by Yoav Limor
Outgoing Military Intelligence research division head Brig. Gen. Itai Brun warns of an "ongoing mess" in the Middle East in 2015 • In an exclusive interview, Brun outlines the challenges posed by a dangerous and complicated region, with little optimism.
"ISIS is an incredible
brand," says Brig. Gen. Itai Brun
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Photo credit: Ziv Koren  |
Even the most die-hard optimists will have
trouble remaining optimistic after reading what the Israel Defense
Forces' military intelligence forecasts for 2015. To sum it up in three
words: an ongoing mess -- at least according to outgoing director of the
Military Intelligence research division, Brig. Gen. Itai Brun.
Brun, who is retiring from the IDF at the
culmination of an impressive career in intelligence, has far more
questions than answers after manning his current position. The Middle
East is more complicated now than when he took the job four years ago:
more conflicted, much more violent and far more difficult to predict.
Under these circumstances, the expectation
that the military intelligence units will be able to accurately forecast
the future becomes nearly impossible to fulfill. The old intelligence
perceptions no longer apply in this new reality, which forces the
intelligence units to confront four new and complicated challenges
(relevant in all the Middle Eastern fronts):
• The challenge "coming into being": While
traditional intelligence research always relied on the analysis of the
other side's intentions and actions, the events of recent years are a
clear result of a dynamic that lacks advance planning or decision-making
in the form of pinning down defined objectives.
• The challenge of "disappearance": In the
past, it was enough to pick up a pair of binoculars or take some
photographs in order to gather intelligence on the enemy. The new
generation of enemies, which is seamlessly embedded in the civilian
population and works deep underground, obligates intelligence gatherers
to make exerted gathering and research efforts to expose them.
• The challenge of "speed": In the past,
processes required time and thought out decisions, but today everything
happens at a dizzying speed. The technological developments in
telecommunications (mainly the cyber field) and the use of weapons that
don't require any special training or preparation (like missiles and
rockets) dramatically cut the time of thinking-deciding-acting
processes.
• The challenge of "shifting": In three words,
the information revolution. It provides unprecedented amounts of data,
but also creates an overabundance, flooding the system, forcing
intelligence gatherers to invest time in analyzing mass amounts of data
and distinguishing the important information from the unimportant.
These four challenges, according to Brun, are
at the crux of the current intelligence effort and are critical to
understanding today's reality.
"The key issue that I have been grappling with
over the last few years is how to practice intelligence gathering in an
age of uncertainty and instability," he says in an exclusive interview
with Israel Hayom. "In order to do that, we had to differentiate between
secrets and mysteries. A secret is something that someone, somewhere,
knows -- how many rockets Hezbollah has, or where Iran has secret
facilities, for example. The task is to infiltrate the most clandestine
places in order to know, too.
"But in the last few years, we have shifted
from dealing with large volumes of secrets to dealing with mysteries.
Unlike secrets, mysteries are questions that don't have an answer: Who
will replace [Syrian President Bashar] Assad? When will Iran have
nuclear capability? What will happen in Tahrir Square if we strike in
Gaza? The answers to these questions have not been decided yet. Bashar
hasn't decided who will succeed him, and even his successor doesn't know
it yet."
These questions are mainly derived from the
events of the Arab Spring, which rocked the Middle East in recent years.
Military intelligence researchers, he reveals, are divided on whether
the instability will continue. Some believe that the shock wave is over
and that the major events are behind us. Brun is among those who believe
that the old world order has been replaced with a long-term lack of
order, and are convinced that the region will not regain stability in
the foreseeable future.
'First we take Damascus, then we take Jerusalem'
Brun completed the first, and most
significant, part of his service in the Air Force intelligence unit. The
most menacing enemy at the time was Syria. "My focus was on Syria for
decades. I view myself as an expert on Syria. But most of the experience
I've amassed over the years is almost irrelevant today," he confesses.
"There is still 'little Syria,' which is where Bashar runs the show, and
there is still a [Syrian] air force and surface to surface missiles and
even a few ground forces, but these are not the main threats."
Q: Will Assad hold on to power?
