The former Israeli Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, revealed new details to his biographers about how close Israel came to striking Iran’s military facilities in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and why it did not despite his and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to do so, according to interview excerpts aired on Israeli television on Friday night.
Barak, who also previously served as Israel’s Prime Minister, said that he and Netanyahu were ready to attack Iran each year but that in 2010, the military chief of staff said Israel lacked the “operational capability”; in 2011, two key ministers waffled at the last minute; and in 2012, the timing did not work out because of a joint U.S.-Israel military exercise and visit by the American Defence Secretary. He noted that the two Ministers who balked in 2011, Moshe Yaalon and Yuval Steinitz, “are the most militant about attacking Iran” today.
The interview excerpts were aired by Israel’s Channel 2, which stressed that Barak had sought to prevent them from being broadcast, but that they had been approved by Israel’s military censor. Reached late Friday by telephone, Barak confirmed that the recordings were authentic but said he had provided the information on background to the authors, Ilan Kfir and Danny Dor, whose book, Barak: The Wars of My Life , came out this week in Hebrew.
“It was not supposed to be published,” Barak said. “I don’t want to comment on it. I tried to convince them not to broadcast it. But it’s true, it’s my voice. I don’t deny my voice, it can be recognised.”
Barak was known at the time to be a prime advocate for a unilateral Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear plants, something Washington strongly opposed.
In the weeks since the Obama administration and five other world powers signed a deal with Iran to restrict its nuclear program, Netanyahu, Yaalon — now Defenc Minister — and Steinitz have all stressed that Israel retains a military option to stop Iran from making a bomb.
But most Israeli experts say a strike would be all but impossible now because of the continuing diplomatic process, and likely far more technically challenging than when it was most seriously considered, in 2012.
In the interviews broadcast on Friday, Barak said “we’d planned to do it” that year. He recalled “demanding” of Leon E. Panetta, then the Secretary of Defense, to postpone the joint military exercise, and succeeding, but still being unable to find the right moment.
The interviews also confirmed a longstanding sense that Israel’s security chiefs held back the political leadership, particularly in 2010. — New York Times News Service
( Jonathan Rosen contributed reporting )
