The Daily - The Secret Push to Strike Iran

Episode Date: September 6, 2019

For almost two decades, the United States and Israel have tried to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Israeli leaders — including the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu — have pushed for a military strike on Iran, a prospect that American presidents have long opposed. But a Times investigation reveals a secret history that shows how close the three countries came to war. Guest: Mark Mazzetti, a Washington investigative correspondent for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: Interviews with dozens of current and former American, Israeli and European officials over several months reveal the startling details of a narrowly averted war and raise questions about how President Trump will respond.Moving further away from the 2015 nuclear agreement, Iran said on Thursday that it had stopped honoring the deal’s limits on research and development.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily. Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust. For almost two decades, the United States and Israel have tried to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

The Iranian threat must be stopped by all possible means. Israeli prime ministers, including Benjamin Netanyahu, The international community must stop Iran before it's too late. have pushed for a military strike on Iran to end the nuclear threat, a prospect long opposed by U.S. presidents who fear it would drag the U.S. into war.

Today. In 2010. After two years of negotiations. That fear helped prompt President Obama to seek a diplomatic alternative. A comprehensive long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The Iran nuclear deal, a deal so detested by Netanyahu that he vowed to block it.

This deal doesn't make peace more likely. It makes war more likely. Last year, Netanyahu got what he wanted. I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. When President Trump pulled out of the historic agreement, locking Israel, the U.S., and Iran in a tense standoff. It didn't bring calm, it didn't bring peace, and it never will. That is the commonly understood story of how we got to this moment.

Today, months of reporting and dozens of interviews by my colleagues, Mark Mazzetti and Ronan Bergman, have revealed a secret history and shown how close we came to war. It's Friday, September 6th. Mark, we're going to talk about four of the key findings from your reporting.

Where should we start? Well, one of the most interesting findings is that Netanyahu's push for war may have helped lead Obama toward a nuclear deal with Iran that Netanyahu despised. And how so exactly? Obama and Netanyahu come to power right around the same time, in the beginning of 2009. And from the beginning, they've got a pretty bad relationship. It is, I believe, in the interest not only of the Palestinians, but also the Israelis and the United States

and the international community to achieve a two-state solution. Obama is really pushing Netanyahu on the issue of Palestinian peace, freezing settlements in the West Bank. Iran openly calls for our destruction, which is unacceptable on any standard. And Netanyahu really wants to push the issue of Iran and the Iran threat. I indicated to him the view of our administration that Iran is a country of extraordinary history and extraordinary potential, that we want them to be a full-fledged member of the international community? The U.S. and Israel agree on a covert campaign to try to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program,

and it works for a period of time. But it starts reaching diminishing returns around 2009, 2010. And it really then begins this question of, well, then what? And that's where both Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, who was kind of a legendary figure in the country, he was a war hero. And at that time, he was the defense minister and one of the leading advocates pushing this idea with the Americans that there needs to be some kind of military action. And no option should be removed from the table. This is our policy. We mean it. And the Israelis start preparing for it.

How so? Well, they develop war plans. They start running training missions that might replicate a strike on Iran. They send drones to a secret base in Azerbaijan to fly into Iran to take pictures of nuclear facilities and also kind of to test the air defenses of Iran to see whether, you know, an actual real live attack might work. A real provocation. That's right.

And the U.S. is watching this. They're watching the Israeli flights into Iran. And because of this growing mistrust between the two sides, there is this real question of, will Israel strike and would they even tell us in advance? So the U.S. is now spying on Israel. Yeah, they're spying on Israel, spying on Iran.

And because of this growing apprehension about what Israel might do, there is the decision in the Obama administration to set a diplomatic path totally independent of Israel. And so that then leads to, in late 2010, Dennis Ross, who's the head of Iran policy at the National Security Council, is on a flight to Oman with another White House aide trying to begin the very earliest negotiations for what would ultimately lead to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. You don't pursue peace because you know you can always achieve it. You don't always engage because you know what the result is going to be. But disengagement produces a result you can always predict.

