Special to WorldTribune.com

WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community is warning
against relying on Israel for information on Iran.

A former senior CIA official has warned that Israel could be skewing
intelligence as part of its campaign for a U.S.-led strike on Iran. The
former official, Ray McGovern, said Israel could be pressuring President
Barack Obama to attack Teheran as part of his presidential campaign.

“The key question is whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak will interpret the presidential campaign rhetoric as an open invitation to provoke hostilities with Iran, in the expectation that President Obama will feel forced to jump in with both feet in support of our ‘ally’ Israel,” McGovern said in an analysis for the U.S. newspaper Baltimore Sun.

McGovern’s remarks appeared to reflect the Obama administration.
On July 31, State Department counter-insurgency coordinator Daniel Benjamin
cited Iran as the preeminent state sponsor of terrorism, but refused to
support Netanyahu’s assertion that Teheran was behind the bombing in
Bulgaria.

“I’m going to leave that to the Bulgarians to characterize,” Benjamin
said.

In contrast, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Israel’s
intelligence on Iran has been “excellent.” He said Netanyahu’s assessment of
Iran as intent on building a nuclear weapon was correct and that Israel
would not need to destroy all of Iran’s assets.

“All the Israelis need to do is delay them [the Iranians],” Rumsfeld
told the U.S. network Fox News. “You don’t need to do something like that
100 percent, like they were able to do in Iraq when they had the bombing
raid and took out the Iraqi nuclear facility, or in Syria, where they took
out the Syrian nuclear facility.”

[On Aug. 7, the Israeli media reported the acquisition of new
intelligence data by Israel and four Western countries — Britain, France, Germany and the United States — on Iran’s nuclear program. The media said the latest information was that Iran had achieved greater progress with its nuclear weapons program than previously assessed in the five countries.]

Congressional sources said McGovern’s analysis was part of a campaign by the
CIA and others in the intelligence community to discredit Israel amid Iran’s
drive toward nuclear weapons. They cited numerous leaks over the last year
from the White House and other parts of the Obama administration that
portrayed Israel as an unreliable ally of Washington.

McGovern, as other former CIA officials, focused his attack on
Netanyahu, accused of trying to exploit the race between Obama and
Republican challenger Mitt Romney. McGovern, who served with the CIA
analysis division and responsible for preparing the daily brief to the
president, said the Israeli campaign was similar to that conducted months
before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The former analyst cited Netanyahu’s charge that Iran was responsible
for the suicide bombing that killed eight Israeli tourists in Bulgaria on
July 18. The Baltimore Sun, said to have been one of several publications
offered McGovern’s piece, has been regarded as a pro-Israeli newspaper
linked to the Democratic Party.

“The likelihood of hostilities with Iran before the presidential
election in November is increasing,” McGovern wrote. “Beware of ‘fixed’
intelligence. Netanyahu’s rhetoric has eerie echoes of the run-up to the
Iraq war.”

On July 31, Netanyahu said he was not planning war against Iran. The
statement was issued as U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in Israel for talks on Iran and Syria, including his ninth meeting with Barak since 2011. As late as January 2012, Panetta asserted that Iran was not trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

“What we are discussing is various contingencies and how we would
respond,” Panetta said. “We don’t talk about specific military plans. We continue to run a number of options in that area, but the discussions I will have in Israel [will be to determine] the threat we are confronting and to share both information and intelligence on it.”

Congress has sought to block the anti-Israel leaks that purportedly stem
from the intelligence community. In mid-July, the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence approved an amendment to the intelligence authorization bill
that required the panel to be notified of any authorized disclosure of
intelligence by any “officer, employee or contractor of the Executive
Branch.”

“Given the pattern of leaks out of the White House, that any prime
minister of Israel would not call the United States and give clear
intentions as to what they plan to do,” Rumsfeld said.

  Benjamin Netanyhau, Daniel Benjamin, Donald Rumsfeld, Iran nuclear weapons program, Leon Panetta, Mitt Romney, Obama intel officials challenge Israeli assessment on Iran, Ray McGovern