In front of the UN General Assembly and the world, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a thick red marker and dragged it across the top of a cartoon bomb. It was a crude but potent image defining the point at which – he says – Iran nuclear development must be stopped. Beyond it, Iran will have enough highly enriched uranium to make The Bomb. “At stake is not just the future of my country, but the future of the world.” BENJAMIN NETANYAHU Prime Minister, Israel
That’s the pointy end of Israel’s public campaign to defuse Iran’s suspected nuclear ambitions. The other has been shaped inside the super-secret walls of Israel’s ruthlessly efficient intelligence agency Mossad and America’s Central Intelligence Agency. Mossad and the CIA are targeting the brains behind Iran’s nuclear community – the scientists driving nuclear research facilities, nuclear enrichment and by association, the quest for atomic weapons.
“They want the bomb, they will get the bomb, they will use the bomb. And mutually assured destruction will not work against them, because they are looking forward to that day”. ‘REZA KHALILI’ – Former CIA Spy
And the spy forces are using two different approaches as well. Elimination and recruitment.
On an icy cold Tehran morning at the beginning of the year a motorcyclist and his pillion passenger pulled up close to a car nosing along in a peak hour snarl and planted a magnetic bomb designed to blow up and destroy the contents and occupants of the vehicle with little or no impact outside. Enrichment scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was the target and he died instantly. The message to Iran’s nuclear scientists: participate in your country’s programs at your peril.
“Cemeteries are full of people who think they are irreplaceable. You kill one scientist eventually someone else will replace him. But in the meantime, you win time, you stall time.” YOSSI MELMAN Israeli intelligence expert
The most notable example of both agencies recruitment programs was a disaster that played out clumsily on the internet. The CIA encouraged middle ranking Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri to defect but in the US he uploaded videos claiming he’d been kidnapped and tortured. The CIA relinquished their prize and eventually he ended up in Iran where a hero’s welcome quickly fizzled as Amiri was marched off to prison charged with treason.
Foreign Correspondent’s Trevor Bormann has secured revealing insights into Israel’s subterranean campaign, interviewing former CIA and Mossad operatives and intelligence experts. He also gets broader perspective from Israelis opposed to action against Iran and others preparing for what they see as inevitable armed conflict.
It’s a revealing insight into one of the hottest, high stakes issues currently playing.