So it's out of fear that Israel will drag the United States into war, that the U.S. begins pursuing a negotiation with Iran. We talked to Dennis Ross and he said absolutely. He said the Israeli pressure played a factor in the opening of this diplomatic channel that he was part of. And did Israel understand that these negotiations with Iran were beginning? No, there was a conscious decision not to tell Israel. And they kind of went to extraordinary lengths to keep a very small circle of people in the know that this diplomatic channel had been opened. And they even cut out the American ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, who is the main interlocutor with Israeli officials on a daily and hourly basis. And throughout this period of time, they're asking Shapiro if the U.S. is talking with Iran.

And he's saying, no, they're not. And eventually he's brought back to Washington and he's told, hey, that thing you've been saying to the Israelis, you can't say that anymore. Because it's not true. Because it's not true. And that's a very interesting finding in our reporting was this was a real debate and discussion in the Obama administration about whether to tell the Israelis. And some people now think it was a mistake not to tell them. Why? had been so fractured that a lot of people were pretty certain, including the president himself,

that if you told Netanyahu, he would leak out the news to try to scuttle any kind of possible deal. And so the stakes were too high to bring Netanyahu into the discussion. Others now say the Israelis were going to find out anyway. And by not telling them, we made a bad situation even worse. Israel found out anyway. And by not telling them, we made a bad situation even worse. Israel found out anyway. In the middle of 2012, we find out in our reporting, the head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, goes to Netanyahu and he says, the United States is having this back channel discussions with Iran. And we asked Netanyahu about this, and he claims that he wasn't angry. He sort of suspected it, that he long thought Obama wanted to do a deal with Iran. And this

kind of buttressed that. But several other Israeli officials we spoke to said they were furious that this was, you know, Israel's greatest ally, the United States, was Israel's greatest ally, the United States, secretly negotiating with Israel's greatest enemy, Iran. And it was a breach of trust that could never be accepted. Hmm. So Obama's mistrust of Netanyahu influences his decision to seek these negotiations with Iran. The mistrust also prompts the U.S. to keep Israel out of a loop.

And that leads to a nuclear deal that prompts Netanyahu to completely mistrust the U.S. — That's right. This deal demonstrates that American diplomacy can bring about real and meaningful change. Change that makes our country and the world safer and more secure. — What a stunning historic mistake. Israel is not bound by this deal with Iran because Iran continues to seek our destruction. We will always defend ourselves. Okay, so what's your next finding? Our reporting shows that Israel was far closer to striking Iran in 2012 than was previously known. What's the evidence of that?

Netanyahu is trying for some time to get his government behind the idea of an Iran strike. the idea of an Iran strike. There's this scene in November 2010 where he gathers all of his top officials to sort of game out the idea of whether they could do a strike and whether they should do a strike. And what Netanyahu finds is pretty much everyone's against it

except him and Ayyub Barak. Hmm. Reporting show about the opposition within his cabinet. What is their argument for continually rejecting this? The primary argument is that it's not feasible, that Israel doesn't have the capacity to do any kind of strike that would deliver a fatal blow to Iran's nuclear program. It did not at that time

have what was critical, they believed, which is this super powerful bomb, a bunker buster bomb that would have been able to, they hoped, destroy an underground facility in Iran called Fordow. Only the United States had that bomb. And the Israelis were trying to get it from the United States and Obama refused to give it to them. And so the feeling was that this could be a suicide mission with little effect. And it's pretty interesting. The United States and Obama in particular knew about the dissent in Netanyahu's ranks. And there's one scene we recount in our reporting where Ehud Barak and Obama are having a meeting and Barak is making his case for why they needed to strike. And Obama says,

yeah, but your own military people don't want it. And Barack has this line to Obama. He says, yeah, but when they look up, they see us, meaning me and Netanyahu. But when we look up, we only see the sky. Meaning we can do whatever we want. Right. And so this sort of escalates into the summer of 2012, when U.S. satellites start picking up what they think are early indications of some kind of an Israeli strike. This is just months before Obama's up for reelection. Thank you. Governor Romney, Mitt, it's a pleasure to welcome you in Jerusalem. We've known each other for many decades. Netanyahu is making no secret that he supports Mitt Romney, Obama's competitor. You said that the greatest danger facing the world is of the Ayatollah regime possessing nuclear weapons capability.

