Precisely 15 years after Israel destroyed the Syrian nuclear reactor, the IDF released on Tuesday more footage, images, and documents that deal with the strike and the intelligence gathering that made it possible
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The cherry on top was the internal now-declassified intelligence memo from 2002 in which the IDF Intelligence Directorate warns that "Syria is engaged in secret projects that we were previously not aware of." The document also says that the "intelligence does not point to a nuclear program that is currently underway in Syria but it indicates activity in areas that could contribute to the development of such a program and raises the suspicion that it is already in its initial phase."
The IDF hoped that releasing this document would show that its analysts successfully predicted Syria's march to the bomb. But one must wonder: Why did Israel's intelligence fail so miserably at detecting the efforts to build the reactor and only found out about it by happenstance in February 2006, and even then it was not because of the IDF intelligence analysts (which are excellent) but because of a Mossad operation that was carried out without much faith.
The truth of the matter is that IDF intelligence officials at that time put the Syrian nuclear issue on the back burner. Likewise, the Mossad barely allocated any resources or attention to this matter, and its chief at the time Meir Dagan reportedly assessed that there was a very low probability that Syria had a nuclear program (Dagan denied that claim and said this report was nonsense). Only the fact that some determined Mossad intelligence officers did not let go of this issue and challenged Dagan's position made him authorize the operations, most of which ended without much to show for.
Even the operation that ultimately produced the critical intelligence was a success almost by accident. Future Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, then an IDF officer at the Operations Directorate who was called to help with the matter, didn't think the operation would lead to valuable intelligence. When things went sideways and the assets on the ground had to improvise, they then – according to foreign media – managed to hack a computer of a senior official at the Atomic Energy Commission of Syria and extracted the information showing the images of a secret nuclear program that had reached an advanced stage. Had this information not been found, the reactor would have become operational several months later.
The Mossad's role was not even mentioned in the IDF publication on Tuesday, which gave the IDF the entire glory. The IDF should be credited for the action it took once the information had been received, especially the taking out of the reactor. But its attempt at rewriting history as if its analysts were the ones to identify the threat and sound the alarm is surprising at best and just plain laughable at worst. The IDF would be well-advised to avoid such meaningless press releases and instead summon all of its young officers to a special professional training day in which it would do what any intelligence agency has to do: Create a Red Team that would scrutinize its own actions and spot the failures in the process so that the proper lessons can be drawn and no future intelligence lapse of this magnitude gets repeated.
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