When Meir Dagan speaks ...
Meir Dagan appeared Sunday on the popular US program and political sounding board 60 Minutes, where he took on Netanyahu and much of the US and Israeli right, albeit obliquely. The interview was interspersed with photos and anecdotes establishing Dagan's strong military and security credentials and his likely association with a number of assassinations across the Middle East. He had already spoken out last year against war with Iran, calling it "the stupidest thing I have ever heard".
The former Mossad chief noted, with some qualifications, the "rationality" of the Iranian leadership. Dagan is not lecturing the American public on Cartesian philosophy or game theory. He is breaking with Israelis and Americans who claim - perhaps even believe - that Iran is ruled by crazed clerics intent on ending the world who cannot be deterred from using nuclear arms. Mutually assured destruction, Dagan believes, can be obtained in the Middle East. It was the basis of the US-USSR standoff for many decades, which kept conflict in check until the fall of the communist regime.
Dagan has followed relations with Iran for decades. He knows that Israel had strong ties with Iran under the shah and also for many years after the mullahs came to power in 1979, as Israel helped in the long war against Iraq (1980-88). The breakdown in relations did not come from a change in ideology or policy in Tehran; it came from a political shift in Jerusalem that, following the destruction of Saddam's army in the First Gulf War, suddenly - and perhaps erroneously - saw Iran as unchecked and dangerous. Iran soon became an enemy.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NC13Ak01.html
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