Ex-Mossad chief: Israel should think twice before attacking Iran

Tel Aviv should refrain from attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities unless it has the capacity to completely destroy them, the former head of Israel’s Military Intelligence, Tamir Pardo, said yesterday.

Speaking at a panel at Reichman University’s Institute for Policy and Strategy conference in Herzliya, Pardo warned that a military strike on Iran’s nuclear programme would be far more complicated than the Israeli Air Force’s successful attacks on Iraq and Syria reactors.

“If it is not possible to close this business as we did in Operation Opera [against Iraq’s nuclear program in 1981], then we’d better think twice,” he said.

Speaking at the same panel, ex-Mossad chief Amos Yadlin said for the last decade, Tel Aviv’s policy on Iran’s nuclear programme was decided personally by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu without consultation.

“The Iranian issue was privatised to one person,” said Yadlin, adding that the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six other countries, including the United States, kept the Islamic Republic from making meaningful progress in its nuclear programme.

“The mistake is not in 2015, but in 2018 when they [the United States] left the deal in its good years,” he added.