Israel's Year of Decision

...Israeli Militar y Intelligence (AMAN, in its Hebrew acronym) had learned from a highly placed source in Cairo that Egypt would not go to war until it received from the Soviet Union long-range bombers capable of attacking Israel’s air bases...

...After last year’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the government appointed the Winograd Commission to determine why it failed...

...claim that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003...

...Five months earlier, a relatively junior analyst in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), Roger Merrick, had submitted a memo noting that Sadat’s political options were exhausted and that without a credible U.S...

...At the Washington meeting, the CIA and INR said war in the Middle East was unlikely...

...In what might be taken as a hint at an independent Israeli policy toward Iran, he further said, “I do not think it is our place to make assessments about U.S...

...Egypt at this point had 100,000 men, 1,350 tanks and 2,000 artillery pieces deployed opposite 450 Israeli infantrymen along the so-called Bar-Lev Line, who were backed by fewer than 100 tanks and 44 artillery pieces...

...What had changed was Israel’s now facing it alone...

...Yet another cause for concern is the long-term effect a strike would have on Israel’s relations with Iran...

...Olmert’s political nimbleness was demonstrated at the conference itself too...

...In the coming days, Israel succeeded by a hair in containing the Syrian assault on the Golan and halting the Egyptian advance in Sinai...

...Two days before Yom Kippur, the heads of U.S...

...It is our responsibility to ensure that the correct things are done...

...would permit such an attack...

...Israeli intelligence even had a copy of the Egyptian Army’s plan for crossing the Suez Canal once hostilities broke out...

...It would be years before the trauma of that close call lifted from the Israeli psyche...

...The current animosity toward Israel is an ideological/religious issue pursued by a clerical regime in Tehran opposed to a non-Islamic national presence on what it believes to be Islamic turf...

...Less well-known is that American intelligence, in spite of its spy satellites and its ready access to the Arab world, got the situation wrong too...

...Elite commando units were being deployed to forward bases, and larger stockpiles of ammunition were being prepared than was normal for maneuvers...

...If Iran has no intention of developing nuclear warheads, Israelis asked themselves, why is it going to the trouble of developing long-range rockets capable of carrying them...

...The official reaction here to Washington’s reassessment has been circumspect...

...Iran is certain to respond with missiles, although it is not apparent whether Israel’s cities would be targeted for that would open the way to retaliation against their own cities...

...Barak, meanwhile, expressed reservations about entering into peace talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas...

...As Yom Kippur approached, Cairo staged an elaborate deception operation aimed at convincing Israel that the deployment of the bulk of the Egyptian Army along the Suez Canal was merely a military exercise...

...When Washington broached the idea of a multination peace conference at Annapolis to be followed by bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Olmert asked Livni to head the negotiating team, effectively neutralizing her opposition...

...Israeli military intelligence was informed...

...The Defense Intelligence Agency representative went further, saying the Arab buildup was hardly of a threatening nature, an evaluation that would cost three of the agency’s officials their jobs...

...A number of Israeli intelligence officers saw through the ruse, but the head of Aman and his closest advisers ignored their warnings...

...intelligence agencies met in Washington to analyze the situation...

...Olmert may have been a failure as a war leader, but he demonstrated coolness under fire as a political operator...

...Orchestrating israels moves in this highly sensitive period is the least popular prime minister in its history, who botched his performance as a war leader last year...

...A major question is whether the U.S...

...On Yom Kippur morning, only four hours before the Arab attack, Israel finally began mobilizing its reserves— constituting two-thirds of its Army— on the basis of a tipoff to the Mossad by a high-ranking Egyptian agent...

...Israelis don’t have to be denizens of think tanks to understand that official announcements, however solemn, are not necessarily connected to reality...

...For Israel, it was a near-disaster...

...Even as Egyptian and Syrian gunners on Yom Kippur afternoon were removing the camouflage netting from their artillery and putting shells in the breeches, AMAN was still insisting on the “low probability” of a conflict...

...Washington’s downgrading of the Iranian threat is linked to the trauma of the war in Iraq and the false intelligence that triggered it...

...The Israelis didn’t know that, despairing of Moscow, Sadat had decided to go to war without the arms he was seeking...

...The lesson is to assume the shadows across the border harbor monstrous apparitions that can kill you...

...peace initiative there was a 50-50 chance of war within six months...

...Unlike the mysteries surrounding Iran’s weapons development today, in 1973 Israel knew virtually everything about its enemies’ capacity—or thought it did...

...In agreeing, Barak committed himself to a peace process that, according to the resolution adopted at Annapolis, is to last for at least a year...

...This past April, its interim report declared that Olmert bore “the ultimate responsibility...

...When Ehud Barak was elected Labor Party leader two months later assumed the defense portfolio, he warned that he would pull his party out of the government, toppling it, if Olmert did not resign when the Winograd Commission published its final report...

...Instead of clashing head on with Livni and Barak, he developed an amiable working relationship with both of them...

...Ever since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israelis have been very skeptical of intelligence assessments...

...The Americans, respectful of Israeli intelligence, deferred to this conclusion...

...Haunted by the Lesson of the Yom Kippur War Israel’s Year of Decision By Abraham Rabinovich Jerusalem When Israelis heard Prime Minister Ehud Olmert commit himself at the Annapolis conference to trying to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians within a year, they recognized this as unrealistic...

...Though he might mean well, said Barak, he is too weak to deliver on any concessions he promises...

...Since Washington has downgraded the danger Iran poses, the term now applies to the possibility of an Israeli attack...

