The End of Terror

by Howitt, Bruce

  Because of Mossad and NIS efforts, many Iranian and North Korean hit squads were quietly eliminated or outed to the media. Most had been posing as attachés to their various delegations and consular offices. The NIS kept the Mossad informed of the activities of the two terrorist countries’ activities in the Far East, especially in Pakistan and Japan, and the Mossad kept the NIS informed of activities in the rest of the world.

  As a result of sophisticated surveillance techniques, Mossad had neutralized several Iranian hit squads, thwarting attempted assassinations of high-profile Iranian dissidents. These actions frustrated Iran, because the attempts were always made public and the perpetrators identified or terminated. Once their identities were leaked to UK, French, German, and US intelligence services, they were no longer clandestine or secretive and had to return to their homeland. Or they were neutralized.

  CHAPTER 27

  In 2012, Ari and Eli Gershon, part of the 9 team that eliminated Abu Yasser in Vienna a few years before, were sent to London to keep track of an Iranian Embassy staffer, Hussein Nasri, whose nickname was “The Messenger.” Nasri appeared to be a third economic attaché at the Iranian Embassy, but in fact, he was a senior Islamic Quds hit man whose mandate was to search out Iranian dissidents and kill them. Both Mossad and 9 had been gathering intelligence on Nasri for about six months and were now ready to remove him.

  The two 9 operatives were staying in a Mossad safe house near Wembley Park and travelled into West London on the underground transit system. They had observed Nasri regularly going for walks in Green Park not far from Buckingham Palace. Once they had clearance on his bona fide confirmation as a really good customer, they implemented their plan.

  As per his habit, Nasri was seated on a bench watching birds and small rodents fight over the crumbs and broken remnants from his lunch. He usually absorbed himself in his smartphone or an Iranian newspaper.

  With Eli covering his back, Ari simply walked past The Messenger and, as he drew level with him, without missing a step, shot him in the eye with a.22 silenced Beretta. Nasri slumped over and appeared to be asleep. There were a few passersby and a pair of nannies pushing strollers, but no one paid any attention to the man dozing on the bench.

  Ari and Eli unhurriedly exited the park, walked to the Green Park Tube station, and used their Oyster cards to take the Piccadilly Line to Acton Green. This tactic was part of their countersurveillance protocol, to ensure that they had not been acquired — identified — by any of the British or foreign security agencies. At Acton Green they exited the Tube and waited for another Piccadilly line train destined for Uxbridge. On leaving the Uxbridge station, they took a bus to Wembley Park, where they retrieved their rental car from in front of the safe house and drove directly to London Stansted Airport for a flight to Athens. From there they transited to Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport, in Israel.

  By the time they landed at Ben Gurion, the BBC was delivering a headline about an Iranian man attached to the Iranian Embassy who had been found dead in Green Park. There were no initial reports of the cause of death, but some sources — who wished to remain anonymous — believed him to be associated with several Iranian regime attempts to assassinate expatriate dissidents. Early assumptions were made that one of the anti-Regime organizations had managed to assassinate him.

  Keen interest in anything Iranian in Europe and the Far East had allowed the Israelis and the NIS to compile a huge amount of intelligence on both Iran and North Korea. While US intelligence agencies relied mostly on electronic and satellite surveillance, the Mossad and the NIS went in on the ground and captured their intelligence directly from the sources they had spent years cultivating. Many Mossad agents were Farsi speakers and the NIS could infiltrate North Korean cells. Both agencies had been developing these skills and the resulting intelligence gleaned over a long period of time, thus making their information highly valuable and pertinent.

  CHAPTER 28

  Tel Aviv, July–August 2015

  Dov and Ari used HUMINT from Tehran, Qom, and Bandar Abbas with information shared by Naftalin’s Mossad to develop a radical and dangerous plan. The mission was to destroy the heavily fortified and guarded nuclear facilities and knock out the Iranian threat once and for all.

