Goldberg: Warnings by Ex-Mossad Head May Backfire

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-04/ex-mossad-chief-s-iran-warnings-may-backfire-jeffrey-goldberg.html

In a country of hard men, Meir Dagan, the recently retired head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, is one of the hardest. He is the Siberian-born son of Holocaust survivors, an ex- commando who has arranged the assassinations of many of Israel’s enemies.

He is devoted to the defense of his country, and, like most of Israel’s samurai class, sees Iran, and its Jew- hating, missile-obsessed leadership, as his country’s foremost threat, because of its nuclear intentions and its support for the Islamist terror groups that seek Israel’s destruction.

So a pressing question in Israel today is this: Why has Dagan called into question the wisdom -- and, privately, even the sanity -- of any Israeli leader who contemplates a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities?

The answer illuminates an enormous divide within Israel’s national-security establishment. It also suggests that Dagan, without peer as a saboteur, assassin and spy, is a bungling strategist.