Notes on the assassination of Iranian IRGC Commander Hassan Mahdawi

April 26, 2024 by 2 Comments

IRGC - ABTHE TARGETED KILLING OF Hassan Mahdawi, a high-ranking member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the commander of the Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon, was carried out by Israel on April 1, 2024. The actual assassination was based on precise operational intelligence, while Israel’s assessment of Iran’s response was wrong.

On the day of the attack, a building adjacent to the Iranian Embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus was attacked with rockets. The attack killed seven IRGC members: General Muhammad Reza Zahedi, also known as Hassan Mahdawi, his deputy, and five additional officers. Mahdawi is the most senior Iranian commander to be killed since the assassination of IRGC Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani by the United States in 2020.

Mahdawi had close ties with Hezbollah. He maintained a close relationship with Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and was perceived by Israel to be directly coordinating the military attacks on Israel from Lebanon and Syria. In Tehran’s collective memory, Israel’s history of attacks against it includes numerous strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, assassinations of scientists within Iran, and actions against Iranian proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. Traditionally, these attacks have been invariably met with attacks by Iran’s proxies in the region.

This time, it was different. Iran recognized Mahdawi’s assassination as a direct attack on Iran that it could not tolerate, and had to respond to differently. Just days following Mahdawi’s assassination, Iran attacked Israel. According to the Israel Defense Forces, 99 percent of the more than 330 weapons fired at Israel (including at least 185 drones and 110 surface-to-surface missiles) were intercepted, mostly over the territory of countries adjacent to Israel. Iran’s attack on Israel was unprecedented. It was launched directly from Iranian territory in contrast to prior cases, when Iran has used its proxies, supposedly leaving its hands clean.

Israel could not tolerate such a blatant infringement on its sovereignty. After Israeli officials vowed a response to the Iranian attack, the Jewish State counter-attacked, causing minor damage to the Eighth Shekari Air Base in northwest Esfahan, a dozen kilometers from the Natanz nuclear facility. It was a calculated response designed to deliver a message to Iran that Israel could and would respond to an attack. Following Israel’s counterattack, the tensions between Iran and Israel have subsided for the time being.

While the attack on General Mahdawi was based on excellent operational intelligence, it became evident that the Israeli assessment regarding a possible Iranian response was erroneous. The Israeli assessment was that the Iranian response would be similar to what occurred in the past —namely limited attacks by Hezbollah on northern Israel and attacks on the Golan heights by Iranian proxies in Syria. Israel simply did not anticipate a direct Iranian attack on Israel from Iranian territory.

It seems that Israeli senior analysts were entangled in a conception of Iran’s past behavior and anticipated that Tehran’s response would be similar to prior cases, namely utilizing Iran’s proxies. Israel did not pay enough attention to the difference between Mahdawi’s assassination and previous attacks against Iran. This time, the attack targeted the Iranian embassy in Damascus and the target was a very senior official, who was close to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

It appears that Israel’s assessment of the Iranian response to Mahdawi’s assassination was a strategic failure. It appears more likely that the Israeli War Cabinet was provided with an incorrect assessment by the nation’s intelligence community, and less likely that it was provided with an incorrect assessment, which it then decided to ignore. There is concern in Israel that the intelligence assessment was once again wrong, after the colossal failure to anticipate the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.

► Author: Avner Barnea | Date: 26 April 2024 | Permalink

Dr. Avner Barnea is research fellow at the National Security Studies Center of the University of Haifa in Israel. He served as a senior officer in the Israel Security Agency (ISA). He is the author of We Never Expected That: A Comparative Study of Failures in National and Business Intelligence (Lexington Books, 2021).

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Austria: Arrest raises broader questions about counterintelligence capabilities

April 10, 2024 by 5 Comments

BVT AustriaON GOOD FRIDAY, MARCH 29, Egisto Ott, a former member of Austria’s now-dissolved domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Counterterrorism (BVT), was arrested in his house in Carinthia, Austria’s southernmost state. Ott had frequently been at the center of media attention in the past year, in connection with the network surrounding the fugitive financier and alleged spy Jan Maršálek, as well as alleged misconduct relating to carrying out illegal investigations of persons. Ott also seems to have been involved in an alleged attempt to create an intelligence unit, or even an entire shadow intelligence service, embedded inside Austria’s foreign ministry. Now the veteran police and intelligence officer stands accused by the state attorney of abusing his authority and of being part of an “intelligence activity to the disadvantage of Austria” —the only form of spying that is illegal under § 256 of the Austrian criminal code.

Ott’s arrest came several years after intelligence was first shared with Austria by Western partner services —allegedly the Central Intelligence Agency— that reportedly date from as early as November 2017. Back then, Ott allegedly received classified material from his service’s email address to his personal Gmail account. However, Peter Gridling, director of the BVT from 2008 until its dissolution in 2021, stated in a recent interview that the ensuing investigations did not yield actionable results that could be used in criminal proceedings. This statement is highly interesting, as Gridling filed accusations about Ott with the State Prosecutor’s Office himself, and would hardly have done unless he had access to hard evidence. Ott was consequently removed from the BVT and placed in Police Academy Austria (SIAK), which is responsible for training police officers and conducts research related to police and domestic security.

Nevertheless, according to media reporting, Ott seems to have kept and illegally used certain forms of identification that presented him as a police officer. He is also alleged to have maintained access to several police databases and to have retained his network of trusted informants that provided him with intelligence. These included contacts in friendly foreign police services, whom Ott knew from his time as a liaison officer in Italy and Turkey. According to Gridling, these contacts were unaware that Ott had been removed from the BVT under suspicion of being unreliable and potentially even working for Russia. They therefore continued to help him when asked. Ott allegedly deceived his contacts by claiming that he needed information on cases relating to different kinds of extremism. As it turned out, according to the leaked arrest warrant, several of the individuals referred to by Ott as “suspects” in terrorism investigations were in fact Russian dissidents or intelligence defectors who were living as protected persons in Austria and elsewhere outside Russia.