...More specifically, it said: “He is responsible for the fact that goals were not clearly or cautiously set...

...The coming year had been dubbed the “year of decision” by journalists, to suggest the possibility of an American attack on Iranian nuclear facilities before President Bush leaves office...

...We simply didn’t feel [the Egyptians] were capable of war,” the head of Mossad, its vaunted intelligence agency, later said...

...Then there is the issue of clandestine attacks Iran may sponsor against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad such as the ones they were allegedly responsible for in Buenos Aires in the 1990s...

...He acted without organized consultation...

...What it did not have was access to the mind of the man who alone would decide on war—Egyptian President Anwar Sadat...

...Despite plentiful evidence to the contrary, Aman continued to insist war was a “low probability,” a judgment that finds an echo in the revised American intelligence assessment regarding Iran...

...Before setting off for the conference, Olmert invited Barak to accompany him...

...Syrian participation cannot be ruled out either...

...More than the Egyptian deception, it was selfdeception that kept Israel from mobilizing its reserves...

...Above all, why is Tehran proceeding as fast as possible to enrich its own uranium, which can be used for either peaceful or military purposes, when it can purchase what it needs for peaceful purposes from Russia or other suppliers...

...If its intentions are innocent, why did President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently replace his tough yet rational principal nuclear negotiator with a stonewaller prepared to brazen it out with the West...

...policy...

...Experts believe Israel’s Air Force, even though operating at maximum range, has the ability to inflict enough damage to set Iran’s nuclear program back several years...

...The final Winograd report is to be issued later this month, but Barak indicated after his return from Annapolis that he would not pull Labor out of the coalition regardless of the findings...

...Olmert’s public support, never high, fell to 5 per cent and his political demise seemed imminent...

...Olmert was able to exploit this threat to obtain Washington’s agreement that he would not discuss them there...

...His adroitness promises to keep him at the center of Middle East affairs for at least the next year, which may yet be a year of decision...

...On the Golan Heights, five Syrian armored divisions faced a depleted Israeli division...

...Because most of their intelligence community was so lulled on the eve of that war by misconceptions, the country was caught flatfooted by a major two-front Arab attack while the bulk of the Army was unmobilized...

...Abraham Rabinovich writes frequently for the New Leader on the Middle East...

...This difference between embarrassment and disaster accounts for their differing takes today on Iran...

...In a psychologically significant move, rare for an Israeli leader, Olmert made a public acknowledgment of Palestinian suffering...

...Constantly speaking about the Iranian threat is not the way to go...

...By war’s end two weeks later, the Israeli Army had fought its way in grueling battles to within artillery range of Damascus’ suburbs and 63 miles of Cairo...

...Upon hearing shortly afterward that American intelligence agencies believed Iran was no longer attempting to develop nuclear arms, they understood that the Iranian threat was in fact unchanged...

...If it decides to engage Tehran in diplomatic talks, as is being intimated an Israeli strike would certainly be ruled out...

...While speaking eloquently of coexistence between Israel and a Palestinian state, and of the need to make “painful concessions,” he did not make any specific concession that would bind Israeli negotiators...

...Defense Minister Ehud Barak publicly accepted the U.S...

...Words do not stop missiles...

...The nuclear reactor at Dimona and Israel’s air bases are considered very likely targets...

...Ehud Olmert has also been the subject of three separate police investigations for alleged corruption in previous ministerial positions...

...For the United States, the intelligence mistake was a profound embarrassment...

...But if Washington gives Israel the green light, Jerusalem will have to make one of the most excruciating decisions any government has ever faced...

...The week prior to Yom Kippur, the CIA station in Cairo picked up indications of unusual military activity...

...But in our opinion,” he cautiously added, “since then it has apparently continued that program...

...But in Israel it is the still haunting lesson of the Yom Kippur War that prevails...

...Another coalition partner, Avigdor Lieberman of the far-Right Yisrael Beitainu Party, threatened to pull out of the government if “core issues” like dividing Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees were mentioned by the Prime Minister at Annapolis...

...Even his political enemies acknowledge that Olmert, 62, has a thick political hide and has shown himself able to ride out his numerous contretemps with surprising aplomb...

...Like the Israeli intelligence officers who cried havoc, his voice did not carry far...

...Hezbollah, it is assumed would join in by launching thousands of missiles from Lebanon, and so would Hamas with the Katyusha stock it has been building up in Gaza...

...He delivered a conciliatory speech that drew applause even from the dour foreign minister of Saudi Arabia...

...Should Israel stage a pre-emptive attack, it could create a national grievance for the Iranians that would endure even if a secular regime is restored...

...If the facts on the ground are not entirely known, the intentions of the Iranian leadership are even murkier...

...Jerusalem does not want to be seen as having pushed Washington toward war with Iran, as the neocons did in the case of Iraq...

...It also wanted Scud missiles that could hit Tel Aviv...

...His latest book, The Yom Kippur War, is now available in paperback...

...The two countries have never had a direct confrontation and actually enjoyed good relations under the Shah— relations Israel hopes to resume down the road with some subsequent secular regime...

...It replied that it was aware of these developments but remained confident there would be no war...

...All of this adds up to great misjudgment...

...Egyptian headquarters had suddenly switched from radio transmissions, which were monitored by the U.S., to landlines, which were not...

...In the wake of the report, Olmert’s resignation was demanded not only by the Knesset opposition but by his own foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, his main contender for the Kadima Party leadership...