  It was determined that any direct air raid on the nuclear installations would be unsuccessful; they were heavily protected by surface-to-air missile batteries and the entrances were blast- and bombproof. Several installations, especially Natanz and Fordow, were deep underground and impervious to an air bombardment. Dov and Ari believed that they had to introduce high explosives directly into the facilities and destroy them from below instead of from above. They asked their analysts at 9 and the IDF to provide as much detailed topographical information about the installations and their surroundings as possible.

  The findings were surprising. The information they were able to decipher from satellite photographs and on-the-ground human intelligence was that the underground facilities were all using sophisticated air exchange systems to provide fresh air to each facility and to exhaust stale air back out. The most interesting observation was that all the breather systems had their ducts installed a distance from the perimeter walls and infrastructure of the facilities.

  At first, the analysts and Macha’s team didn’t have an explanation for this anomaly. Finally, in a more in-depth review, one of the IAF pilots, Lt. Shimon Jacobitz, came up with a probable and plausible reason. The Iranians, prior to receiving the S-300 and S-400 surface-to-air missile defence systems, were concerned that the Israelis and/or the United States would initiate an air bombardment in an attempt to destroy the facilities. Jacobitz proposed, correctly, that the Iranians had been concerned that an air attack could block or knock out the air systems if they were located too close to the underground nuclear and missile plants. By locating the air-breathers a distance away from the main infrastructure, the Iranians minimized risk of the breather systems’ being damaged or rendered inoperable.

  For Dov, it was personal. His large family of ancestors — with the exception of his grandparents, Mayer and Ruth — had been destroyed in the Holocaust. Having been exposed to the rantings of the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had vowed on several occasions before and after the assassination of Darioush Rezaeinejad to wipe Israel off the map, Dov was emotional and passionate about doing everything in his power to prevent another Holocaust, regardless of what he or his team needed to do.

  The plan was both bold and simple. It was fraught with risk and would need steely resolve for Ari, Dov, and their teams to succeed. The two commanders spent twelve to fourteen hours daily laying out a highly detailed plan and intense training program. Much of their information in planning for Iran was shared with Colonel Naftalin as he prepared and trained the Mossad teams for the North Korean operation.

  Between the intelligence assets and data of both 9 and Mossad, the wealth of knowledge about Iran and North Korea’s cooperation was much larger than many had originally considered. The more due diligence was carried out, the more apparent it became that both Iran and North Korea posed grave danger to the world in general and Israel in particular. The brutal leaders of both nations had previously shown many times that they had no compunction in murdering their perceived enemies or critics anywhere in the world.

  Colonel Naftalin was adamant that no Mossad intelligence of his was to be shared with other Israeli or Allied agencies, specifically SIS and the CIA. He was still concerned that there were staff at Mossad who believed in clandestinely sharing future operations and plans. Some did it for self-aggrandizement, others for pure financial gain. The liberal media, such as Haaretz and CNN–Middle East, paid small fortunes to leakers. Their motives were simply to sell news regardless of whether or not it jeopardized national security.

  Ari and Dov’s plans required eight teams of special forces to infiltrate Iran and make their way to Bandar Abbas and the seven nuclear facilities: the Arak heavy water plant, the Bushehr and Fordow nuclear power
plants, the Bonab and Tehran nuclear research centres, the Natanz enrichment plant, and the Parchin military complex. Ari and the 9 executives agreed with Dov and Lt. Jacbovitz that the underground nuclear facilities at Fordow, Bushehr, and Natanz would have to be attacked and destroyed via the breathers. The aboveground facilities and Bandar Abbas would require commando teams’ breaching the security systems and barriers to infiltrate and destroy the plants and facilities.

  Ari and Dov had no illusions about the risks and dangers inherent in their plan. The Iranians were a sophisticated people with a fanatical sense of pride in their technological achievements, which were considerable. The Iranian military was not third-world; their defence systems were regarded as formidable.

