Interview by Gudrun Dometeit

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Did you expect that Benjamin Netanyahu together with the US would attack Iran again – just a few months after the attacks of the US and Israel in June when they allegedly destroyed an Uranium enrichment plant, destroyed a lot of military installations and killed several military leaders?

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‍It was sort of predictable. This government has made it quite clear that it was looking for trouble with Iran. They didn't even wait for an Iranian attack, but preempted an attack claiming that the Iranians were about to attack, which you can never prove. The government didn't explain to us what exactly happened, and will probably not do it in the future. So now we're at war once again.
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What was the real motivation for Netanyahu to start the war now?

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‍Iran is considered an existential threat - which definitely it is not, as long as it's not nuclearized. But now we have clearly extended the existential threat also to conventional ballistic missiles. That's a new development, but people don't talk much about it.
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The explanations are different. Netanyahu also said they wanted to help the Iranians to get rid of the religious autocratic leadership. Was it just the right moment because Iran seems to be weakened? Or even because Netanyahu feared that a settlement at the negotiating table on nuclear weapons was quite near and any attack on Iran would then harder to be justified?  

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‍It's always a conglomeration of reasons. And a particular one which then takes the lead. The timing, his considerations regarding upcoming elections...
Netanyahu is very opaque, he's also lying. Maybe in a couple of years somebody will write about it and then we know what exactly happened. One of the theories is also, that he wants to avoid to be brought before the court. It might be true – consciously or not. He is always selfish.  
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How is the mood among Israelis right now – now that they have to flee again into shelters because of Iranian counterattacks?

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‍People first of all are worried and they're busy staying undercover, hoping that those missiles don't do any harm like they did yesterday. And they're thinking when and how this going to end. We're after a two year war with Gaza which still isn't finished and now we started another war with Iran although we declared last summer that we completed everything in Iran, and that for generations to come we won't have to deal with Iran. Less than a year later here we are again.
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A contradiction, you think…‍

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Yes, either we finished it or we didn't. There's a lot of distrust to what the government says. But there is hardly any protest because Israelis might be fed up with sending their own people into the war.  It's very unlikely that we'll go onto the streets in such a war where the missiles are coming in. This is not the time. Also because many of the young men are in reserve duty, and a lot of people are in the army - so it’s considered unpatriotic to protest against the government when you're at war. However, I guess, if you ask the average Israeli, they would say that it was good to hit Iran. People have been pumped for years that Iran is a great evil, which it was not originally. It’s a threat that we built up.
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Judging on remarks of US Secretary of state, Marco Rubio, Israel has allegedly been pressing the US to that war.

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‍I don't think he's going to lie on something like that. And since we tried to get Barack Obama to cancel the JCPOA, Netanyahu has been working against an agreement with Iran, and he also convinced Donald Trump to cancel the JCPOA. It's only logical that he would try to push America to join the attack.
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You have been working in Mossad and in the airforce before – how do you assess the strength of Iran in the security field?‍

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Iran doesn't have a very powerful army. It doesn't have a strong air force. The only real threat would have been a nuclear threat. And of course, the missiles are surprisingly effective when they come through in the Gulf states or Cyprus for example. That doesn't help very much vis a vis Israel. We have the best air defense in the world. It is not a real existential threat.

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What are the scenarios for the future? What will be the consequences of the Iran-Israel-US war for the Middle east?

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‍My main concern is that the situation in Gaza will not progress, that there will be not very much emphasis on Gaza while everybody's looking at Iran. And that's a big problem because we have to finish our withdrawal from Gaza. I'm not sure if we're going to do that without Hamas disarming. So we might have another armed confrontation with Gaza. What's happening with Iran is less of a concern for me because Iran can't do us very much damage. And inside Iran the dream of regime change is unlikely to happen. I don't see the Iranians going to the street, at least not at this moment.
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What does it mean for the whole peace process between Israel and the Palestinians to which you are very much committed?

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‍It will have a very detrimental effect. One of the problems with our peace process is that there's no interest in it. Nobody is really giving attention to it. We will have now the sixth or seventh election in a row where the conflict with the Palestinians is not on the agenda, which is ridiculous. And the fact that we are now in war with Iran makes it even more unlikely that the process with the Palestinians is going to be on the agenda. We might see an uprising in the Palestinian territories, something along the line of October 7th, maybe not exactly that way, but in a similar way, because there's not that much the Palestinians can do. I don't see anything good coming from this war with Iran, definitely not for our relationship with the Palestinians.