"The debate surrounding Syria is actually
about the entities located on the territory we once referred to as
Syria. There is no Syria anymore. In my opinion, in the coming years,
there will be no Syria in the atlases from which children study. There
will be an entity that has yet to be named, which we affectionately call
'little Syria.' It extends from Daraa, Damascus, Homs and Aleppo all
the way to the coast. That is where Bashar reigns. This is where most of
the citizens who were once in Syria reside, and this is where most of
the national infrastructure is there. I believe that within this
territory, Assad will survive. In the rest of the territory, independent
entities will be formed -- mostly Islamist, some radically so. That is
the current situation in the Golan Heights."
Q: Why are these groups in the Golan Heights refraining from action against us?
"I assume they will take action. It seems
rather inevitable, because of their ideology. They haven't taken action
until now because they were occupied with overthrowing the regime in
Syria. Their ideology, explicit and well documented, is 'first we take
Damascus, then we take Jerusalem.' There was a discussion among them
whether it would be better to do it simultaneously or one after the
other, like in Sinai. At the moment they have decided on doing it in
stages, but that could change at any minute. I am convinced that it is
only a matter of time before they attack us in the Golan Heights."
This intelligence insight regarding the deep
change sweeping over Syrian and the Golan Heights has led the IDF to
make dramatic changes on the Syria front: A new fence has been erected, a
new division has been recruited and operational perceptions that have
been implemented for years have now been replaced. These efforts are
meant to ward off radical Islam, which Military Intelligence compares to
the Hun tribes that invaded Europe 1,500 years ago. The most prominent
of the Islamist groups -- ISIS -- isn't present on Israel's border yet,
but the focus dedicated to this group has increased dramatically in the
last few months.
"It is an incredible brand," says Brun. "With
four yards of orange fabric and a few knives they managed to enter all
our minds. They took over a large territory, from Ar-Raqqah in Syria to
the outskirts of Baghdad. They used Hunnish methods to scare everyone
into fleeing. But it must be said that this is an unstable takeover, and
its future depends on their meeting with the international coalition.
On this, too, intelligence experts are divided. I think that the
coalition will have trouble doing what [U.S. President Barack] Obama has
promised on the podium -- to "degrade and ultimately destroy" ISIS.
This thing cannot be destroyed. I'm not sure that they will continue to
spread militarily, but it will continue to spread ideologically. More
and more existing organizations will pledge allegiance to ISIS, similar
to what is currently happening in Sinai, Gaza and Lebanon. This is a
nearly decade-old idea, and like the idea behind the Muslim Brotherhood,
it will never disappear."
Brun talks about "thousands" of European
citizens who have joined ISIS since last summer. The obvious concern is
from when these citizens return home, brainwashed and militarily
trained. The fear is that a wave of terrorism will wash over the
continent. The recent terrorist attacks in Paris may not have come out
of the ISIS greenhouse but they underscored the need for Western nations
to keep their eyes open. Brun says that the process has already begun,
at least at the level of locating and monitoring dangerous operatives.
But he is not optimistic: "There will not be complete success in this
battle. There are thousands of Western operatives who are coming home,
trained, equipped, with experience, but above all, motivated. The
terrorist attacks against the West, including against Israeli and Jewish
targets, will undoubtedly continue. This is a permanent phenomenon that
needs to be confronted."
No hope from Damascus
Almost two years ago, in March 2013, Brun
found himself in the middle of an international incident after saying at
a public lecture that Assad was using chemical weapons against his own
people. The U.S., which had pledged to intervene militarily in Syria if
such a "red line" was crossed, criticized Brun and accused him of
disseminating unsubstantiated information. They had to backtrack several
months later when thousands of people were killed in a chemical attack
in Damascus. In time, it turned out that the information Brun was
relaying had not only been solid, but it was also well known to the
Americans. They simply wanted to avoid a new Middle East adventure.
Ultimately, these events led to Syria's near
absolute disarming in terms of chemical weapons. "The threat has
shifted," Brun says. "It is no longer thousands of air missiles carrying
hundreds of strategic and lethal chemical warheads that could have hit
our homefront. Assad may still have a limited chemical capability but he
lacks the means to transport it. He used his Scud missiles against his
own citizens."