  After presenting their proposal to Macha, they were summoned to the office of the prime minister, Gershon Mendelsohn, who was joined by his Defense Minister, Yaakov Melnik. Both Mendelsohn and Melnik had been frustrated for the past eight years because of restraints placed on Israel by the US president, who had seemed more concerned with his standing in the Muslim world than the tangible threat from the Shi′ites in Iran to not only Israel, but the whole Sunni Arab world and even the Americas.

  CHAPTER 29

  Gershon Mendelsohn was a Sabra; he was born on Kibbutz Ein Gev, where his grandparents had settled after securing passage from Poland in 1936. Gershon’s grandfather had read the tea leaves and believed that Nazi Germany would eventually go on a rampage across Europe. There was already open anti-Semitism in Poland, which the rise of Hitler and the Nazis only enabled and empowered. As a result, Menachem Mendelsohn, who had a successful wholesale jewellery business, sold all his assets to secure a circuitous journey through the Balkans and Turkey to reach eventually what was then Palestine. They became founding members of Ein Gev in 1937 and quickly settled into kibbutz life.

  From the time of their arrival until after the Six-Day War thirty years later in 1967, life on Ein Gev was just an artillery shell away from the Syrian controlled Golan Heights. Menachem became a skilled banana plantation farmer, and he and his wife, Sarah, led a happy life. They had two children, Isaac and Nathan, who grew up through the early years of the State and were staunch Zionists. Nathan married a stunning Iraqi Jew, Shoshana Shamash, whose parents had arrived at Ein Gev after they fled Iraq in 1948.

  Nathan and Shoshana had three children: Naomi, born in 1951, Hannah in 1952, and then Gershon in 1954. Gershon was fascinated by politics and at the young age of eighteen he had already served a term on the kibbutz council. When he joined the IDF just in time for the 1973 Yom Kippur War, he distinguished himself in some of the heaviest fighting in the Sinai. After he mustered out in 1976, he ran as a MK for the district where Ein Gev was located. Easily elected, he soon became a star in the Knesset. He was considered extremely capable and built a solid reputation as a fair and dependable Knesset member.

  During the time when Menachem Begin was prime minister, Gershon became a valuable aide to Begin. He was called on many times to be spokesman for the PM. Begin was Gershon’s hero and mentor, and as Gershon rose through the ranks of Likud and ultimately became prime minister himself, he always remembered the famous Begin doctrine, which stated, “On no account shall we permit an enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction against the people of Israel. We shall defend the citizens of Israel in good time and with all means at our disposal.”

  Prime Minister Gershon Mendelsohn was a fierce defender of Israel and world Jewry; he would follow the Begin doctrine on many occasions. Previous plans had been developed by Israel to enter Iran with stealth aero technology and bomb the nuclear facilities as they had done in Iraq and Syria. Notwithstanding US reservations and the hate for Israel of some members of the US State Department, certain influential leaders within the IDF and the Cabinet were also unconvinced bombing would succeed. Even while negotiations regarding the nuclear pact with Iran were being carried out in great secrecy, members of the IDF and the Israeli Defense Ministry were in deep discussions with some of their counterparts at the Pentagon. US military professionals were terribly frustrated by the inertia of the White House and State Department vis-à-vis Iran. The Pentagon had already war gamed stealth bomber attacks on all the facilities in collaboration with the Israelis using the huge bunker-busting munitions.

  Each time the Joint Chiefs pushed their plan up to the civilians at State and the White House, they were rebuffed with nebulous and obsequious excuses: “The timing isn’t right,” or, from the president to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, “Haven’t you got enough on your hands without another war in the Middle East? Good gracious, General, we will be a pariah among nations if we drop bombs haphazardly all over Iran or the Middle East or Asia just to demonstrate to that war hawk Mendelsohn in Israel that we have his back.”

  At a subsequent meeting in the Oval Office regarding the impending nuclear treaty with Iran, the secretary of state said, “Mr. President, if we pull this off with the Iranians, you will be up for a Nobel and so probably will my Iranian counterpart.”

