Part 2 - Inside Mossad’s Shadow War with Iran (INSIDE Call me Back sneak peek)

Hi, it's Dan. This is a sneak peek from the members only edition of our show Inside Call Me Back. I hope you enjoyed this segment and if you want to get the full episode and support our mission at ARK Media, please become an Inside Call Me Back member by following the link in the description or by going to ARKMedia.org. That's ARKMedia.org. And to all our insiders, thank you. It's your support that keeps the lights on at ARKMedia. You are listening to an ARKMedia podcast. In early 2008, a senior official from MI6, so his Majesty's Foreign Intelligence Agency, came to Israel and told the Mossad military intelligence a secret that only few people in the world knew. He said, "We have a human source, an agent, a spy deep inside the highest strengths of the Iranian nuclear project." And that spy revealed to us something that all other measures of intelligence all fail to reveal. And that is that the Iranians are building a new secret enrichment facility in a place called Fordou, not far away from the Holy City of Kham, underneath the mountain, four thousands of centrifuges for the secret enrichment up to a military degree that could be used for a bump. That was a shock. And the name of this spy was Ali Rizhak Barri. Welcome to the Inside Edition of the Kham, we pull back the curtain and have the conversations we typically have after the cameras stop rolling. Thank you for subscribing to the show and supporting the Kham, podcast and everything we do here at ARK. And also welcome to those of you who have recently joined us. Now, my guest today for the second part of this series Inside Mossad's Shadow War with Iran is Ronan Bergman. Ronan, welcome back to Inside Kham, back. Thank you, pleasure being here. We would have caved earlier Ronan, but I know there are some challenges recording podcasts these days when you have to constantly run to a shelter while you're trying to record a podcast. And when you are a busy journalist and analyst covering all matters in the intelligence community while Israel is oh by the way in the middle of a very intelligence intensive war against Iran. Yes indeed. The house I'm speaking from is it Ramata Sharoon? Yeah, I've been there. I've met with you there. And it is exactly in the midway between Mossad headquarters and eight to 100, the Israeli and the Say Headquarters. Right. So like the two most popular sites for the Iranian or the Hizbala Khutti bombs, the missiles. Yeah. So we feel the action of course in what I need to cover, but also very personally, sometimes every hour in the of silence and the let's to go to the same room. I remember the place well. Okay, so I want to jump right back into this conversation. We've received an overwhelming response from our audience from the first episode in this series, which was was excellent. And people were really just sending us messages and commenting saying there, we left a real cliffhanger that they injured their seats and they can't wait for the next episode. So I just want to quickly update where we were last week. We told the story of Mayor DeGun, the former head of the Mossad and his sabotage strategy against Iran's nuclear program, which ultimately proved to be effective at a tactical level, but failed strategically to end Iran's nuclear program. And we ended part one as tensions between the US and Israel were rising. And as the Bush administration began to suspect that Israel was planning to strike Iran on its own. So let's recap, Ronan, the American approach towards an Israeli strike. There were two telling moments, according to what you shared with us last week, one with President Bush in 2008. And then there's one with President Obama in December of 2011. So can you just briefly remind us of those two exchanges? So maybe two moments with President Bush. The first one is where we left that last time that's in May of 2008 when President Bush come to Israel for the anniversary of Israel. Sixtyth anniversary. Sixtyth anniversary. The day of independence. And a few months after he was already in Israel. Right. So first he comes in May of 2008, allegedly for the day of independence. But these renails believe that there is something else. And indeed, after the dinner that the Prime Minister always is holding for President Bush at his house, the three of the minister of defense, the other baroque prime minister, all that and President Bush are going to the study of the Prime Minister and they have scorch and cigars. And then a good baroque start speaking with the President about the wish list of Israeli military procurement in America that not all was authorized by the President. And he said, we are really looking to buy these V22. These are like choppers that can function as airplanes. And in a certain point, Bush is getting a little bit unpatient and says that the minister, Mr. Minister, I was a pilot. I know what you want this for. You want this in order for me able to have a strike in Iran. And I am not going to give that to you. I said no and no is a no. And then he turns to Prime Minister Al-Mert and says, listen, this guy pointing at baroque scares the shit out of me. The Americans, I think, were too concerned. But it does reflect some kind of contradiction between the two administrations that when the US feels they have time and this is far from being the last resort, the last red line before attacking Israel failed that they are on the verge of losing the control over the Iranian nuclear project. And just to shut a little more light on the Israeli concerns in the previous visit of the President to Israel when they meet in the office, Prime Minister Al-Mert asks all the aids to leave and let them