Barak: Dagan's comments on Iran hurt Israel's ability of deterrence

The defense minister criticized former Mossad cheif Meir Dagan for saying that a military strike on Iran would be a 'stupid thing.'

Defense Minister Ehud Brak criticized on Monday comments made by Israel's ex-Mossad chief, who said a military strike on Iran would be a "stupid thing."

Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan's comments "hurt Israel's ability to deter" Barak said during an interview with Israel Radio.

"Any ability to disperse the ambiguousness surrounding the issue of Iran" hurts Israel's standing against Iran, the defense minister said. Barak said that the military option against Iran must remain on the table so that international efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program are effective.

"There is no decision to attack Iran," Barak clarified. "We don't make decisions beforehand for hypothetical situations. I don't think that anyone would be happy to pull the trigger on a military operation against Iran."

Last month, Dagan made the comments about Iran while speaking in public at a conference of the senior public service organization, held at Hebrew University. This was Dagan's first public appearance since he left the service at the end of 2010.

What is that bet selling for right now in places like intrade? I don’t see Israel going nuclear first, nor Iran doing anything before this September, if even this year. I’d think a conventional strike on Iran’s production facilities would be more likely.

I didn’t get it from this article, but elsewhere (NYT, if memory serves) mention was made that Dagan was, along with someone similar in Netanyahu’s administration, the check on unreflected bellicosity coming from Barak and Netanyahu. This is more than significant; I’m surprised this thread hasn’t had more hits. If the former head of Mossad is now speaking out, now that he’s able to as no longer in an administrative role, this bears consideration, as it’s coming from someone who would both know as well or better than anyone else, and who has presumably demonstrated his ability and reliability in acting for Israel’s continued best interests.

I agree that the attack would be conventional from both sides, in initial attack and subsequent retaliation. Well, outside chance of things getting out of control always exists but it would be very small, I suppose.

Whether one would be for Netanyahu or Dagan, I also thought more people comment on this, but the thread turned out to be "quiet."

Oh well. They both know Israel better than I ever could; I’m just watching from afar.

There had been reports of Iranian submarines in the Mediterranean, though I don’t know how credible they are. That flotilla? I haven’t heard much more, but tensions would peak around then. There are a lot of conditionals in this equation, but Iranian influence is meant to be a growing factor there unless something changes, maybe not with this, but who knows when. There’s the flotilla reprise soon; there’s September’s UN vote; there’s what’s going on with Iranian ally Syria right now.

An Iranian I met in my travels, seemingly a vocal dissident from what he was saying, talked about how Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s initials are used instead of his name in the Iranian press, last name’s initial first in the Persian way, because it comes out to ‘AM’ which is also the Persian word for ‘excrement’. I don’t know if the extent of dissidence to his rule that this reflects makes him more a loose cannon or restricts his movement. We’ll see, I guess. I expect the submarines Germany gave Israel could literally run rings around any Iranian ones anyway.

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