TEL AVIV Ñ Israel's failure to accurately assess Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction program has damaged the credibility of the intelligence
community, a prominent think tank has concluded.
The damage could diminish Israel's effort to persuade the international
community that Iran intends to develop nuclear weapons.
A new report said Israeli intelligence was as much responsible for the
faulty assessment on Iraqi WMD program as other Western intelligence
services. The report by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies said
exaggerated Israeli assessments of Iraqi missile and WMD capability
contributed to the mistakes of the British and U.S. intelligence
communities.
Authored by Shlomo Brom, a senior researcher and former head of Israeli
Air Force intelligence, the report said Israel sustained considerable
damage in its assessment that Iraq was capable of striking the Jewish state
with medium-range missiles and biological or chemical warheads. The damage
could affect Israeli intelligence liasion with other Western services as
well as the nation's deterrence.
"Israel's potential enemies might conclude in retrospect that if Israel
was so frightened by what was apparently such a negligible threat, it
clearly has good reason to be," the report said.
The report also cited the financial costs of Israeli preparations
against an Iraqi WMD attack as well as the psychological toll on the
population. Other damage asserted by the report include the erosion of trust
by Israelis in their leadership as well as that by foreign countries in the
Jewish state.
"Foreign intelligence services might stop trusting intelligence received
from Israel, and foreign countries might suspect that Israel is giving them
false intelligence in order to influence their political positions," the
report said. "Indeed, in the past Israel has been accused of disseminating
false information that serves its own interests. Such suspicions, for
example, could harm Israel's efforts to convince others that the
intelligence on Iran's nuclear project is solid, despite the fact that the
case of Iran is different from that of Iraq in that Israel's assessments in
this regard are based on good, solid information."
The Israeli intelligence assessment of Iraq has been examined by the
Israeli military as well as the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Relations
Committee. The report called for an investigation by what it termed an
independent professional body that was not linked to political parties.
The report said Israeli intelligence on Iraqi capabilities resembled its
counterparts in the United States and other Western countries. Israeli
intelligence failed to obtain information regarding Iraqi WMD and
missile programs since the 1995 defection of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law,
Hussein Kamel.
But Israeli intelligence, despite lack of supporting evidence, decided
that Iraq had succeeded in concealing a growing missile and WMD program in
wake of the 1998 departure of United Nations inspectors, the report said.
Brom attributed this to what he termed a "dogmatic conception" that has
plagued Israeli intelligence since the 1973 Arab-Israeli war as well as a
lack of technical understanding within military intelligence of how missiles
operate.
Over the last 30 years, the report said, Israeli military intelligence
has preferred to submit worst-case scenarios that are largely
unsubstantiated. The
concept assumes that a worst-case scenario only improves military readiness
and produces no harm.
"Intelligence analysts feel that by giving bleak assessments they
decrease the threat to themselves," the report said. "If the assessment ends
up being correct they will be heroes, and if it ends up being untrue, no one
will give them any trouble because everyone will be pleased that their bleak
prophecies did not materialize. When this is the psychological state of
intelligence analysts, biases and serious distortions result."
The report suggests that Israeli military intelligence might have been
influenced by the U.S. perception of the Iraqi WMD threat. Israel and the
United States have disagreed on the extent of many threats in the Middle
East and the Jewish state has long felt that Iraqi WMD capability was
exaggerated.
"The United States was wont to emphasize the Iraqi threat, while Israel
tended to express its understanding that the Iraqi threat was contained and
under control, and it was the Iranian threat that loomed as far more
serious," the report said. "Once the Bush administration decided to take
action against Iraq, it was more difficult for Israel to maintain its
position that dealing with Iraq was not the highest priority, especially
when it was obvious that the war would serve Israel's interests. Considering
the circumstances, it would therefore be difficult to expect the Israeli
government to express its doubts Ñ if any Ñ about Iraq's capabilities."