It appears highly probable that Ott also had people inside the Austrian bureaucracy, including former colleagues in the BVT, who continued to provide him with information and assistance, even after the first allegations against him arose in 2017. As of now, at least one other officer from LVT Vienna (the state unit of the BVT) has been found to have illegally provided Ott with Information. It is likely, given the publicly available descriptions of Ott’s activities, that other individuals may be implicated. It also remains to be seen whether individuals involved in this case were able to join the BVT’s successor agency, the new Directorate of State Protection and Intelligence (DSN). Read more of this post

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Analysis: Israel underestimated Hamas while overestimating its own capabilities

January 10, 2024 by 10 Comments

IDF IsraelTHE OCTOBER 7 ATTACK on Israel was a total surprise. There was no warning. There were very few signs of a possible attack. Israeli intelligence evaluated these signs as elements of a routine military exercise by Hamas, and even assessed them as parts of an imaginary scenario. It therefore gave no warning to those Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) units that were stationed on the border with Gaza. Meanwhile, what we know about the intelligence failure of October 7 will likely pale before what the commission of inquiry will reveal once it is established. That was precisely what happened in the case of the Agranat Commission of Inquiry, which made significant revelations while investigating the intelligence failings of the IDF in the run up to the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

In the eyes of the Israeli generation of the Yom Kippur War, the possibility of such a failure happening again was unthinkable. Yet there is a significant difference between the events of 1973 and the events of last October 7. In 1973 the intelligence failed, but the IDF reacted quickly and acted efficiently. This Q Quotetime, in the first two days of the conflict the IDF was confused and acted without direction, in the apparent absence of relevant action plans for what to do in the event of a massive invasion. The IDF was clearly not ready for such a scenario.

Recently, another important piece of information about the intelligence failure of October 7 was revealed. It was reported that, two months before the surprise attack by Hamas, information was received from an agent handled by the Israel Security Agency (ISA) in Gaza, with a “very high” reliability level. The agent allegedly reported that Hamas was planning “a major move in the week after Yom Kippur”. Yet that warning was not marked as significant; the assumption was that, if the warning materialized, it would be corroborated with additional intelligence. It was thus kept from higher levels of command and from Israeli Military Intelligence (IMI). The ISA did not deny the report, saying instead in a statement: “Focusing on one specific piece of news or another does not reflect the intelligence picture at the time”.

Given the high number of casualties and the horrendous destruction that resulted from the October 7 attack, many Israelis, including some in the security establishment, feel that it is far too long to wait until a commission of inquiry is established and publishes its conclusions. It will likely take at least two years Q Quotefor those conclusions to become public. What is to be done in the meantime? There is public pressure to launch the inquiry soon.

Recently the State Comptroller of Israel, Matanyahu Engelman, announced that he has begun to investigate the intelligence failure. This is an appropriate move. However, with all due respect to the state comptroller’s inquiries, we know from previous experience that his findings have no teeth. For instance, in the context of Hamas, the state comptroller’s review of Operation TZUK EITAN (the 2014 Gaza War) was published in early 2017. It revealed serious instances of misconduct in the intelligence community dating several years prior to the operation. Yet this severe criticism passed below the public’s radar and was practically ignored, while no actions were taken against IDF and ISA security personnel that were shown to have acted irresponsibly.

I would like to point to a number of stronger factors that led to the tragic complacency of October 7, drawn from the field of psychology. It relates to how a country (mainly through its intelligence analysts) perceives its enemies and how this affects the evaluations of said enemies. We know that there was a conception on the Israeli side that Hamas had no interest in attacking Israel at this stage. It seems that the State of Israel underestimated Hamas and its leader, Yahya Sinwar, based on the available evidence of Hamas and Sinwar. Read more of this post

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Analysis: Killing of Hamas leader in Lebanon marks a new phase in Israel’s war

January 3, 2024 by 2 Comments

Dahiyeh BeirutMIDDLE EAST OBSERVERS WERE hardly surprised by yesterday’s news of the apparent assassination of Hamas leader Saleh al-Arouri in Lebanon. Not only was al-Arouri a senior Hamas official, but he also headed the militant group’s contact team with Lebanese Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons. He was likely at the top of Israel’s permanent assassination list even prior to Hamas’ bloody assault on Israel last October 7. Yet, within the explosive content of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, Tuesday’s assassination signals the opening of a new and highly unpredictable phase in an already uncertain conflict.

The vague statements issued by Israeli officials in response to the news of al-Arouri’s assassination did little to dispel the broadly accepted view that Israel’s intelligence services were behind the killing. Headed by its external intelligence agency, the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence services have a long history of extrajudicial assassinations. In his seminal book Rise and Kill First, the Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman discusses in detail the history of these assassinations, which predate the postwar establishment of the state of Israel. Bergman’s data-rich research reveals that the Israeli intelligence services have performed approximately 2,700 extrajudicial assassinations in their history —more than any Western state.

Given such a prolific history of targeted killings, al-Arouri’s assassination in Beirut can be described as both expected and unremarkable. Indeed, Israeli officials have stated repeatedly since October 7 that Hamas’ senior leadership will be targeted worldwide. In a leaked recording that emerged last month, Ronen Bar, director of the Israeli Security Agency, was heard announcing to members of Israel’s Knesset that Hamas’ senior leadership would be targeted “in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar, everywhere”.