be alone, the Prime Minister and the President. And then he pulls out a tape recorder and he plays an audio tape. And he gives the President a transcript and a translation of this transcript and says, look, what you hear now is the voice of a person called Professor Mouxsen Fakhrizadeh. He is the Iranian Dr. Strangelove. He is the brain behind the project. And what he is saying here in that recording is that they are planning to manufacture nuclear bomb, maybe 10 at the first layer, but many more others. So he's just, this is the smoking gun. He's talking very clearly on what they are planning. And Mr. President, please take all of the anti-recording and the transcript, give it to your analyst and the CIA and ask them what they think about them. And Israel is worth concern. And then 2011 just remind us again, refresh the Obama-Ehud-Barak moment. So December 2011, the President Obama and the Ministry of Defense, Ehud-Barak, are meeting in some conference in DC. And the President of the United States is trying to convince Ehud-Barak not to strike and said, listen, we have your back. We will make sure and we have the relevant, our moment, the relevant equipment, the relevant bombs to make sure that Iran will never become a nuclear military state. And then Ehud-Barak answers, he says, I believe you Mr. President, I believe you that what you say is totally sincere and that you feel obliged to fulfill your promise. But I also know that when time comes, you will follow American interests and not necessarily Israeli interests at that time. And this is a risk I cannot take basically hinting that Israel needs to strike now, now meaning back then in 2011, before the Iranian nuclear sites are becoming immune to the Israeli bombs. So there was disagreement between the US and Israeli sides. But unlike today where there's really just a very wide-ranging virtual consensus among the Israeli security establishment about what Israel should do here, back at this time that you're describing, it wasn't just tension and disagreement between the US and Israel, there was also tension and disagreement within the Israeli security establishment. The heads of Israel's security establishment, some of them were opposing an Israeli attack with it without the United States. And this opposition was shaped in part by the outcome of the 2006 Lebanon war. So tell me more about that. The 2006 Lebanon war between Israel between the idea for Hizbala was to an extent a traumatic experience for Israel defense leaders and defense forces. Minister of Defense Amir Peretz was basically fired or replaced by Ehud Barak, the new old leader of the Labour Party. Chief of Staff Halutz was replaced by a new chief of staff that was not stained by the, I would say, non-victory of debt confrontation. The chief of Mossad, Mayor Dagan was already all in in what we discussed last time the sabotage strategy. Yeah, but Ehud Barak did not have a lot of faith in the Ghan's strategy. To an extent later, he was even proven right. Barak gave the example of the 1981 strike against the Iraqi nuclear site, Tammuz-o-Sirak, as an example of a sabotage strategy that didn't work when Iraq was trying to assemble a nuclear bomb, Mossad was launched for all kinds of secret operations, killing the scientists, poisoning some of them, exploding the shipments from France. And at a certain point in 1980, the chief of Mossad, then, someone called General Khoffee came to Prime Minister Menachembegin and said, "Prem minister, we have done everything we could, we have delayed the project significantly, but now they learn the lesson, they are far more sensitive to our possible operation, they have more gods, they have more security, it's up to you from here, Prime Minister, either to go for an aerial overt strike with all the caveats and all the risks or just accept them, but we are done." And Eud Barak making that equivalent, he said Mosad did marvelous things on the secret sabotage campaign, but it has a reduced benefit, so while they can gain less, the Iranians are getting more advanced and Barak said, "Soon it's just going to be too late." And can you just talk a little more about the relationship between Barak and Mayor Dagan? I think that to put this in a very simple term, they didn't like each other. They hated each other, it's more like it. Yeah, but there's also history and people are people, it's not just about their debate on how to handle the Iranian nuclear project. Barak is the most decorated soldier in the history of the Israeli armed forces, the one officer that is most identified with Sayyarat Madkal, that's highly leech reconnaissance unit, the one that was behind the antebrate and many others. It's the most elite special operations force in Israel. It's like trying to compare to the Delta Force. There's like the Kremlin, the Kremlin that gave birth to also many leaders of the Israeli science and the political world, so Benjamin Netanyahu and Afthali Bennett and Eud Barak and many others all started there as officers in that unit. Now, Dagan, who came as the son of Holocaust survivors that lost everything in the war, Dagan wanted to be part of that unit, but he did not finish the training. The fact that he was not able to be more sabra than the sabra, the hero of the country, and the fact that he was not admitted to the unit that left a stain, that sort of led him in many of his senior jobs, including in the Mossad, had a quite a bitter confrontation with anyone who came from that unit and coincidentally, the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Defense, were both veterans of the unit that he hated so much. And maybe I have an audio I can share with you from a conversation I had with Dagan back in 2013. He