. So now we know that the US and Britain are sub-contractors of the Arab League. But I don’t think that in the long run, that the US and Britain can allow themselves to act on security interests only as sub-contractors of the Arab League.

Question two:

Sir Richard you spoke very interestingly about Robin Cook as Foreign Secretary deciding which intelligence should, and should not, be shared with the Israelis given what the Israelis might then do with the information. Is there not a case for saying that there is actually one definition of the British National Interest which indicates that we should very much be sharing the information with the Israelis, precisely because of what the action they are likely to take in response to it? And that action however robust it might be, is actually in the British national interest in terms of the shared agenda we face when it comes to dealing with extremism and terrorism?

Sir Richard Dearlove:

Well if you had a Liberal Democrat Foreign Secretary I don’t think he would go along with your statement, or the way you’ve posed the question. I mean, I suppose my reply is, you know the British intelligence and security community operates under the control of an elected government and is subject to ministerial clearance on sensitive issues of risk. I mean full-stop really that’s how the system works, and it’s a question of judgement of the people who www.chathamhouse.org.uk 15 Transcript: Security Cooperation and Challenges lead to ensure they have the political cover for the things that they do. And that is quite a mature and sensible way if you, as it were, look at the structure of how to run an intelligence and security community in this rather complicated day and age.

Question three:

Sir Richard, both you and Dr Arad have emphasised the overwhelming importance of tackling Iranian proliferation. You’ve told us and we understand, why you can’t go in to details about what advice you’d give the Prime Minister. But if you were to send a public message to the Prime Minister about how he should tackle Iranian proliferation, what would your advice in that public message be?

Sir Richard Dearlove:

I mean I think that’s pretty straightforward, do everything you can to make sure that…Iran doesn’t become nuclear armed. Well there’s been a recent well-publicised example, I don’t who was responsible, for a cyber attack on, you know Iranian [laughter, Chair: We do know who’s responsible] on the Iranian computers controlling their centrifuges. It’s a good example of a measure which obviously could be taken without legal and political blowback which slows the programme down. You know, I think most policies now that are being followed by Europe, by the United States, probably by Israel, are designed to frustrate the Iranian programme. Whether they can actually stop it, I mean stop it in its tracks, probably you’re talking about a military solution.

I mean there is some reference to the disarmament of Libya, which obviously I was involved in, and a certain amount of that now is in the public domain. But I think it’s generally known, that Libya had acquired most of the kit to start its nuclear weapons programme but hadn’t got very far in terms of assembling it and putting it into operation. All I would say from our knowledge of disarming Libya, and that knowledge was extensive, it would have been very difficult, even with Libya, you’ve seen the state of its military sophistication, to intervene militarily to deprive it of its potential nuclear weapons capability. So what I’m saying is, a country relatively unsophisticated had already taken quite sophisticated measures to disperse the stuff in such a way, it would have been very very complicated, so what worries me about the Iranian programme, is that the Iranians are way, way, way ahead of where the Libyans were, and they’ve had plenty of time to, as it were, protect themselves from military intervention.

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Question four:

How important is Russia’s protection of Iran in terms of its nuclear programme?

Sir Richard Dearlove:

Well I think Russia’s attitude towards Iran is changing, and has changed significantly over the last two or three years. Closer to the West’s view.

Chair:

Just to try and extract something from those questions, just for our Israeli panel members. Do you think that covert action of the kind we’ve seen using stuxnet and sabotaging the supply lines to Iran is going to be sufficient to actually seriously destabilise the programme, or do you think it only really delays matters?

Schmuel Bar:

I can just note that we put this question to a group of 30 experts including former Israeli generals and people who are involved in sort of a brainstorming session on Iran in the latest Herzliya. What is interesting about 80% of them said, that the current efforts are not enough to prevent Iran from reaching a military nuclear capability. They can delay to a certain extent, but they cannot prevent them. And I think more or less a consensus. Of course everybody says, let’s just hope the Iranian people will save us and will overthrow the regime, but you really can’t rely on that.

Chair:

But what is your assumption of when Iran is able to test its nuclear programme?

Schmuel Bar:

I don’t think that we can make that sort of assumptions at the moment. But what I am saying is that, we should not be reaching the point where we are going to have to be surprised. I just want to note there is a very distinct difference between the Israeli and the British or American perception of this threat. And we don’t need wikileaks for this. Let’s imagine that the director in the UK of intelligence comes to the Prime Minister and says, ‘Mr Prime Minister, you’ve got, we’ve got a month away and Iran is going to test a bomb.’ He’ll say, ‘well how sure are you?’ And he’ll say, ‘well 70% sure, 80% sure.’ He’ll say, ‘you were wrong in Iraq, you were, go back and check. And let’s say that you are right and now you are telling me that I have to take www.chathamhouse.org.uk 17 Transcript: Security Cooperation and Challenges action, but what action am I going to take and what is the blowback, the political blowback going to be?’ But if the director of Mossad or military intelligence comes to the Prime Minister of Israel and says, ‘Mr Prime Minister you’ve got two months and we’re 70% sure Iran is going to cross the threshold.’ He’s going to say, ‘I know you intelligence people, you’re always underestimating, you did it in 1973 so you are 70% I’m upping it to 90%. And even if it was 70% what could I tell the Israeli people if I allowed an existential threat to emerge?’ And I think that that’s a crucial difference and we should take that into account.