WarSclerotic

Report says ex-PM Olmert played top-secret recording of Fakhrizadeh for President Bush in decisive 2008 meeting that boosted US-Israel cooperation against Iran’s nuclear program

By TOI STAFF4 December 2020, 8:41 pm  2

Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. (Agencies)

Israel intelligence managed to recruit an Iranian official close to the recently assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and recorded the nuclear scientist speaking about his efforts to produce “five warheads” on behalf of the Islamic Republic, according to a Friday report in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.

This top-secret recording was played in 2008 by former prime minister Ehud Olmert for then-president George W. Bush during a visit by Bush to Israel and was a key element in convincing the Americans to step up efforts to combat Iran’s nuclear program, the report said.

The report quoted several unnamed Israeli and Middle Eastern intelligence officials, along with recollections from former prime minister Ehud Barak, who was then serving as Olmert’s defense minister.

It said Olmert was so concerned about safeguarding the source of the recording that he refused to play it while anyone else was in the room, including Bush’s national security adviser Stephen Hadley.Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert welcomes US President George W. Bush to Israel, at Ben Gurion International Airport on May 14, 2008. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

Fakhrizadeh, the scientist said by Israel and the US to head Iran’s rogue nuclear weapons program, was killed in a military-style ambush last Friday on the outskirts of Tehran. The attack reportedly saw a truck bomb explode and gunmen open fire on Fakhrizadeh.

Iran has accused Israel of carrying out the November 27 hit, and threatened revenge. Israel, which has been linked to a succession of killings of Iranian nuclear scientists, has not publicly commented on the allegations that it was responsible. It has warned its citizens traveling abroad that they may be targets of Iranian terror attacks in the wake of the killing.This photo released by the semi-official Fars News Agency shows the scene where Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in Absard, a small city just east of the capital, Tehran, Iran, Friday, Nov. 27, 2020. (Fars News Agency via AP)

According to the Yedioth report, written by the newspaper’s well-connected investigative reporter Ronen Bergman, Israel had been compiling a dossier on Fakhrizadeh for nearly three decades, long discounting the scientist’s claims that he had nothing to do with any weapons program.

For Israel, the recordings were the final proof that Iran’s nuclear program was not peaceful, as Tehran repeatedly claimed.

Olmert was methodical in the way he revealed the material to Bush, the report said.

The US president had come to Israel in May 2008 as the country marked the 60th anniversary of its founding.Former National Security Advisor to president George W. Bush Stephen Hadley at the Saban Forum on December 5, 2015 (YouTube screen grab)

Olmert hosted a dinner at the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem and just before dessert, Olmert, Bush, Hadley and Barak, who was defense minister at the time, headed to a side-room. It was there that Barak asked Bush if the US could supply Israel with a series of weapons it did not have in its arsenal, according to the report. Yedioth said these were believed to be vertical take-off and landing aircraft, along with bunker-busting bombs.

Hadley in the previous weeks had been briefing Bush about Israeli desires to carry out a strike against Iran’s nuclear program and Bush immediately understood what Barak wanted the weapons for.

According to Barak, Bush responded to the request by pointing at the defense minister and saying, “This guy frightens me.”

Bush then got to the point. “I want you to know the official position of the United States government. The US strongly opposes Israel taking action against the Iranian nuclear program,” Barak recalled the president replying.

“And in order not to be vague, I will tell you that the United States does not intend to act either as long as I serve as president,” Bush added, according to Barak.

Seemingly expecting the negative response from Bush, Olmert decided he’d make use of the recording the next day when he was meeting the president and Hadley at his office.US President George W. Bush visits the historical Masada site together with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, May 15, 2008. (Ariel Jerozolimski/Flash90)

According to the report, Olmert asked the national security adviser to leave the room. Hadley insisted on staying, arguing that protocol required him to be present when matters of national security were being discussed.

