What's past is prologue: Israel's covert campaign against Iran's nuclear program

that could lead to a wider regional war. A former CIA officer on Iran told the Daily Telegraph: “Disruption is designed to slow progress on the program, done in such a way that they don’t realize what’s happening. You are never going to stop it. The goal is delay, delay, delay until you can come up with some other solution or approach. We certainly don’t want the current Iranian government to have those weapons. It’s a good policy, short of taking them out militarily, which probably carries unacceptable risks.”

Reva Bhalla, a senior analyst with Stratfor, the U.S. private intelligence company with strong government security connections, told Sherwell that the strategy was to take out key people. “With co-operation from the United States, Israeli covert operations have focused both on eliminating key human assets involved in the nuclear program and in sabotaging the Iranian nuclear supply chain,” she said. “As U.S.-Israeli relations are bound to come under strain over the Obama administration’s outreach to Iran, and as the political atmosphere grows in complexity, an intensification of Israeli covert activity against Iran is likely to result.”

Rumor has it that Mossad agents were behind the death of Ardeshire Hassanpour, a top nuclear scientist at Iran’s Isfahan uranium plant, who died in mysterious circumstances from reported “gas poisoning” in 2007. Other recent deaths of important figures in the procurement and enrichment process in Iran and Europe have been the result of Israeli hits, intended to deprive Tehran of key technical skills at the head of the program, according to Western intelligence analysts. “Israel has shown no hesitation in assassinating weapons scientists for hostile regimes in the past,” a European intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Sherwell. “They did it with Iraq and they will do it with Iran when they can.”

Mossad’s covert operations cover a range of activities. The former CIA operative revealed how Israeli and U.S. intelligence co-operated with European companies working in Iran to obtain photographs and other confidential material about Iranian nuclear and missile sites. “It was a real company that operated from time to time in Iran and in the nature of their legitimate business came across information on various suspect Iranian facilities,” he said.

Israel has also used front companies to infiltrate the Iranian purchasing network that the clerical regime uses to circumvent UN sanctions and obtain dual-use items — metals, valves, electronics, machinery — for its nuclear program. The businesses initially supply Iran with legitimate material, winning Teheran’s trust, and then start to deliver faulty or defective items that “poison” the country’s atomic activities. “Without military strikes, there is still considerable scope for disrupting and damaging the Iranian program and this has been done with some success,” said Yossi Melman, a prominent Israeli journalist who covers security and intelligence issues for the Haaretz newspaper.

Sherwell writes that Mossad and Western intelligence operations have also infiltrated the Iranian nuclear program and “bought” information from prominent atomic scientists. Israel has later selectively leaked some details to its allies, the media, and UN atomic agency inspectors. On one occasion, Iran itself is understood to have destroyed a nuclear facility near Tehran, bulldozing over the remains and replacing it with a football pitch, after its existence was revealed to UN inspectors. The regime feared that the discovery by inspectors of an undeclared nuclear facility would result in intense pressure at the UN for tougher action against Iran.

The Iranian government has become so concerned about penetration of its program that it has announced arrests of alleged spies in an attempt to discourage double agents. “Israel is part of a detailed and elaborate international effort to slow down the Iranian program,” said Melman.

There are skeptics. Vince Canastraro, the former CIA counter-terrorism chief, expressed doubts about the efficacy of secret Israeli operations against Iran. “You cannot carry out foreign policy objectives via covert operations,” he said. “You can’t get rid of a couple of people and hope to affect Iran’s nuclear capability.”

Ben Frankel is editor of the Homeland Security News Wire