  “You must understand that as my secretary of state who negotiated this deal, you for sure should also be eligible.”

  The secretary shared a broad smile. It was easy to see his ego grow as he preened on receiving encouragement from his boss.

  CHAPTER 30

  Macha proposed a radical addition to their plan. During their intelligence-gathering, 9 uncovered alarming information. The nuclear missile tests being carried out by the North Koreans were being made in tandem with the Iranians’. This information validated what some in the Israeli security and military had surmised for several years.

  When Israel destroyed the Syrian nuclear reactor at al-Kibar in Northern Syria, there was little or no reaction or international condemnation. Based on intercepted communications between Syria, Iran, and North Korea, the Israelis determined that the three countries were coordinating their nuclear ambitions. Syria wanted a nuclear reactor and the ability to build a bomb and was leveraging its relationships with Iran and North Korea. The Iranians were providing technical and personnel assistance to North Korea on missile technology and fissionable material, and the North Koreans were aiding in the design of nuclear reactors and testing Iranian-designed nuclear bombs while aiding the Libyans and Syrians.

  Macha and Eli Naftalin recognized that if the objectives were to end terror once and for all, then the North Korean threat would also have to be removed at the same time as the Iranian threat. Israel was in North Korea’s crosshairs ever since a train loaded with plutonium fissile material destined for shipment to Syria had been destroyed in 2004 and both suspected Israel.

  The train had been nearing the North Korean port of Namp'o carrying sealed wagons with suspected nuclear material. The train also held Syrian and Iranian technicians and scientists as well as some of their respective special forces. An anonymous commando attack sabotaged the train, killing most of the Syrian and Iranian scientists and many of their and North Korean special forces. The Mossad operators, aided by South Korean Special Forces, had planned the attack for weeks. The most difficult part of the operation was that they only had minutes to exit the area after they had triggered the bombs, destroying the train. The eight men – four Israelis and four South Koreans – had to immediately run to evade the massive North Korean manhunt that activated almost immediately. Hiding in rice paddies and small copses of trees by day, they finally reached their extraction point on the coast on the fourth night, escaping via a South Korean Navy operation. All of the team members were removed safely and without injury.

  Israel had not taken official responsibility, but most understood that Israel was responsible. From this point on, Israel was a key focus of the North Koreans. They knew that the Israelis were keenly aware of their close cooperation with the Iranians.

  Then in September 2007, Israeli fighter-bombers and fighter jets destroyed the Syrian facility at al-Kibar, for which the original shipment was intended. This Kibar facility was Iranian financed. They were estimated to have
spent between one and three billion US dollars on the illicit project. The design was essentially a North Korean design constructed under North Korean supervision. The intended bomb was a hybrid of the Khan design, which was created by the Pakistani nuclear physicist, AQ Khan.

  Khan was suspected of offering his designs to several rogue Islamic regimes besides Iran and North Korea, including Libya and Saudi Arabia. At least a dozen North Korean scientists and engineers and several Iranians were killed in the bombing raid on al-Kibar. Obviously, the North Koreans could not acknowledge this fact, but they were absolutely furious with Israel and determined to exact revenge. The loss of face felt among the Syrians, North Koreans, and Iranians was huge, but nowhere near the weight of the financial blow suffered by Iran and Syria.

  In Iran, people were living in poor circumstances because the national treasury was being squandered on the nuclear program and the financing of arms for Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations. This was leading to serious discontent among the populace. The details of Operation Orchard had provided 9, Ari, and Dov with the keys to planning a successful attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities. Operation Orchard was carried out by eight IAF fighter-bomber F-15Is and F-16Is supported by an ELINT aircraft. The day prior to the air attack, elite teams of Sayeret Matkal Special Forces were involved in highlighting the target with laser designators so the missiles and bombs deployed by the fighter-bombers landed with pinpoint accuracy on designated targets.