At the time the recorded conversation leaked, nobody thought that Bar, a seasoned intelligence officer, was bluffing. Indeed, the operational capabilities and reach of the Mossad are well understood by everyone in the Middle East. That al-Arouri was assassinated in southern Beirut’s Dahiyeh suburb is significant. An undisputed Hezbollah stronghold, Dahiyeh is tightly controlled by the Shiite militant group, which prides itself on ensuring the safety of its residents. Yesterday’s assassination at the very heart of Hezbollah’s lair was nothing short of a demonstration of the Mossad’s competency in special operations.

If Israel is truly intent on neutralizing the leadership of Hamas, Mossad’s competency will be increasingly tested in the coming months, as the Jewish state will have to strike repeatedly beyond its borders. This is because, unlike the beleaguered Gazans, who are currently experiencing the most destructive bombing campaign of the 21st century, most leaders of Hamas live in relative luxury in Doha, Ankara, Beirut, Damascus, and other Middle Eastern metropolitan centers. It is there, and not in the razed neighborhoods of Khan Yunis and Jabalia, that Israeli assassination teams will need to operate with increasing dexterity. Read more of this post

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A senior American diplomat spied for Cuba for 42 years. How serious is this case?

December 11, 2023 by 4 Comments

Victor Manuel RochaLAST WEEK THE UNITED States Department of Justice announced the arrest of Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, a former senior American diplomat, whose career included stints as ambassador and advisor to the National Security Council and the United States Southern Command. Cuban intelligence allegedly recruited Rocha when he was a student in the 1970s and inspired him to spend his entire professional life in search of opportunities to supply intelligence to Cuba —and possibly Russia and China. United States Attorney General Merrick Garland said Rocha’s case was “one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations” of the US government by a foreign agent. This may be an understatement.

A STORIED CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

Rocha was born in Colombia in 1950, but grew up in New York City after his mother emigrated to the United States. In 1965, the studious Rocha earned a full-ride scholarship to a prestigious boarding school in Connecticut. This enabled him to earn an undergraduate degree from Yale University in 1973, before completing master’s degrees in public administration and foreign affairs from Harvard University and Georgetown University.

After receiving his security clearance from the Department of State, Rocha relied on his advanced social skills and native command of the Spanish language to quickly rise through the ranks of the diplomatic corps. Within a decade he had served prestigious assignments in Argentina, Honduras, Italy, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic, where he held the post of deputy chief of mission. In the mid-1990s, Rocha served as deputy principal officer in the United States Interests Section in Cuba —effectively the second-in-command in Washington’s de facto embassy in Havana.

Rocha’s diplomatic career culminated with the post of ambassador to Bolivia, from which he abruptly resigned in 2002. He did so reportedly in order to pursue employment in the private sector and raise funds for his children’s college education. Prior to the end of his State Department career, however, Rocha had managed to hold posts as a Latin America adviser to the National Security Council, which is the highest executive decision-making body of the United States government. He had also served as an adviser to the United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), which oversees all activities of the Department of Defense in Central and South America, including the Caribbean.

FORMING REVOLUTIONARY LEFTIST IDEALS

By 1978, when he became a United States citizen, the young Rocha had spent time in Chile. While there, he witnessed first-hand the turbulence of Chilean politics in the lead-up to the military coup of 1973, which cut short the presidency of leftist icon Salvador Allende. Washington’s role in the coup, and in the ensuing junta of General Augusto Pinochet, appears to have steered Rocha’s politics decisively to the left. It was in fact in Chile where, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Rocha was recruited by the Dirección de Inteligencia (DI, also referred to by its former acronym, DGI). Read more of this post

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The OSINT factor in Hamas’ operational success and Israel’s intelligence failure

December 5, 2023 by 1 Comment

Hamas GazaIT HAS BECOME CLEAR that Hamas had up-to-date intelligence on Israeli targets prior to the attack on October 7, 2023, the largest and most devastating terrorist attack in Israel’s history. Hamas did not have access to clandestine information sources but rather relied on open-source intelligence (OSINT) to understand the structure and weaknesses of Israel’s defense system along the border fence. In addition to publicly available maps, Hamas meticulously gathered online intelligence about specific sites within the Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip.

It is also possible that some of the intelligence came from human intelligence (HUMINT) sources, largely through Gazan workers who were employed in Israel. Moreover, Hamas had access to constant Israeli media broadcasts, which supplied them with invaluable intelligence on the border communities and adjacent military facilities, as well as on communities that were located further to the north and east. Although the Israeli state exercises censorship in the Q Quoteinterests of national security, the public’s ‘right to know’ purview is substantial. Thus, significant amounts of information are available online.

In assessing the behavior of Hamas in recent years, one can observe that it did not act as a terrorist group for quite some time. Rather, it operated as a government organization, while monitoring its enemy and waiting patiently for an opportune moment to attack. Simultaneously, Hamas utilized disinformation tools to conceal its attack plans. It trained its fighters within commando units that employed information effectively and relied on actionable intelligence, rather than chance. This can be observed from interrogations of Hamas members who were detained by Israeli authorities after October 7. In one example, Hamas used detailed maps of Israeli communities near the Gaza border, which are available on Google Earth, to plan its attacks of October 7. Printouts of these maps were found among the belongings of Hamas assailants that were killed during the attacks.

Some in Israel are now advocating for increased protection of OSINT, particularly for Israeli sites related to security, including civilian first-response units, defense systems guarding settlements, and civil technological assets. However, implementing such measures within the current framework of Israel’s open society seems challenging. Despite the known importance of OSINT to Hamas and its potential risk to Israel’s security, significant changes in this regard may not occur, as they could impact the country’s democratic values. However, it is still possible to improve the quality of security censorship regarding sensitive civilian information that can be used by adversaries. Such moves would include protecting databases, limiting information relating to the addresses of senior officials, or putting in place stricter policies on the movement of Gazan workers in Israel.