But still, Brun points to a major change that
the public is not aware of: The strategic threat of the chemical weapons
has turned into a tactical threat. "In the end, Bashar [Assad] has in
fact been using chemical weapons on his people throughout all of last
year. It's not sarin or VX, but other agents. He uses them on his own
population, and to us it seems very natural that terrorist organizations
will get their hands on these kinds of weapons, or that they will be
transferred to Hezbollah. It may not pose a strategic threat to the
[Israeli] homefront, but it is certainly a threat to the [Israeli
military]."
Q: What do these chemical agents do?
"They neutralize in low doses and kill in high
doses. [Assad] used chlorine gas, for example. These are chemicals that
may not kill thousands, but people in Syria have already been killed by
them."
Q: What you know, the West also knows. Why isn't anyone doing anything about it?
"Because it doesn't cause mass casualties.
This time I have to be careful, but I will say this, and it doesn't have
to do with chemical weapons: 200,000 people have been killed in Syria
and the world is doing nothing. That is unbelievable, and it is not just
true in regard to chemical weapons. When I spoke back then it was part
of a wider sense that there was genocide being committed in Syria and
that it could be stopped, and that no one was doing it."
Q: What scenario in Syria would be best for Israel?
"The best outcome for us is not realistic --
the radical axis of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah loses its influence, and
the Islamists are unable to secure a victory. That is something that
could have been achieved in 2013, if the West had taken action and a
moderate Sunni element had emerged from the wreckage. But that didn't
happen. Today we have to choose between the radical axis and radical
Islam. Both are equally bad, so in the Syria development there is no
optimistic aspect."
Q: Assad attributes to Israel several strikes on Syrian soil. Why has he not retaliated?
"In my opinion, he is intimidated. And he has
more pressing matters to tend to. There is the intelligence approach,
which we have never identified with, that asserts that when an Arab
leader feels pressured, he will attack Israel. That is not true. He is
dealing with a bunch of punks. He doesn't need the neighborhood bully on
his case as well."
Q: If we enter into a war with Hezbollah, will he join in?
"That is a perfect example of something that
is not a secret, but a mystery. It depends on the concrete context. I
think that he will continue to avoid having us attack him. To the point,
he will turn on his television, he will see that Hezbollah is doing
okay, then he'll do something small to fulfill his obligation. If he
sees that Hezbollah is not okay, he will have a very difficult decision
to make. But the very question derives from the old Syria. The question
is not what Bashar will do, but whether Hezbollah and Iran, which are so
significantly present in Syria, will use that presence to wage war with
Israel on the Syrian front, with or without Bashar's authorization."
Nasrallah's dilemma
Over the last few months, Hezbollah has
resumed action against Israel in the north. At first they did it by way
of emissaries in the Golan Heights. Lately they have been doing it
directly, and out in the open, in Har Dov. Military Intelligence picked
up signs indicating that this would happen as early as two years ago,
after the first airstrike attributed to Israel on Syrian soil. In that
strike, the target was the SA-17 systems intended for Hezbollah. A month
later, in a recorded interview, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan
Nasrallah vowed that if Israel acts in Lebanon, Hezbollah would respond.
Nasrallah not only made threats, but he also
made a clear distinction: Hezbollah would not retaliate for attacks on
Syria, but attacks on Lebanon would not go unanswered. "In January 2014
he identified what he viewed for the first time as an [Israeli] attack
on Lebanese soil," says Brun. "Even before then, there were all kinds of
events that he could not explain or definitively prove that they were
'Israeli' -- like a high-ranking commander who was killed, and other
incidents. But this was obvious, and what happened was that he made good
on his threat. Granted, it was a marginal incident that he could have
easily glossed over, because the attack he attributed to us was in an
isolated area, very close to the border with Syria. But I think that he
felt that we were testing him, starting out small in efforts to open up
Lebanon to our attacks as well."
Q: So he sent us a signal.