But Olmert was adamant and Bush assured Hadley it was okay for him to be left alone with the prime minister, the report said.

“I’m going to play you something, but I ask that you not talk about it with anyone, not even with the director of the CIA,” the report quoted Olmert as telling Bush from within the closed-door meeting. Bush reportedly agreed to the request.

Olmert pulled out a recording device, hit play and a man could be heard speaking in Persian.

“The man speaking here is Mohsen Fakhrizadeh,” Olmert reportedly explained. “Fakhrizadeh is the head of the “AMAD” program, Iran’s secret military nuclear project. The one it denies exists at all,” Olmert told Bush according to the report.

The prime minister then revealed that Israeli intelligence services had managed to recruit an Iranian agent close to Fakhrizadeh who had been feeding Jerusalem information on the nuclear scientist for years.

Military personnel stand near the flag-draped coffin of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a nuclear scientist who was killed on Friday, during a funeral ceremony in Tehran, Iran, November 30, 2020. (Iranian Defense Ministry via AP)

Olmert provided Bush with an English-language transcript of what Fakhrizadeh had said in Persian.

According to the report, Fakhrizadeh could be heard giving details about the development of Iranian nuclear weapons. However, the Yedioth report only quotes selected phrases, without the word nuclear. The scientist complains that the government is not providing him with sufficient funds to carry out his work. On the one hand, Fakhrizadeh says, in an apparent reference to his superiors, “they want five warheads,” but on the other, “they aren’t letting me work.”

Fakhrizadeh then goes on to criticize colleagues in the defense ministry and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to the report.

Bush read the recording’s translation and reacted with silence. Yedioth claimed the recording served as a “smoking atomic gun” for Olmert.

The premier recognized that Bush would not sell Israel the weapons it was looking for, so he made a new request: full intelligence cooperation on the Iranian nuclear issue.

When Bush agreed, Olmert decided to up the ante and proposed that the two carry out joint operations against Iran’s nuclear project, Yedioth said.

This photo released by the semi-official Fars News Agency shows the scene where Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in Absard, a small city just east of the capital, Tehran, Iran, Friday, Nov. 27, 2020. (Fars News Agency via AP)

The president agreed to this as well, the report said.

Senior officials in Olmert’s office at the time told Yedioth the recording served as a “defining moment” in the two countries’ joint effort to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb.

One apparent instance of such cooperation was the Stuxnet computer virus, which was uncovered in 2010 and was widely reported to have been developed together by US and Israeli intelligence. Stuxnet penetrated Iran’s rogue nuclear program, taking control and sabotaging parts of its enrichment processes by speeding up its centrifuges. Up to 1,000 centrifuges out of 5,000 were eventually damaged by the virus, according to reports, setting back the nuclear program.

Yedioth speculated that the Stuxnet plan, called Operation Olympic Games, was born as a result of Olmert’s revelation of the Fakhrizadeh recording to Bush.

However, other reports have said that Bush gave the go-ahead for the operation as early as 2006.

The recording was just one part of the trove of evidence that Israel has gathered on Fakhrizadeh and Iran’s nuclear program over the years, Yedioth noted.

In 2018, the Mossad spirited a huge trove of documentation out of a warehouse in Tehran, detailing Iran’s rogue nuclear program.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands in front of a picture of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who he named as the head of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, April 30, 2018 (YouTube screenshot)

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed in April 2018 that Israel had attained the archive, which he said proved that Iran had lied about not seeking a nuclear weapons arsenal, he specified that Fakhrizadeh oversaw the program and said: “Remember that name, Fakhrizadeh.”

Faisal bin Farhan says talks are only path to a sustainable agreement; reiterates Saudis ‘completely open’ to normalizing with Israel once Palestinian state established

By AGENCIES and TOI STAFF5 December 2020, 5:55 pm  0Then-US vice president Joe Biden, right, offers his condolences to Prince Salman bin Abdel-Aziz upon the death of on his brother Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, at Prince Sultan palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 27, 2011 . (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

The Gulf states must be consulted if a US nuclear accord with Iran is revived, Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat said Saturday, warning it is the only path towards a sustainable agreement.