Contrary to Hamas’, Israel’s OSINT systems underperformed in the run-up to the October 7 attacks. That was so especially after the central OSINT unit of the Israeli Military Intelligence was dissolved, for reasons that remain to be investigated. CNN was among many news outlets that have revealed how Hamas advertised its military drills on social media, but somehow Israeli intelligence failed to pay attention to them.

When Hamas openly declared its intention to attack communities near the Gaza border, and trained its units for that purpose, the Israeli intelligence community, including the IMI and the Israel Security Agency (ISA), underestimated its real attack capabilities based on OSINT materials. This miscalculation stemmed from incorrectly assessing Hamas’s capabilities and overestimating the Israel Defense Forces’ ability to swiftly respond and prevent the attack on civil and military targets. Unfortunately, this assessment proved to be a significant mistake.

The effective use of OSINT lies at the heart of Hamas’ operational plan to attack simultaneously several Israeli targets and to cause extensive damage. It appears that Hamas was able to utilize the OSINT factor to its maximum extent, thus adding significant value to the success of the attack.

► Author: Dr. Avner Barnea | Date: 05 December 2023 | Permalink

Dr. Avner Barnea is research fellow at the National Security Studies Center of the University of Haifa in Israel. He served as a senior officer in the Israel Security Agency (ISA). He is the author of We Never Expected That: A Comparative Study of Failures in National and Business Intelligence (Lexington Books, 2021).

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Analysis: Israel’s misjudgment of Hamas caused the October 7 intelligence failure

November 10, 2023 by 4 Comments

Gaza StripSINCE OCTOBER 7, WHEN Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel, many more details about the intelligence failure have emerged. It appears that Israeli intelligence officials have warned for years about military exercises held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which have included practice raids on cities deep inside Israel. However, the Israel Military Intelligence (IMI) did not heed to the warnings, because it considered Hamas operationally incapable of carrying out such raids. Instead, the IMI estimated that the Hamas leadership aimed to arrive at a settlement with Israel. That seems like the result of a highly successful disinformation operation, which added significantly to the effectiveness of the sudden attack on Israel on October 7.

It now appears that several months after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Operation Guardian of the Walls, which targeted Hamas in the Gaza Strip in May of 2021, Hamas began to train for a large-scale operation against Israel. However, the IMI estimated that Hamas was not capable of attacking aQ Quote large number of settlements simultaneously. It also believed that such an operation would go against the spirit of Hamas leadership’s spirit intention to settle with Israel.

As early as 2022, the IMI had analyzed videos of Hamas’ military exercises, which Hamas itself had made available on social media networks. Meanwhile, the intelligence information that emerged from the Gaza Strip showed that the professionalization of Hamas’ military arm, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was improving. However, IMI officials rejected the need to build an operative response to the mass-attack scenario that these exercises pointed to, because they saw them simply as exercises.

Israeli intelligence also analyzed the communications discourse between the commanders of Hamas, which it had acquired through intercepts. It purportedly indicated that Hamas intended to carry out raids on Israeli communities located near the fence between Israel and Gaza, but also on targets located deeper inside Israel. The communications discourse also indicated that such attacks could occur, not only using tunnels, but with incursions above ground and even through aerial methods.

One of the methods that Hamas trained on, and one that was known to Israeli intelligence, focused on disabling the highly sophisticated observation posts, sensors and remote-controlled machine guns, which Israel has installed along the border fence with the Gaza Strip. The purpose of these exercises was to enable an attack on the fence and overtake it these sophisticated tools with Hamas operatives, thus effectively blinding the Israeli forces. However, Israeli authorities made no effort to prepare for such a scenario by protecting these installations.

The broad picture that is emerging raises serious questions about why the IDF did not take a reasonable course of action against Hamas’ operational plan —and why it failed to do so despite being aware of the intensity of the Hamas exercises, and despite being aware of the group’s stated intentions. Q QuoteIndeed, a preventive course of action should have been in place even in the absence of specific intelligence warnings —if only to enable the IDF to repel a surprise attack by Hamas. There was no need to estimate what Hamas would do in order to prepare for a surprise attack.

Yet it is now patently obvious that there was ample intelligence about Hamas’ intentions. The latter were both apparent and known. Even without the wisdom of hindsight, it is clear there was enough intelligence to enable Israel to act in a timely manner against Hamas’ plan. Yet Israel severely misjudged Hamas’ intentions. In retrospect, it appears that ample intelligence about Hamas’ intentions had been gathered, that the IMI and Shin Bet were severely underprepared for a surprise attack, that the precise details of Hamas’ attack were missed, and that Hamas’ intentions were misjudged. These are the reasons why Israel was caught unprepared and suffered a catastrophic surprise on October 7.

► Author: Dr. Avner Barnea | Date: 10 November 2023 | Permalink

Dr. Avner Barnea is research fellow at the National Security Studies Center of the University of Haifa in Israel. He served as a senior officer in the Israel Security Agency (ISA). He is the author of We Never Expected That: A Comparative Study of Failures in National and Business Intelligence (Lexington Books, 2021).

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In entering Gaza, the IDF will be facing not just Hamas, but Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance’

October 23, 2023 by 1 Comment

Hamas GazaARGUABLY NO COUNTRY BENEFITED more from the American invasion of Iraq than the Islamic Republic of Iran. In a war that lasted over a decade, Washington spent over $2 trillion of its own funds to eliminate one of Iran’s most powerful regional adversaries. In the process, the invasion facilitated the rise of Iraq’s militant Shia movement, which today forms the core of the Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). Although it is technically an auxiliary branch of the Iraqi security forces, the PMF regularly looks to Tehran for guidance.