"Yes. That was in March. He identified a
device he attributed to Israel. True, he has discovered many like it
over the years, but this time one of his operatives was killed and he
took responsibility, so, in his eyes, he had to respond. In my opinion,
he didn't do it with a happy heart. Only to signal to us that he had
enough."
Hezbollah's response to that incident was to
detonate bombs on an Israeli unit in Har Dov. Two Israeli soldiers were
hurt, but the incident could have easily ended up with Israeli
casualties in the double digits. Some people, including Brun, believe
that the IDF's weak response to this incident taught Hezbollah that
Israel would accept reopening the Har Dov front for battle. "They think
that as far as we are concerned, we can contain that area. They made
that mistake in 2006, and they may make it again."
Q: What will the third Lebanon war look like?
"It's complicated, because I can only describe what Hezbollah will do. What we will do is a different question."
Q: So let's focus on Hezbollah.
"They will try to fire a large amount of
rockets and missiles into our territory, more than a thousand a day: a
thousand short range projectiles and a few dozen more mid- and
long-range missiles. Unlike the Second Lebanon War, I believe that next
time we will see Hezbollah forces on Israeli soil," Brun warned. "They
will come in two forms: One will be terror attacks -- pinpoint strikes
in Nahariya or Shlomi or Maalot -- and the other will be more
substantial operations to grab territory inside Israel."
Q: Does that mean, for example, that a Hezbollah force crosses the fence and takes over an Israeli community?
"Yes. There is a deep seated idea here -- to
undermine Israel's sense of security. I mean even as I say it, and you
write it, it is not really sinking in. When it happens, we will be
deeply shocked. In Nasrallah's view, that deep shock is something that
can help him in the long term to bring down the State of Israel."
Q: That means that instead of attacking, we will have to deal chiefly with defense.
"From an operations perspective, what you are
describing is true, but that is not the main issue. It's like the
Egyptian Third Army in the Yom Kippur War. In the end it was a small,
surrounded area, but it opened up the Egyptian's sense of victory."
Q: What is Nasrallah hoping to achieve in the next war?
"I don't think he wants the next war. But when
it happens, he will want to inflict as much damage as possible. It is
not about deterrence: We have to believe what they are saying. They want
to destroy the State of Israel. They don't have an operational plan
with a target date, but that is the main idea."
Q: What is the lesson of the latest Gaza campaign -- Operation Protective Edge?
"The lesson is that we are generally headed in
the right direction. But they are building up weapons stores and
focusing on short-range weapons in efforts to target the population and
hurt our forces."
Q: What about tunnels?
"We haven't found any, but we are always looking. The basic assumption is that they exist and we have to find them."
Hezbollah invests most its efforts into
amassing rockets, in bulk. They already have about 100,000. More
precisely, the aim is to target sensitive and strategic Israeli
locations and thereby immobilize the Israeli population. The targets
include the Kirya Defense Ministry compound in Tel Aviv as well as Air
Force and Intelligence bases, but also the oil refinery in Haifa,
electric company infrastructure, Ben-Gurion Airport, the ports, and
more. "Tel Aviv will be hit," Brun stresses. "How much? That depends on
the success of our offensive strikes."
Q: Will Hezbollah be able to accurately strike any target it wishes?
"They are making every effort to obtain the
precise capability to do that. They are not there yet. It will happen at
some point."
Q: Do we have quality intelligence on Hezbollah?
"Yes. So good that no one between Hadera and
Gedera will be hit by Hezbollah rockets? No. Our intelligence
capabilities are not good enough to prevent rockets from striking our
territory, but it is good enough to minimize this threat as much as
possible."
Another war could erupt
Five months after Operation Protective Edge,
it looks like the so-called "drizzle" of rockets from Gaza has returned
to Israel's southern communities. Military Intelligence experts say not
only is Hamas not responsible for the rocket fire, the rockets are being
launched in clear defiance of Hamas' stated interest to maintain the
calm.
"It is not debatable, because it is based on
the strongest pool of information," Brun concludes, but rushes to
explain that "the story, as usual, is far more complicated. Hamas is
trying to signal to us that there is a direct correlation between the
economic hardship in Gaza and security in Israel. Ultimately, Hamas may
become committed to its signals. But one thing is certain, as certain as
one can be in this region: Hamas does not want to initiate a
confrontation. The truth is that Hamas would have a hard time launching
an attack again."