died in 2016, where he says. "Beebee" so Benjamin Netanyahu has a certain quality that is similar to Eud Barak. Both of them think they are geniuses and the world does not understand them. In this debate he says, the entire security establishment actually did not accept their position, says, "I have known many Prime Minister. None of them were pure or holy, and then I answered "Cloyanyahu was in Fela." Otherwise, he wouldn't be become a Prime Minister. The gun replies, "Right, but when they reached the point where personal interests touched the national interest, the national interest always prevailed." "I cannot say that about Netanyahu anywhere." So, running that is revealing of the gun's tense relationship with both Prime Minister Netanyahu and Barak, but there was also a very complicated relationship between Netanyahu and Barak, which is relevant to this chapter of the Iran story. So, tell me about the history between Netanyahu and Barak. So, both of them also go back to say, "Eud Barak was the commander. Netanyahu was one of his soldiers. There's a famous photo of both of them after risking the passengers from the Sabena flight that was hired by terrorists in 1972. It was Gouron Airport, dressed as a maintenance guy for the airplane." Barak was the one that went to speak with Yoni Netanyahu's spouse, Benjamin brother, when he was killed, and he came to give the tragic news. And so, they were connected, I think, in a good way. And when Netanyahu was appointed Prime Minister in 2009, he did something that is very, I would say, unusual for Netanyahu, and he took something from Prime Minister Olmert. He just offered Eud Barak to continue to be the Minister of Defence. I think that this was a vote of confidence and trust, and also the need of Netanyahu to have someone of the security establishment around someone with experience. And for a very long time, Netanyahu trust Barak to hold the security establishment portfolio. But it's even more complicated than that because Netanyahu served as Prime Minister from 1996 to 1999. His premiership was cut short, this first tour has been Prime Minister, because he lost an election to Eud Barak. And then BB comes back to power, gets elected, about close to a decade later. And to your point, the first thing he does, or one of the first things he does when he forms a government, is he brings this man into his government to service the Defence Minister, who had defeated him a decade ago, in order to do what you're explaining, to accomplish what you're explaining, which is to have a senior security establishment official, even if he's not from the same party, even if he's been a political rival in the past, to serve at the center of his government. So I think that Netanyahu realized that at that point Barak is no longer a competitor for the Prime Minister, or maybe at that time he was less concerned for any kind of political competition, and was more concerned to have someone that he believed to be the right guy sitting in the seat of the Minister of Defence. But the bottom line remained the same. These two politicians worked closely together for most of the next 5, 5 and a half years, where Barak is taking upon itself the preparation for a possible aerial overt strike on the Iranian nuclear project. Okay, so in 2007, Barak is Defence Minister, not yet of the new Netanyahu government, but obviously it's a position he continued in as you're saying, because he continued that position from the Omrite government into Netanyahu government, but he ordered the development of an attack plan on the Natan's facility. It was his plan B to DeGon's sabotage strategy, which is we discussed earlier. Barak was very skeptical of the sabotage strategy, and he wanted an attack plan, and the plan was being developed. And in 2008, everything changed in terms of Barak's development of the plan, when the UK's MI6 enters the stage. Yeah, so one of the first things that they heard Barak did when he came to Minister of Defence was to renew thoughts and plan that were not adopted by Prime Minister Sharon. We spoke about this last time, when the secret enrichment facility in Natan was discovered, and that was put aside when Barak came to the Ministry of Defence, he said, we should plan and seek for all different kind of solution, because it's far away, because it's fortified, because some of it is underground, because there's air defenses. We should start planning seriously for the possibility that the sabotage campaign fails, and we would need to resort to an aerial strike. Maybe they even start to think about the ground strike. But the whole thing was based on the assumption that Israeli intelligence and American intelligence working together very closely, they know everything. They know what the Iran is up to. They know where centrifuges, they know what is the stream of products. Basically, they understand what the Iran is up to. And then in early 2008, it all changed. When a senior official from MI6, his Majesty's Foreign Intelligence Agency, came to Israel and told the Mossad military intelligence a secret that only few people in the world knew. He said, we have a human source. We cultivated an agent, a spy deep inside the highest ranks of the Iranian nuclear project. And that spy revealed to us something that all other measures of intelligence, syringes, cyber, surveillance, satellite, all fail to reveal. And that is that the Iranians are building a new secret enrichment facility in a place called Fordou, not far away from the Holy City of Qom, underneath the mountain for thousands of centrifuges for the secret enrichment up to a military degree that could be used for a bump. That was a shock. And the name of the spy was Ali Rizza Qubari. Can