The PMF belongs to what Iranian leaders refer to as the ‘Axis of Resistance’ (mehvar–e moqâvemat in Farsi), a term that denotes the extraordinary expansion of Iran’s influence in the Middle East and Central Asia in recent years. In addition to the PMF in Iraq, the Axis of Resistance incorporates an international coalition of dozens of armed groups, militant factions, Shia tribes, and political parties. They range from the Houthis in Yemen and the Hezbollah in Lebanon, to entire branches of the Syrian Armed Forces, and even Shia militias in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain. The coalition also includes a complex mosaic of armed Palestinian groups, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad and —increasingly after 2018— Hamas.

These actors are certainly disparate, and often contrast with each other. For instance, relations between Hamas and the Syrians have been strained for years. All of them, however, are united in their common anti-Western stance and contempt for pro-Western states in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Israel. Moreover, their ties under the Axis of Resistance umbrella remain informal and relatively loose. However, they all receive support —including funding and training— from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces that protects and promotes the ideological inheritance of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Since 2011, the IRGC has viewed the Axis of Resistance as a vital element of its asymmetric military strategy. Its purpose is to help Iran successfully confront its much stronger adversaries, two of which —the United States and Israel— are nuclear-armed. That is precisely why Tehran has invested nothing short of a fortune to transform Hezbollah into what experts describe as “a force multiplier” that can give Israel a run for its money. In 2014, Tehran launched a similar effort in the Gaza Strip, initially with Palestinian Islamic Jihad —a group that, very much like Hamas, emerged out of the Egyptian Islamic Brotherhood in the 1980s.

The financial arrangement between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Iran alarmed Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2008. Over time, however, Hamas too began to flirt with Iran’s Axis of Resistance, enticed by the lucrative funding and training opportunities offered by Tehran. By 2020, Hamas was actively engaging with the IRGC under the Axis of Resistance umbrella. To a significant extent, the operational sophistication of the October 7 attack on Israel, which was jointly led by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, provided clear evidence of Iran’s patronage of these two militant groups. Because of Iran, the Palestinian armed factions in Gaza are today better-armed and better-trained than at any time in the past. They will likely demonstrate that in the coming days or weeks, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) begin their ground offensive on Gaza.

The big question, however, is how the other components of the Axis of Resistance will respond to the impending IDF attack. Read more of this post

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Analysis: How Israeli Intelligence Failed to Anticipate the Hamas Attack

October 16, 2023 by 1 Comment

Hamas GazaSEVERAL DAYS HAVE PASSED since October 7, the day when Hamas stunned Israel with a surprise attack against several settlements near the Gaza border. It is now clear that Israeli intelligence was in possession of warning indicators about the attack, and that these indicators were misjudged.

The IMI and ISA Assessment

It is important to note that the intelligence division of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), known as Israeli Military Intelligence (IMI), and the  Israel Security Agency (ISA), have been monitoring Hamas for years. These two agencies are believed to have conducted a situation assessment approximately two weeks before the October 7 attack. The assessment concluded that Hamas was deterred and had no interest in changing the status quo by attacking Israel in the short run. This assessment was communicated to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.

It appears that this assessment was not supported by concrete intelligence. The agencies that produced it relied primarily on monitoring the recent behavior of Hamas, including the fact that it was allowing Palestinians living in Gaza to work inside Israel. Additionally, the assessment noted the fact that Hamas was receiving funds from Qatar to help the poverty-stricken residents of Gaza. In retrospect, this assessment appears to have been based on wishful thinking.

The Egyptian Warning

It is now known that Abbas Kamel, Director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate, sent a warning to Israel a few days before Hamas’ attack. Kamel allegedly warned of “something unusual, a terrible operation”, which was about to take place from the direction of Gaza. The warning was forwarded to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office. The Israeli newspaper that published this report, Yedioth Ahronot, is known for its serious reputation and quality sources inside the Egyptian establishment. According to the report, Kamel was told by the Israelis that they were focused on preventing terrorist attacks in the West Bank.

Yet, in a speech that Netanyahu delivered immediately after the October 7 attack broke out, he denied claims about the Egyptian warning and claimed that they were fake news. However, American Congressman Michael McCaul, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on October 11: “We know that Egypt […] warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen”. Speaking to reporters following a closed-door intelligence briefing on the crisis for American lawmakers, McCaul added: “I don’t want to get too much into classified [details], but a warning was given”. An Egyptian government source also asserted that Egyptian intelligence officials warned their Israeli counterparts that Hamas was planning “something big” ahead of the October 7 surprise onslaught. But this intelligence appears to have been ignored. Read more of this post

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Analysis : Attack on Israel Points to Systemic Failure at All Levels

October 11, 2023 by 4 Comments

Hamas Israel - BarneaTHE COMPARISON BETWEEN THE October 2023 attack on Israel and the Yom Kippur War is reasonable. We still have an obscured perspective on what happened on October 7. But even this partial picture makes it possible to draw a preliminary comparison. Undoubtedly, there is no precedent for such a monumental failure in the history of Israeli intelligence.

The most striking difference between the two case studies is that in 1973 the system as a whole did not fail. The failure was personal, on the part of several key people, who did not perform according to expectations. The events of 2023 point to a systemic failure at all levels, not personal mistakes. The failure is at the level of intelligence warning, the military response to the attack, and even the actions of Israel’s political leadership.

An Intelligence and Military Failure

In 1973, the intelligence-gathering system was working well, and Egypt’s war intentions were known. Thousands of reports from observations along the Suez Canal spoke of the Egyptian preparations. The wireless transmissions that were issued testified to preparation for war in the Egyptian army. All this did not translate into a warning of war, due to the failed performance of some senior officers in the Israeli Military Intelligence (IMI), who stuck to their preconceived notions until the last moment.