Despite all that, however, it could still
happen. Just like it did last summer. Then, too, Brun was convinced that
Hamas was not interested in confrontation. This stance led him into a
profound, high-profile and damaging disagreement with the Shin Bet
security agency. Brun admits that damage was done, because "in that
disagreement there was a certain degree of concern over the
confidentiality of the information."
Q: Is Hamas rehabilitating the tunnels already?
"Yes. They are clearing out the wreckage and
trying to rebuild. Are they digging new tunnels into our territory? I
would guess that not right now."
Q: What about rockets?
"They are being a lot more experimental, but
we are also seeing that they are facing a lot of difficulty smuggling
materials in from Egypt. They will ultimately resume manufacturing
rockets; that is unavoidable."
Q: So when will we fight the next war in Gaza?
"If you subscribe to my view, there is no
answer to that question. After all, Hamas was deterred in July 2014, but
still a war erupted. That could happen again, depending on a variety of
circumstances. Intelligence can't really predict when it will happen,
so we have to prepare for it to happen."
Q: What you are saying directly contradicts
what we were promised last summer: that Operation Protective Edge will
bring long-term calm to the south.
"Hamas is very intimidated. They don't want a
confrontation. They are meticulously enforcing restraint and when a
rocket is fired at us, someone gets arrested. Despite all that, a war
could erupt."
A substantial part of this restraint stems
from the Egyptian enforcement along the Gaza-Sinai border. The
Egyptians, Brun says, blame Hamas for much of the chaos they are
experiencing in their own territory, so they are taking action to weaken
Hamas. "They want Fatah to return to the Gaza Strip, but they don't
understand that it is not realistic right now," Brun says.
Q: Is Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's leadership stable?
"It is, but at some point he will have to
confront the gap between the public's expectations and reality, because
he can't really solve Egypt's financial problems."
Q: Going by your thesis, we may see millions of people demonstrating in Tahrir Square again.
"True. But the Egyptian public is far more
realistic now, especially after the disappointment of the [deposed
Egyptian President Mohammed] Morsi era. That is the reason we didn't see
anyone demonstrating in the streets after the acquittal of [Morsi's
predecessor, former Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak."
Q: So is the Arab world gaining a more realistic view of the Islamic revolution?
"I think that a large portion of the public
prefers order to democracy right now, but that won't last long. The idea
of political Islam, just like the idea of global jihad, is not new. It
survived persecutions and outlawing. It won't collapse now."
Contagious atmosphere attacks
The main focus of the intelligence community
in recent months, once the fighting in Gaza was over, has been the
second Palestinian front -- Judea and Samaria and east Jerusalem. The
main concern is a third intifada alongside the Palestinians' diplomatic
moves in the international arena.
In response to the direct question -- what
does Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas want? -- Brun replies
decisively: "We have no doubt that Abbas does not want terrorism. He
does not use doublespeak and he does not incite, he simply doesn't want
terrorism. His way is not the way of terror. There are people who think
differently, but this is our understanding of things."
Q: So what does he want?
"His position is that Palestinian national
goals -- statehood -- should be achieved through negotiations with
Israel. As he approaches his 80th birthday, watching the Israeli
political apparatus, he feels that the likelihood of that happening is
very low. Therefore, he is going for a double-sided approach: One, he
wants to force us to return to the negotiating table by way of
international pressure, with the talks starting with his usual demands,
of course. Or two, he wants a Palestinian state to be established
without negotiations with Israel but due to international pressure, like
in South Africa."
Q: Which option does he prefer?
"Right now he has found the comfortable space
that allows him to go in either direction. But in my opinion he will
prefer -- depending on political developments on our end -- the
negotiations route. But there is always the other option."
Q: Is his leadership in Ramallah stable?
"Yes."
Q: Is a third intifada possible? Is it a current concern?