you tell us a little bit about Akbar's story, his background? Who is he? So he comes from a very strict religious background. The people knowing him, later to speak with my colleague from the New York Times, Farnas Fasichyan, myself, through her, they said that he had a stain here in the front part of their forehead. Yeah, like a dent because this is a sign of people who religiously, strictly praying five times a day. And from the touching the carpet, it creates such a stain. So it's just it's like a symbolic barking, all-rable in Iran for someone who's very, very religious. So that person, he was a senior IRGC revolutionary god commander that rose to the rank the deputy defense minister of Iran. He was very, very close with two people. One is Muchsen Fakhrizadeh, the chief nuclear scientist, and the other one is the National Security Advisor of Iran, Ali Shamakhane, two very, very powerful people inside the Iranian defense establishment. Now, when the international community started to suspect Iran, that Iran is not just having some kind of a peaceful, reserved nuclear project, he was sent to foreign embassies to explain that Iran is not about nuclear military project. This is all peaceful. And while doing that, he met with the British ambassador to Tehran, and the British ambassador presumably understood that this is someone that they can turn. He got him into a contact with the MI6, and these people very slowly, very gradually throughout three years were able at the end of that process to turn him, to making him into an asset, to convince him to spy, and make him, I would say maybe the most important spy that the West was running inside that project later removed to London. And then in 2009, President Obama makes the public announcement and reveal to the world the existence of Fordu. We are here to announce that yesterday in Vienna, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France presented detailed evidence to the IAEA, demonstrating that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near KOM for several years. So the Iranian regime responds how to that announcement by Obama. So they denied publicly, but domestically they were looking for the traitor. They understood that they have a leak. They arrest few people, quite a lot, including Al-Irisah. They interrogated him, but he convinced him he has nothing to do with it, and they released him. Then in 2010, he moved to London with his family for what he distressed, his hard treatment that can be done only in London. But then he rotates, he goes to Iran from time to time freely with no suspicion until 2019 when Iran gets a tip from Russian intelligence that it was Al-Irisah Akbar who gave the information to MI6 back then about Fordu and about many, many other things. National Security advised the Al-Ishamahani calls Al-Iakbari in London and says, "Listen, but I have something about national security that only you can solve." And Al-Irisah travels to Iran. He thinks that he can again bring good information, but instead he is taken into custody horribly, horribly tortured and was forced to turn against his British handlers and using the codes to brief them with false information. Until at the certain point they realized that he was caught, that this is just a campaign of lies. He sentenced to death and in 2023 he is executed by hanging. He is buried in an unmarked spot in very simple cemeteries of Tehran. The authorities, they let his family have some kind of a memorial meeting. So the family comes to this memorial meeting. They wait for people to come. He was very well known and highly appreciated, but nobody comes. Okay. So Akbar's story ends tragically as you described in 2023, but I do want to run and wind the tape back to 2008 when MI6 tells the Israelis about Akbar's report on Fordu. How does MI6's transmission of Akbar's findings or knowledge intelligence? How does this change the Israelis thinking? So everybody that were in position at that time, Barack, the Ministry of Defense, Chiefs of the Intelligence, the military, they all recall the same kind of feeling, which is you know, like a slap in the face, like real earthquakely shuttering of their confidence. Like if they didn't know about that, and this is a massive facility project digging the facility, bringing the equipment, they didn't know anything about that. So what else they don't know? And then I think that Barack is the Chief of the Security Establishment. He concluded that at that point an air strike by itself on all the main facilities, especially on Fordu because it's so deeply underground might not be effective because the underground tunnels were too complicated, were too complex and too deep because visible targets above ground might not connected to the bunker below. So the shafts and the ventilating pipes. And all of that led to a conclusion that Israel now needs not just to prepare to strike on the known sites before. So the two sites, Natanz and Acefahan. But because the third site is so deeply underground, they might need to involve ground troops, command arrays in order to ensure the destruction of the site. That's it for our sneak peek today. If you want to catch the full episode, please subscribe to Inside Call Me Back by following the link in the description or by going to arcmedia.org. That's ARKmedia.org. Your support is what allows us to do what we do here at ARK Media. I hope to see you there. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Juan Benatar. Arcmedia's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aready. Our production manager is Brittany Cohn. Our community manager is Ava Weiner. Sounded video editing by Liquid Audio. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Seenor.