In 2023, the failure is systemic. It involves both the level of collection and at the level of assessment. It relates both to the IMI and the Israel Security Agency (ISA). It has already become clear that the intelligence collection mechanisms failed to detect large-scale preparations for an all-out attack from the Gaza Strip. A massive intelligence system failed to detect the preparatory actions of the assailing forces.

When the perceived enemy is Palestinian civilians and when Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers spend their time guarding settlements and worshipers, instead of engaging in hard training, the result is catastrophic. On October 7, we witnessed the operations of an army whose main mission is occupation. Given what we saw on that day, namely more than 1,000 civilian and military casualties and approximately 150 kidnapped Israelis, it is not clear how this army will be able to face the upcoming challenges in this war. The need for the professionalism and resilience of the IDF, which was there in 1973, continues to exist.

A Political Failure

The comparison between the political leadership of 1973 and 2023 is also discouraging. Back then, the root of the failure was that the intelligence information the leadership received from Eli Zeira, the director of IMI, who was the nation’s most senior intelligence officer, was distorted and false. It is now understood that the IMI’s assessments were based on the concept of reassuring the political leadership. Yet, Prime Minister Golda Meir and Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan were challenged after the war, and were eventually removed from their positions. However, they acted responsibly.

In contrast, there is not much to say about Israel’s current political leadership. It suffices to look at the composition of the Security Cabinet and the first leaks that have already begun to emanate from it, or at the surge of slander that members of the governing coalition have begun to heap on the finest of the IDF’s officers. It is nothing short of a disgrace and a disaster.

This war has just begun. It is still too early to draw conclusions. But we can examine the conclusions from the Yom Kippur War and assess their relevance to today. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talks about revenge, it is advisable to remember those lessons. The conflict with the Palestinians is long and bitter. They will not give up their ambition for their state. It is now time to comprehend the full cost of the continuation of the conflict.

► Author: Avner Barnea | Date: 11 October 2023 | Permalink

Dr. Avner Barnea is research fellow at the National Security Studies Center of the University of Haifa in Israel. He served as a senior officer in the Israel Security Agency (ISA). He is the author of We Never Expected That: A Comparative Study of Failures in National and Business Intelligence (Lexington Books, 2021).

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How Did Israel Miss This Attack? Some Likely Explanations

October 9, 2023 by 7 Comments

Gaza HamasTHE HAMAS-LED OPERATION al-Aqsa Flood, which began on October 7, marked the first large-scale conflict within the borders of Israel since the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. However, unlike the coalition of Arab armies it faced in 1948, Israel now confronts an alliance of sub-state groups. Led by Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, this alliance includes the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad and a number of secular groups, such as the Fatah-aligned al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP).

Such groups are lesser-known than Hamas; however, they often bring with them expertise in niche areas, such as handling networks of informants inside Israel, building sophisticated explosives, employing unmanned combat drones, or procuring specialized weaponry. They are therefore likely to have contributed greatly to the outcome of Operation al-Aqsa Flood. Their participation also enabled Hamas to launch what essentially amounted to a combined arms assault on Israel. The latter included coordinated land, sea and air elements, which were purposefully low-tech. That may explain why the assailants were able to short-circuit and overwhelm the purportedly impregnable security perimeter that Israel maintains around the Gaza Strip.

Iranian and Lebanese Coaching

Putting aside the individual low-tech elements of the operation, its overall level of tactical organization almost certainly points to considerable support from actors beyond the Gaza Strip. Such actors likely include networks of informants within Israel, as well as possibly Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah. Both are well-versed in hybrid warfare and have studied Israeli defense systems more extensively than any other regional actor. Additionally, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah’s Lebanese Resistance Brigades are seasoned practitioners of deception operations. They likely coached Hamas, not only on how to carry out Operation al-Aqsa Flood, but more importantly on how to prevent Israel and its allies from gathering intelligence about it.

There is no question that an operation of such a magnitude must have taken months —possibly even years— to conceive, develop and organize. Such a complex process would have taken place under the watchful eyes and ears of Israeli and Egyptian intelligence agencies, who have historically faced little resistance in penetrating Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas. Yet none seem to have collected enough intelligence to anticipate the attack. It is equally stunning that the meticulous planning of Operation al-Aqsa Flood appears to have escaped the attention of American intelligence agencies, whose presence in the Middle East is significant. How was that even possible? Read more of this post

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Analysis: Prigozhin’s goal was to survive, not to remove Putin from power

June 26, 2023 by 8 Comments

Yevgeny PrigozhinIN THE EARLY HOURS of June 23, PMC Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin declared the launch of an armed campaign against the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. Within hours, several thousand soldiers belonging to Wagner, one of the world’s largest private military companies, had abandoned their positions in eastern Ukraine and were en route to Moscow. Their mission, according to Prigozhin, was to arrest Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, and try them for mismanagement and corruption.

In the ensuing hours, National Guard units along the M-4, a 1,100-mile-long expressway that connects the northeastern shores of the Black Sea to Moscow, began blocking or destroying critical junctures across that vast road network, in an attempt to obstruct the Wagner convoy. In a televised nationwide address, a visibly shaken Vladimir Putin accused Prigozhin of leading an armed insurrection, and warned those who followed him that they would be treated as traitors. Meanwhile, tickets on flights from Moscow to several visa-free international destinations were sold out within hours, as Muscovites braced for the outbreak of civil war.