"The current situation is less calm than in
recent years, but it is not an intifada. Right now we are not seeing
Hamas terror cells undermining the stability there, nor are we seeing
mass demonstrations, but it could happen. What we are seeing is what is
often called, for lack of a better term, atmosphere attacks, which are
contagious. What we can say is that we are on the verge of increasing
instability. That is true for Gaza, too.
Q: Can you outline a possible scenario?
"For years, there was some kind of future
involving negotiations and the establishment of a state from the ground
up, and it gave a sense of direction to a population that doesn't want
to live under occupation. Now we have atmosphere attacks. We retaliate,
Abbas goes with his contrarian approach, and then we punish him. All
this could lead to instability. What Israel is trying to do, in Gaza and
in Judea and Samaria, is to respond to each development in a way that
won't spark a deterioration. It is very delicate."
Q: Is Abbas trying to intervene in Israeli elections? Influence Arab MKs?
"No."
Q: No question?
"They have three ways of dealing with the
situation. Saying that now is not the time to act and letting us make
our choices and seeing what happens; Saying that now is precisely the
time to act because we are busy with our own elections and therefore the
most fragile; or what you asked, trying to influence the elections from
within. We are seeing none of these right now."
More information, more vulnerability
The challenges facing the intelligence
community in recent years, a direct result of the regional upheaval,
have led to far reaching changes in the way intelligence work is done.
These changes also stem from the biggest intelligence revolution of
recent years, the development of the cyber field. Brun says that the
most perceptible aspect of this change is the "accessibility to things
that we didn't know how to touch in the past."
Q: Like what?
"You know I won't answer that. But it is
something that provides much more information than we ever knew before.
On the other hand, it also gives our enemies access to our
vulnerabilities. There have been several situations where I thought we
knew everything, but it was all confused, chaotic, the information and
the noise appear together and you have to know how to separate them --
that is what we are trying to do here."
Brun is mainly concerned with the defensive
aspect of cyber intelligence. He thinks that we don't fully understand
how exposed we are. He is not talking about defense systems, but
civilian systems. "In my eyes, it is similar to rockets," he says. "I
was there when the rockets just began -- in the beginning of the 1980s.
They were small, imprecise weapons. It didn't seem like a serious
threat. But now, some thirty odd years later, soon rockets will have the
capability of hitting a plate on the roof of the General Staff
building. The same is true for the cyber field. While we try to defend
our core secrets, our defense systems, our national infrastructure, we
can sustain a lot of damage to our civilian sector."
On the offensive side, Israel's cyber
capability has provided endless information and opportunities that did
not exist in the past. Brun refuses to address the most obvious example
-- the joint U.S.-Israeli operation that, according to foreign reports,
debilitated Iranian centrifuges in Natanz for quite some time. Only
since then, the cooperation between Israel and the U.S. has diminished
significantly on anything having to do with staving off the Iranian
nuclear efforts. So much so, that some in Israel have accused the U.S.
of capitulating to Iran by striking a nuclear deal with them.
Q: Give us an up-to-date assessment on the Iranian nuclear effort.
"The Iranian public, and the regime, are
currently in a holding pattern that could lead to a comprehensive,
permanent agreement, or another temporary deal and another extension, or
extensions. Another possibility is a breakdown of talks, but that seems
less likely. The sides are interested in a deal, but there are still
gaps, especially on the issue of enrichment, the number of centrifuges
allowed to remain active and the amount of uranium that will remain in
Iran."
Q: So Iran is no longer the main threat facing Israel?
"The idea of achieving nuclear capability is
still relevant, but the advancement toward that vision has slowed. In
fact, the only aspect that is still somehow moving forward is the
enrichment, and even that in a limited way and in compliance with the
interim deal. And still, let us not forget that in other arenas, Iran is
the engine behind a string of actions against Israel, including efforts
to transfer weapons mainly to Hezbollah."
Q: In a headline: How will 2015 look?
"In the past, we used to do annual
intelligence assessments. In 2014 we started doing it twice a year,
because we realized at the end of 2013 that we couldn't give a headline
that would remain relevant for an entire year. That is the challenge of
coming into being. Things change. And still, the headline for 2015: An
ongoing mess.
Yoav Limor
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=22837
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