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‍So the war doesn’t make Israel safer?

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Marginally maybe, by degrading Iranian capacities. But I don't think Iran would have used those capacities anyway without our initiation.
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What will be the impact on Hamas? Its military strength has been widely reduced.

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‍It has been diminished, yes, and they will get no support from Iran. But they don't need that much, just hand arms, Kalashnikovs and RPGs (grenade launcher) to cause trouble.

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Do you fear an increased danger of terrorism inside and outside the region?

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Definitely. The Shiites have once started the suicide attacks. It will take a while until it filters through, until they react. This is referring not just to Israel and  the Middle East, but also to Europe and the US. The US is ultimately part of it. So conceivably terrorism can snowball into other areas, too.

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I am coming back to the regime change-question: Why do you think that a regime change is very unlikely? Did you get any information about this, that people are too scared or not very well organized, so that there will be no internal effect of the bombardment?

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‍That is possible. But I don't have access to this kind of information anymore. And the Iranian desk officer in Mossad may very well tell exactly that to his boss, and his boss may even tell that to the head of Mossad, but when the head of Mossad goes to the prime minister and knows that the prime minister doesn't want to hear a story like that… That's a problem of the integrity of intelligence information. We know that both in Israel and the United States, intelligence information has been abused politically to a very large degree.

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The Gulf states basically tried to follow the path of economic wealth and at least political stability. They want to be hubs for international tourism. Do you think Iran – by bombarding those countries – want them do show solidarity or to put pressure on them to stop the war?

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‍Whatever happens, Iran will stay unstable for an extended period of time, for five years or more. It’s a huge country, and it may even break up, because there are a lot of minorities, some asking for separation. Instability is always bad for business and it's definitely bad for the Gulf countries. Iran wants to exert pressure on the Gulf states to exert pressure on the United States to stop the war. Trump is amenable to economic pressure, and he doesn't like dead people. It's more likely that he will call an end to the war than Netanyahu, who is more ruthless than Trump. Let's hope that Trump will begin to realize that his economic plans won't go anywhere if he keeps this war and oil prices will continue to rise.

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Will the war make Netanyahu stronger - what are the political and personal consequences for him?

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‍Probably it makes him stronger, or at least not weaker. Unless things go off script, of course. People begin to feel a little bit uneasy about him because he jumped into this war head over heels. And some may start thinking that it's about time to replace him, but he still has a lot of support. It would be interesting to see polls whether the Likud is staying stable or going up or going down. That should be an early indicator.
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‍Israel is a democratic state. Is there…

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‍No, we're not a liberal democracy anymore. The previous President of the Supreme Court said that on record a few weeks ago.
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… any discussion about the killing of the Iranian leadership and the legal base for the first strikes?

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We all know that Ali Khamenei was responsible for the brutal regime in Iran, including other figures at the top, but some argue that this was against international law norms.  

The former commander-in-chief of the navy and ex-chief of the secret service Shin Bet (Shabbat), Ami Ayalon, was talking some years ago about our policy of killing the leadership among terror groups.  He called this a kind of mission creep: At the beginning one assassinates people who are on their way to commit a terror attack. Then one starts assassinating people who are putting the bombs together. Then you start killing those who talk to the ones who put the bombs together. And the hand gets ever easier on the trigger. We've been in this business for a long time, killing our adversaries on an individual base. You prevent somebody from doing something completely. So no, I hardly think that there was a legal discussion. This government doesn't really care about the law.  

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‍Do you think that Netanyahu's policy will provoke more anti-semitism?

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‍Sure, absolutely. The pressure that we exerted in the US - perceived or real - what we're doing with the Palestinians. Some critics might be understandable, some not. Fact is, this government is not a good government for Israel and the region. That's why we have to try to continue our peace activities. I am still an optimist. Yesterday I took part in a zoom conference with the European Young federalist Movement who supports a federation between Israel and the Palestinians. There is always reason for optimism.

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Emanuel Shahaf was born in 1954 in Germany and emigrated to Israel in 1972. He served in the Israeli Air Force and as station chief of the Mossad foreign intelligence service in Southeast Asia. He is politically active in the Labor Party and is co-chair of the Federation Movement, a movement that advocates for Israelis and Palestinians to live together in a federation. He is a regular commentator in the Israeli media.