Yet, within fewer than 24 hours, Prigozhin, who had repeatedly vowed to reach Moscow or die trying, was on his way to Belarus. He had seemingly accepted a deal to abandon his loyal troops in exchange for amnesty and a life in exile. Prigozhin’s sudden about-face surprised many observers, who had expected to see firefights between Spetsnaz units and Wagner forces in Moscow’s southern districts by Sunday afternoon. Even some of Prigozhin’s own troops took to social media to openly accuse their former leader of betrayal, and vow revenge.

PRIGOZHIN: A RATIONAL AND CALCULATED ACTOR

How are we to explain this unexpected turn of events? The difficulty of such a task is amplified by the lack of reliable reporting from Russia, along with the inherent chaos of war and the rapidly changing nature of events. It must be stressed, however, that Prigozhin is neither impulsive nor irrational. His maneuvers over the past week were calculated and almost certainly pre-planned and choreographed —most likely long in advance. His ultimate decision to seek political asylum in Belarus —one of the few countries in the world that is unlikely to turn him over to the United States— makes sense under one premise: that the motive behind his “justice march” to Moscow was not to challenge Putin, but to save his life.

To begin with, the bitter feud between Prigozhin and the Russian Ministry of Defense is not new. It has been raging for years. It both precedes and exceeds Russia’s ongoing military campaign in Ukraine. The Wagner leader has repeatedly expressed his dismay at being viewed as an outsider by the Ministry of Defense, which it views as an elitist and incompetent bureaucracy. His experience in Ukraine, where Wagner’s forces faced stiff resistance from the local population and the Ukrainian military alike, added fuel to his rage against a host of Russian defense officials. Prigozhin has been voicing his denunciations of the way these officials have managed the war since March of 2022, just two weeks into the invasion of Ukraine.

PRIGOZHIN’S DISILLUSIONMENT

The disastrous Russian military campaign in Ukraine only served to sharpen Prigozhin’s criticism of his country’s defense establishment. One can observe this in the evolution of his critiques over time. In recent months, the Wagner leader has not only criticized the Ministry of Defense, accusing his leadership of corruption, but he has increasingly directed his ire against broad segments of Russian society. In his video tirades, he often decries what he describes as “the Russian elite” and the “oligarchy”, whom it accuses of living in luxury, while Russia’s working class fights and dies in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere. Read more of this post

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Still unanswered: Trump’s motive for withholding classified documents

June 12, 2023 by 5 Comments

Trump 2016THE 49-PAGE GRAND JURY indictment, filed last week in Florida by the United States Department of Justice, contains 37 criminal charges against former president Donald Trump. The charges can be summarized into a two-fold accusation: Trump is alleged to have stolen more than 300 classified documents upon leaving the White House in January 2021. Moreover, he allegedly schemed with a group of advisors and aides in order to obstruct efforts by the government to retrieve the stolen documents. Both accusations are spelled out in stark detail in the pages of the indictment.

What remains unanswered, however, is the motive. Why did Trump allegedly take several hundred classified documents from the White House? Did he select specific documents to purloin? And, if so, why these specific documents? Lastly, why did the former president go to such pains to frustrate the government’s efforts to recover the documents? There has been intense public speculation about the answers to these questions. Yet the grand jury indictment does not appear to attempt to establish the possible motive behind the alleged crime. Nor Q Quotedoes it need to. Establishing a motive is not required in order to demonstrate the need for a trial, or indeed a conviction. Given the high stakes of this case, however, establishing a motive can provide much-needed clarity in the public sphere.

Accidental or Malicious?

It is important to clarify with precision what the grand jury indictment does not state: its pages do not contain any suggestion that Trump took possession of the classified documents in order to share them with specific individuals or entities, American or foreign. Nor does the indictment suggest that the former president intended to use the classified information in his possession for personal financial gain —for instance to promote his investment ventures at home or abroad, or to gain leverage and win over potential business partners.

So, why did Trump do it? As The New York Times explained on Sunday, the indictment does offer some hints of motives, if one reads between the lines. One possible explanation stems from Trump’s time in the White House, during which he learned to associate his access to classified information as a paramount perk that came with being president of the United States. It follows that, retaining access to classified information was a way for him to maintain control over the office of the presidency. That strong need intensified even more after January 2021, as Trump was clearly “not ready to let go of the perks of holding the highest office in the country”. Indeed, the indictment describes several examples that reveal the strong sense of ownership that the former president felt about the classified documents he kept at his private residence at Mar-a-Lago, as well as his determination to keep them in close proximity to his office and sleeping quarters.

Tertiary Motives

A plausible tertiary motive for Trump’s alleged crimes is the leverage and status that access to secrets can bestow upon an individual. It is possible that Trump viewed the classified documents as the apogee of the long list of his material prizes and trophies —as an important physical legacy of the zenith of his career. That would also explain why he allegedly fought so determinedly to keep the documents in his possession, even after he was told in no uncertain terms by the government that they did not belong to him. Moreover, as The Times notes, the former president may view his classified document collection as a way to insure his legacy —for instance as a means of rebutting critics of his policies and decisions while he was in office, or even as potential “payback against perceived enemies”.

But these motives are probably less prominent in Trump’s mind. A strong and deeply held sense of ownership of government information, no matter their classification grade, is likely the driving motive behind the alleged crimes. As The Washington Post noted in an insightful article in 2022, aides to the former president said that he appeared sincere and genuine about his conviction that the classified documents “were his, not the government’s”. When he was advised otherwise by his own aides, he noticeably “gravitated toward lawyers and advisers who indulged his more pugilistic desires”, according to the paper. His attitude was not a show. It was sincere. Moreover, there is no reason to believe that it has subsided since his indictment.