US President-elect Joe Biden has signaled he will return the United States to a nuclear accord with Iran and that he still backs the 2015 deal negotiated under Barack Obama, from which Donald Trump withdrew.

A return to the agreement, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), would delight US allies in Europe, but concern the Gulf states, who have criticized US engagement with Tehran.

Biden has indicated he will bring Iran’s US-allied Arab neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia, which sees Iran as its arch-rival, into the process.

“Primarily what we expect is that we are fully consulted, that we and our other regional friends are fully consulted in what goes on vis a vis the negotiations with Iran,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told AFP.Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud addresses the Manama Dialogue security conference in the Bahraini capital, on December 5, 2020. (Mazen Mahdi/AFP)

“The only way towards reaching an agreement that is sustainable is through such consultation,” he said on the sidelines of a security conference in Bahrain’s Manama.

“I think we’ve seen as a result of the after-effects of the JCPOA that not involving the regional countries results in a build up of mistrust and neglect of the issues of real concern and of real effect on regional security.”

Asked whether the Biden administration was already in touch about the shape of a revived Iran deal, Prince Faisal said there were no contacts as yet, but that “we are ready to engage with the Biden administration once they take office.”

“We are confident that both an incoming Biden administration, but also our other partners, including the Europeans, have fully signed on to the need to have all the regional parties involved in a resolution,” he said.

The US imposed crippling sanctions on Iran after Trump unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018. In response, Iran began publicly exceeding limits set by the agreement while saying it would quickly return to compliance if the United States did the same.

Biden told The New York Times this week that if Iran returned to compliance, the US would rejoin, after which he would seek to tighten Iran’s nuclear constraints and address concerns about both its missile program and Iran’s support for militants in the region.

According to the Times report, Biden and his team are working on the premise that if the deal is restored on both sides there will need to be new negotiations on the length of time for restrictions on the production of the fissile material necessary for producing a bomb, originally set at 15 years under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

Additionally, Biden said, steps would need to be taken to address Tehran’s terror activities through regional proxies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attends a news conference with Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza in Caracas, Venezuela, November 5, 2020. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

The report said that the future Biden administration would want the talks with Tehran to include not only the original parties to the deal — Iran, the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union — but also key regional players Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Thursday his country won’t agree to renegotiate elements of the international accord limiting its nuclear program.

He also said Iran won’t agree to any curbs on its missile program or backing of regional proxies unless Western countries stop their “malign behavior” in the Middle East.

No normalization without Palestinian state

In his remarks, Bin Farhan reiterated that Saudi Arabia won’t normalize relations with Israel until a Palestinian state is established.

“We have as we have always been… completely open to full normalize relations with Israel. We think Israel will take its place in the region, but in order for that to happen and for that to be sustainable, we do need the Palestinians to get their state and we do need to settle that situation,” he said.

He said it was “critically important” to encourage the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1335143004361928704&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.timesofisrael.com%2Fsaudi-fm-biden-must-consult-gulf-states-on-rejoining-iran-nuclear-deal%2F&siteScreenName=timesofisrael&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px

The comments came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly held a secret rendezvous last month with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Saudi Red Sea city of Neom, alongside US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

It was the first known visit to Saudi Arabia by an Israeli leader, but the talks on Iran and possible normalization reportedly yielded no substantial progress.

The Trump administration had hoped Saudi Arabia would join the UAE and Bahrain in recognizing Israel and forging diplomatic ties, a move seen as increasingly distant in the wake of Joe Biden’s election as US president. But Saudi leaders have hitherto indicated that Israeli-Palestinian peace will have to come first.

It is believed that the two countries have long held clandestine ties, particularly on the issue of Iran.