March 31 update

31 March, 2012

Article 1.

TIME

Mo=sad Cutting Back on Covert Operations Inside Iran

Karl Vick=/a> http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/a=thor/karlvick/

Article 2.

Article 3.

Article 4.

Nicholas=Noe

Article 5.

Article 6.

Article 7.

Article 1.

TIME

Mossad Cutting Back on Covert Operations Inside Iran, Off=cials Say

Karl Vick http://globals=in.blogs.time.com/author/karlvick/

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March 30, 2012 -- Israel's intelligence services have scaled =ack covert operations inside Iran, ratcheting down by "dozens of percent=94 in recent months secret efforts to disable or delay the enemy state's nuclear program, senior Israeli security offi=ials tell TIME. The reduction runs across a wide spectrum of operations, c=tting back not only alleged high-profile missions such as assassinations a=d detonations at Iranian missile bases, but also efforts to gather firsthand on-the-ground intelligence and=recruit spies inside the Iranian program, according to the officials.

The new hesitancy has caused "increasing dissatisfaction" i=side Mossad, Israel's overseas spy agency, says one official. Another se=ior security officer attributes the reluctance to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who the official describes as worrie= about the consequences of a covert operation being discovered or going aw=y. Netanyahu was Prime Minister in 1997 when a Mossad attempt to assassina=e senior Hamas official Khaled Meshaal in Amman Jordan ended in fiasco. Two Mossad operatives were captur=d after applying a poison to Meshaal's skin, and returned to Israel only=after Netanyahu ordered the release of the antidote. The Prime Minister al=o was forced to release Hamas' spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin from an Israeli prison, dramatically boosting th= fortunes of the religious militant movement.

"Bibi is traumatized from the Meshaal incident," the offici=1 says. "He is afraid of another failure, that something will blow up in=his face."

Iranian intelligence already has cracked one cell trained and e=uipped by Mossad, Western intelligence officials earlier confirmed to TIME http://www.time=com/time/world/article/0,8599,2104372,00.html . The detailed =onfession on Iranian state television last year by Majid Jamali Fashid for=the January 2010 assassination by motorcycle bomb of nuclear scientist Mas=oud Ali Mohmmadi was genuine, those officials said, blaming a third country for exposing the cell.

In that case, the public damage to Israel was circumscribed by =he limits of Iran's credibility: Officials in Tehran routinely blame set=acks of all stripes on the "Zionists" and "global arrogance," their labels for Israel and the United States. But=that could change if the Islamic Republic produced a captured Israeli nati=nal or other direct evidence — something on the lines of the closed circ=it video footage and false passports that recorded the presence of Mossad agents in the Dubai 2010.=Difficult-to-deny hotel evidence where of Hamas=arms Israeli involvement runner Mahmoud trickled out al-Mabhouh for weeks; =etanyahu was found was dead Prime in his Minister room in then January as well.

The stakes are higher now. With the Iranian issue at the forefr=nt of the international agenda, a similar embarrassment could undo the imp=essive global front Washington has assembled against the mullahs — perhaps by allowing Iran to cast itself as victim,=or simply by recasting the nuclear issue itself, from one of overarching g=obal concern into a contest confined to a pair of longtime enemies.=/p>

Some warn that the assassinations already run that risk. After =he most recent killing, of nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan in Janu=ry, the United States "categorically" denied involvement in the death and issued a condemnation. Western intelli=ence officials say he was at least the third Iranian scientist killed by M=ssad operatives, who lately are running short of new targets, according to=lsraeli officials.

"It undercuts the consensus, th= international consensus on sanctions," says Mark Fitzpatrick, a former =tate Department nuclear proliferation specialist who opposes the assassinations.

The covert campaign also invites retribution from Iran's own =ar-reaching underground. In the space of just days last month, alleged Ira=ian plots against Israeli targets in Thailand, Azerbaijan, Singapore and Georgia were announced as thwarted, and Indian o=ficials blamed Iran for a nearly fatal attack that went forward in New Del=i. The wife of an Israeli diplomat was injured by a magnetic bomb attached=to her car by a passing motorcyclist, the precise method Israeli agents are alleged to have used repeatedly on t=e crowded streets of Tehran.

But scaling back covert operations against Iran also carries co=ts, especially as Iran hurries to disperse its centrifuges, some into faci=ities deep underground. Quoting an intelligence finding, one Israeli official says Iran itself estimates that sabotage to =ate has set back its centrifuge program by two full years. The computer vi=us known as Stuxnet — a joint

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effort by intelligence services in Israel =nd a European nation, Western intelligence officials say — is only the best known of a series of efforts to slow th= Iranian program, dating back years. That alleged effort involves a variet= of governments besides Israel, involving equipment made to purposely malf=nction after being tampered with before it physically entered Iran. The resulting setbacks prompted Iran to=announce it would manufacture all components of its nuclear program itself=— something outside experts are highly skeptical Tehran has the ability =o actually do.

"Iran has said for some time that they're self-sufficient, =ut that's a bag of wind," says Fitzpatrick, now at London's Internat=onal Institute for Strategic Studies. For example, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in February announced that Iran had =erfected a far more efficient centrifuge — a "fourth-generation" mac=ine, three levels beyond its original centrifuges, made from designs purch=sed from Pakistan's A.Q. Khan. Fitzpatrick has his doubts. "They haven't been able to get the second generation t= work over the last ten years," he says.

The alternative is importing equipment, which leaves the produc= vulnerable to continued tampering — especially in the shadowy markets o= front companies where Iran has been forced by U.S. and international sanctions to do much of its business. It can be =lmost impossible to know whom you're actually doing business with, a cir=umstance that favors Western intelligence agencies.

"The easiest way to sabotage is to introduce faulty parts int= the inventory from abroad," says Fitzpatrick.

Between assassination and silent sabotage lies another covert o=tion: Very loud sabotage. Recent years have brought a series of mysterious=explosions at complexes associated with Iran's nuclear program. TIME has reported http://www.time.comitime/world/article/0,8599,2099376,00.html Western sources saying=that Israel was responsible for the massive November blast at a Revolution=ry Guard missile base outside Tehran, which by dumb luck also claimed the =ife of the godfather of Iran's missile program.

But other blasts remain genuine mysteries. Weeks after a huge e=plosion darkened the sky over a uranium enrichment site in Isfahan, in cen=ral Iran, Israeli officials appeared eager to see what had actually happened. "I'm not sure what," a reti=ed senor intelligence official said two weeks afterward, then offered an a=alysis based on open-source satellite <http://isis-online.org/isis-reports=detail/no-visible-evidence-of-explosion-at-esfahan-nuclear-site-adjacent-f=cility-h photos available to anyone wit= an internet connection.