Taken out of the book “Mossad: battles of the 21st century” by Peter Lukimson
In January, 2011 a new spy scandal erupted in Iran: another ‘Jewish spy plot’ was revealed. The remorseful ‘Mossad agent’ Madjad Djamal-pasha was shown by all state channels telling the story of his ‘recruitment’ by Israel.
He told the press how he and his ‘colleague’ visited Israel in secret, how they were escorted to a Mossad secret base (a large premises halfway from Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv surrounded by a barbwire wall with video surveillance) by Israeli intelligence agents, how he underwent special training there, and finally how he was instructed to kill Iranian top nuclear physicist, Doctor Ali Mukhammadi, vice-President of Teheran University. He added that they were given two motorcycles of Iranian production – Iranian special services say that it were the vehicles that were used in the attempt on Mukhammadi’s life.
Another 9 people were arrested on charges of espionage back then. It is hard to tell, without any additional information apart from Djamal’s confessions, were these people really working for the Mossad, or were they forced to confess under torture. Unlikely and absurd details of Djamal’s interview make one wonder, however, other details point to the real background of his story.
Israel and Iran have been at war for a long time: a covert war, led by spies, politicians, media, etc., and it’s not really important, in a real ‘Israeli spy network’ was uncovered by Iranian special agencies in January, 2011, or was that just another provocation. The confrontation has approached a point where actual shooting war is more than a theoretical possibility.
Each side had its victories and its failures in this ‘cold war’, but as far as the actions of the countries’ special services are concerned, the Mossad was far more successful that its Iranian counterpart. And Iranian nuclear program was on the top of Israeli intelligence’s agenda lately.
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It is worth noticing that Iran’s nuclear program has a long history: it started in the 70s, still under the last Shah, when Israeli-Iranian relations were quite friendly. Two nuclear reactors, capable of working for peaceful and war needs, were constructed with the help of German ‘Siemens’ company. In 1977 Israeli Defence Minister Erez Weitsman made an unofficial offer to the Iranian military: he offered them to purchase surface-to-surface missiles from Israel instead of the US, and even implied that these missiles could be modified to carry nuclear load.
Luckily for Israel, this plan has never been put to action. After the Islam Revolution, Iran turned from Israel’s best friend to its worst enemy in a matter of days. All contacts between the two countries were aborted. The nuclear program along with many other high-tech projects was banished by the revolution’s spiritual leader Ayatollah Khomeini as an ‘anti-Islam’ one.
However, soon the Iranian-Iraqi war followed, and the use of bio- and chemical weapons by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein led to great losses among Iranian troops and great psychological shock among Iranian people. After Khomeini’s death his successor declared that to survive Iran has to create his own weapons of mass destruction – biological, chemical and nuclear – and ‘proved’ that there was nothing ‘anti-Islam’ in such weapons. The next Ayatollah had to complete this task at any cost. A lucky opportunity – the collapse of the USSR – presented itself, and Iran tried to purchase enriched uranium or nuclear warheads from ex-Soviet republics that were in a state of complete chaos or from ex Soviet military. When all these attempts failed, Tehran came in direct contact with Moscow and Peking. As a result of these negotiations Russia agreed to supply necessary materials and deliver technological help for construction of a large-scale nuclear reactor in Bushehr, and China agreed to help with the construction of two smaller reactors.
Both US and Israel were deeply distressed by this outcome. Israeli diplomats tried to convince Russian and Chinese governments to break of their deals with Iran. Two Russian successive presidents couldn’t convince Israel that Bushehr reactor would serve peaceful purposes only, and that Russia doesn’t want another nuclear power to emerge right on its border. Mossad still tried to determine what did Russian diplomats try to hide under their polite smiles and whether Russia was allocating military specialists to Iranian allegedly peaceful project or not.
It turned out that Russia has been pretty honest with Israel all along. However, the endless Bushehr construction was just a ruse to throw Israeli and US intelligence off the trail of real nuclear weapon construction by Iran. In other words, when the US and Israel finally came to trust Moscow on the matter of its cooperation with Tehran, it was too late: the latter was already deep in the process of building its own nuclear bomb.
To be continued