A Genuine Conviction of Ownership

Trump’s latest legal woes are rooted in his genuine belief that access to classified information is something he is owed —not simply because he served as president of the United States, but because, in his mind, he should still be in the Oval Office. These deeply entrenched beliefs are unlikely to be abandoned by the former president, regardless of the cost. More importantly, these same beliefs are passionately shared by millions of his supporters. The latter are sufficient in number to wreak havoc in the Republican Party and radically reshape American politics for years to come. If Trump avoids trial or a prison sentence, his support base will view such an outcome as a form of noble victory against the “deep state”. It is therefore likely to be energized, possibly like never before. Should Trump be jailed or seek political asylum abroad in order to evade incarceration, the American political landscape will undergo a major earthquake. Regardless of the outcome of this unprecedented saga, stormy waters seem to lie ahead.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 12 June 2023 | Permalink

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Russia’s spy networks in Europe see greatest post-Cold War setback, experts claim

February 20, 2023 by 4 Comments

Russian embassy LondonRUSSIA’S ABILITY TO CONDUCT human intelligence operations in Europe has suffered greater damage in recent years than at any time since 1991, according to some experts. These setbacks have partly been caused by what The Washington Post refers to in a recent article as “a campaign to cripple Russian spy networks”, which is taking place across the continent. This Europe-wide campaign has grown in momentum since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and supplements boarder efforts to arm Ukraine in its war against the Kremlin.

The initial blow against the Kremlin’s spy network was delivered last year, when a wave of mass expulsions of Russian diplomats resulted in more than 400 suspected Russian intelligence officers being ordered to leave various European capitals. According to observes, the expelled Russian diplomats were in reality intelligence officers, who were active across Europe under diplomatic cover. Since that time, European counterintelligence agencies have launched a series of “precision strikes” against what remains of Russia’s human intelligence network across the continent.

The recent wave of expulsions of Russian intelligence personnel was not unprecedented. But it does suggest a degree of collaboration between Europe’s counterintelligence agencies that is difficult to match with historical examples. An interesting element in this collaboration is what The Washington Post describes as a “post-Ukraine shift in mind-set” in countries that had previously taken a softer approach toward the Kremlin. These include Germany, as well as Britain, which since 2018 has “refused on national security grounds over 100 Russian diplomatic visa applications”.

Russia’s response has been noticeably muted, and may mean that Moscow was caught off-guard by this Europe-wide counterintelligence campaign. The Post quotes Antti Pelttari, director of the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (SUPO), who claims that the Russian capability to conduct human intelligence operations in Europe “has been degraded considerably”. This would imply that the Kremlin’s ability to carry out covert political action, such as political influence campaigns and related psychological operations, has been curtailed. Moreover, it is likely that the Russian intelligence services are unable to adequately assist the Kremlin’s decision-making capabilities with actionable information. Read more of this post

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Espionage allegations prompt sharp exchanges between ex-CIA officials

February 13, 2023 by 2 Comments

CIAA BOOK BY A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer, which alleges that a senior Agency official sabotaged American counterintelligence efforts on orders from Moscow, has prompted a series of fiery exchanges by retired CIA personnel. The primary figures in the dispute are the book’s author, Robert Baer, and Paul J. Redmond, who served as the CIA’s Associate Deputy Director of Operations for Counterintelligence.

Baer’s book, The Fourth Man: The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the CIA and the Rise of Putin’s Russia (Hachette Books, May 2022), focuses on the period following the arrests of three American intelligence insiders, who were found to have spied for the Kremlin: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent Robert Hanssen, and CIA officers Aldrich Ames and Edward Lee Howard. By 2002, Hanssen and Ames were serving life sentences for espionage, while Howard had died in Russia where he had fled while under investigation by the FBI. Collectively, these three had been responsible for some of the CIA’s gravest operational setbacks against the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor agencies.

Some in the CIA, however, remained convinced that not all of the CIA’s failures in the 1980s and 1990s could be explained away in this fashion. They held on to the suspicion that Moscow had been able to recruit a senior CIA executive, who —among other things— had sabotaged numerous probes by some of the Agency’s most committed spy-hunters. Baer’s book discusses how, in the mid-1990s, the CIA’s Directorate of Operations actively pursued those suspicions, by setting up a Special Investigations Unit (SIU). This new unit was led by one of the CIA’s most talented counterintelligence officers, Paul Redmond.

CONTROVERSY

This is precisely the point at which Baer’s book turns wildly controversial: it alleges that the missing spy, whom Baer refers to as “the fourth man”, is none other than Redmond himself. The retired CIA case officer further alleges that even the SIU eventually concluded that Redmond —i.e. its leading member— was a spy for Moscow. The author claims that the SIU presented those findings at a briefing with Redmond among the audience. The presentation prompted Redmond to storm out of the meeting, Baer alleges.

Importantly, Baer describes his case as “inconclusive”, and claims that he relies on information from some of his former CIA colleagues. He also admits that the very idea of a “fourth man” may be nothing more than a chimera. Nevertheless, the SIU probe did occur. It also appears that the FBI opened an investigation into the matter in 2006. Baer claims to have received a visit by two FBI agents in 2021, in which he was asked about what he knew about Raymond. This, he says, left him with the impression that some sort of counterintelligence effort to find the “fourth man” was “ongoing then and is continuing” now. Moreover, according to Baer, this counterintelligence investigation is no longer confined in-house at CIA; the FBI has now taken the lead.

REDMOND’S SIDE RESPONDS

Remarkably, Baer appears to have spoken to Redmond at least twice while preparing his book. On each occasion, the retired CIA senior executive fiercely rejected Baer’s claims that he was a spy for Moscow. In recent months, Redmond voiced his dismay at Baer’s claims publicly. As SpyTalk reports, the first time Redmond spoke publicly about Baer’s book was in November of last year, during an event held by the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. Read more of this post

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