How successful were Israel's operations against Iran and Hezbollah?

Channel 4

a day ago

We leave the high-rise beach life of Tel Aviv and head out early morning into the countryside. It always seems, in
Israel
, as if everything is being built at pace all around you, and we pass through the orange groves along the motorway for an appointment with a man who, I suppose, was Israel's answer to 'Q' of sorts.
Of course, he wasn't the boss of the Mossad, but was certainly, how can we put it, in a highly influential position. A position which gave him considerable influence in the key issue of how on earth Israel could penetrate physically and politically and strategically, so far and so deep inside the theocratic regime of Iran.
He tells me he's still very good friends with the people he's known inside British intelligence, MI5 and 6.
He's recently been at a conference in London talking about the importance of online espionage and to some degree, let's face it, sabotage. I asked him if this was all about Pegasus, the notorious spyware perfected in some measure by the Mossad.
'Of course, among other matters,' he tells me.
We talk about
Lebanon
before the cameras are rolling, and he's relaxed, twinkly, easily moved to laughter.
'It's the psychology you see, ' he says, tapping his forehead with an index finger to represent psychological stress, 'the psychological effect.'
He's just baked some pastries in the oven. As he pulls out the baking tray, he describes the operation which, it is fair to say, has left the world bedazzled in a previous phase of the three wars Israel has now fought since the
October attacks
.
Or at least three fronts of the same war, perhaps. In Lebanon, the offensive against
Hezbollah
, and particularly of concern to him, the operation which involved scores of
pager devices
primed to detonate, killing or maiming Hezbollah militias.
He wasn't directly involved in that operation of course, but I was struck by what he gleaned from it.
'It's the psychology you see, ' he says, tapping his forehead with an index finger to represent psychological stress, 'the psychological effect.'
He goes on: 'Our intelligence on the ground after that was eye opening. It was the fear that it caused, the sense that no person, no place, was safe. The feeling caused of there being nowhere to go. If it is the pagers detonating this week, what next week? And that for our side was a huge payoff. I think it's fair to say more than we expected.'
So we talk about more immediate affairs.
I ask what the recent 12-day war against
Iran
tells us about the penetration the Mossad had inside Iran.
He laughs again. 'So Alex, you want me to tell you? You want me to tell you about the operation. You need names, locations?'
And he's laughing, of course, first off, because his knowledge is now a little bit removed, he is out of the service and into the world of interviews, lectures, academia and conferences.
'We were working in Iran,' he says, 'in fertile territory. Of course, in this society, there are many different sects, large percentages of the population completely disaffected from the regime and, shall we say, deeply unsympathetic to it.
'It's fair to say this was good ground, but this is meticulous work, and this is slow work, maybe unrewarding by its nature, over many, many years. But we knew, as is obvious, there are an awful lot of people who were willing to work with us, and not just us, I may say, towards the overthrow of the regime.'
'But,' I say, 'this isn't about regime change. This was about stopping Iran obtaining a nuclear bomb, right?'
'Of course,' he replies, 'but once these operations start, the end point is never fully decided, never fully clear and matters can, shall we say, gain their own momentum.'
'There are an awful lot of people who were willing to work with us, and not just us, I may say, towards the overthrow of the regime.'
The next day, and a similar rendezvous with a senior figure retired now from the Israeli army.
We talk about how Iran suddenly seems to lack so many friends. How Hezbollah has been severely weakened in Lebanon, so too Hamas over the grinding 600-plus days of warfare in Gaza. Of how Tehran's ally Bashar Al Assad in Syria is no more.
And more widely, what of Moscow? What of Beijing? What have they given to support the Iranian regime in its hour, indeed in its 12 days, of need?
He is up front. 'I tell you,' he says, 'Iran achieving a nuclear weapon is not what the Russians want. I have long experience of working with the Russians in the intelligence field. It's my view that, quite simply, Putin doesn't like Muslims.'
'Really?'
'I tell you, it's that simple at a certain level, he doesn't want to see any Islamic nation or any more Islamic nations join the nuclear weapon club. I know this from direct experience.'
And then our third rendezvous in recent days has been with an equally curious figure.
A man with a long history of running the Israeli army intelligence wing, with particular focus on Iran.
Asaf Cohen, once a colonel, now strictly civilian, doesn't fit the mould in many ways. He's not been afraid in recent weeks and months to take issue with Israel's oft-repeated claim that Iranian missiles are targeted at civilian areas.
He says, on the basis of long experience at a clandestine level with Iran, that the regime there has been genuinely trying to hit military targets in Israel. It's just that the hardware, the missiles themselves, are simply not particularly accurate, delivered as they are, over long distance.
He says it's astonishing that for all their wish to annihilate Israel, the Iranians made fundamental strategic mistakes, as he sees it.
'How effective these 12 days of war have been lies somewhere, I am sure, in the middle of the claims and counterclaims being made by Tehran, Jerusalem and Washington.'
– Asaf Cohen
For instance, they decided not to upgrade and update their air force. They had no strong aerial capability at all, in fact, relying on often outdated and scarcely serviceable aircraft.
'They could have bought new, updated equipment off the shelf from the Russians. You would think but they simply didn't do it. It is baffling to me.'
But he also openly accuses both sides in this war of blatant propaganda, and by that he means not just Iran trying to save face, but the US and indeed Israel as well.
He says all sides are trying to prepare a narrative for this war, as all sides, of course, do in every war. It is absolutely a propaganda issue as much as a military issue. This is the essence of war. You can't argue with that, of course.
'So where does the truth lie in this current row? For instance, have the US strikes in Fordow really obliterated that nuclear site?' I ask.
Obliteration is the term that Team Trump uses over and over and over again. It is a mantra, a badge.
'Well, ' he says, 'the obvious thing is, it's too early to know and just as it's virtually impossible to win any war from the air, it's impossible to assess accurately battle damage from satellite photography. You have to get people in there. You have to get people on the ground.'
'Well, given Israel's penetration of of presumably they can do that?
He laughs. 'I couldn't possibly comment, but I would say this, the truth about what has happened and how effective these 12 days of war have been lies somewhere, I am sure, in the middle of the claims and counterclaims being made by Tehran, Jerusalem and Washington. The emerging truth will indeed come out, even from Iran, but that process will take many months.'
In his view, the pathway to talks and negotiations with the Americans over a nuclear future in Iran for peaceful energy is now strangely reinvigorated. He's optimistic.
But as ever that caveat that you hear so often in Israel.
'Of course,' he says, 'I firmly believe that, with or without negotiations, Iran will rebuild, replenish, it will go back to proceeding towards a weapon. The enrichment from 60% to 90% is relatively easy to do. They still have their 400 kilograms of enriched uranium, maybe less, maybe some has been lost. We don't know, but for sure, they will have some and they have the know-how, despite people being eliminated from the process, to pursue this knowledge forward, it will happen.'
'So what does that mean?' I ask.
'Well, it's obvious, if the talks fail, we will have to go back again, with or without the Americans, and do this again.'
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