Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bears full responsibility for an “absurd” Iran strategy built around the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, former senior defense official and Iran nuclear expert Avner Vilan said in an interview with 103FM on Tuesday.
Speaking with Or Heller and Amichai Attali, Vilan praised the Mossad’s reported ability to reach former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but questioned the strategic purpose of attempting to recruit him.
“They managed to reach him, and they managed to speak with him. Operationally, that is impressive,” Vilan said. “But we need to stop being dazzled by it and ask ourselves: What was it for?”
Vilan described Israel’s broader plan as “absurd,” arguing that its goals were disconnected from the situation on the ground.
“Full responsibility for this lies with Benjamin Netanyahu, who decided to go to war with Khamenei’s assassination as an objective,” Vilan said. “He took a risk, and in my view, it was an absurd risk.”
“It did not correspond with reality,” he continued. “It failed miserably, and we are paying the price for it now.”
Ahmadinejad was an unlikely intelligence target
Despite his criticism of the broader strategy, Vilan said the Mossad’s reported ability to establish contact with Ahmadinejad was extraordinary.
“Even by the standards of espionage operations, this is unusual,” he said. “You do not recruit a country’s president every day, certainly not the president of Iran.”
Vilan said Ahmadinejad’s position as an outsider within the Iranian establishment may have made him more approachable than other senior figures.
“But you need to understand who this man is,” he said. “He was always something of an outsider, a kind of troll. Even when he was president, he was not the most powerful man in Iran.”
Vilan said this may explain why the Mossad was able to reach Ahmadinejad rather than other prominent Iranian officials.
Contact does not mean complete allegiance
Vilan cautioned that intelligence recruitment is rarely straightforward and that contact with a foreign intelligence agency does not necessarily mean that a source has fully changed sides.
“In these situations, it is not as though you wake up one morning and suddenly become a committed Zionist,” he said. “He met with the Mossad chief, but there is a spectrum. You can meet and do certain things, but that does not mean you are 100% on our side.”
“These matters are always complicated,” Vilan added. “There is ego, and there are other considerations. I do not know what Ahmadinejad wanted, but the fact is that he did not go all the way with it.”