I couldn't agree with you more. And there's this thought in the United States that maybe Netanyahu would do a strike in the weeks before an election to tie Obama's hands. Wow. That he would have to support it because electoral politics would determine the United States would have to come to Israel's defense if Israel went to war with Iran. So there's a lot of complicated things going on. And the United States is pretty concerned at that time that Netanyahu just might strike. In an interview we had with him, he said, well, I would have. I was planning on it.

Yes. Before the election. Yes, I was going to do it, but I just could never get the full support of my cabinet. Now, some question whether Netanyahu really would have pulled it off, but he's told us it was absolutely something he was prepared to do. But in the end, even Ehud Barak flips.

He decides that a strike so close to the American election could do irreparable damage to the U.S.-Israel relationship. And he tells us, you can't drag a partner into war. This is a fatal blow to Netanyahu's plans to have some kind of strike. And it creates a rift between Netanyahu and Barack that exists today where the two men are bitter political enemies. And that's really as close as Israel ever got to our knowledge of striking Iran. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

Okay, Mark, so give us your third finding from your reporting. So despite Obama's adamant opposition to a military strike on Iran, he hands Trump a highly refined war plan for just that. And why would he do that? Well, so remember we were talking about the growing concern in the early years of the Obama administration that Israel might do something, might strike, and might possibly draw the United States into a war, and that was one of the things that led Obama to negotiate a diplomatic solution.

Right. Well, at the same time led Obama to negotiate a diplomatic solution. Right. Well, at the same time, Obama is ordering the Pentagon to develop its own plans for different scenarios. And one would be the United States goes and strikes Iran on its own if it needed to. Another would be if Israel strikes and the U.S. gets drawn in, well, what does the United States do? And, you know, the Pentagon is starting to run war games of what might happen if Israel strikes. And one of the things that they did was they built a mock-up of the underground Iranian nuclear facility at Fordow. They built a mock-up in the western desert of the United States and used that 30,000 pound bunker busting

bomb, the one that Israelis wanted, but the U.S. refused to give to them to destroy the facility. And they took video of the bombing and Leon Panetta, the defense secretary, showed it to Ehud Barak in his office at the Pentagon. In other words, look at what we can do. So why don't you hold off? One of the things going on was that the United States had to convince the Israelis that they were serious about not letting Iran get a nuclear weapon. So in developing these plans, they would sometimes brief the Israelis, not necessarily on highly classified specifics, but tell them we are doing this to show you that we are really serious. So there's a kind of, as one person we talked to said, there was kind of a three-way bluff going on. The United States and Israel and Iran are all trying to let the other know

it's capable of doing things. None had decided that they wanted to do yet, but they had to convince the others. But in order for the United States to have a credible bluff, they needed to actually do this war planning, take actual hard measures of deploying ships to the Persian Gulf, air defenses to allies, other aircraft that are deployed around the Middle East that they would need if the United States gets drawn into war. They know Iran is watching those deployments. They know Israel is craft that is deployed around the Middle East that they would need if the United States gets drawn into war.

They know Iran is watching those deployments. They know Israel is watching those deployments. So you kind of speak to each other in an entirely different language, the language of the military. Of course, they never use this war plan. Obama goes the diplomacy route. So by the time Donald Trump is elected, he's got an entirely different view about how to deal with Iran, and he's got a war plan at the Pentagon that Obama gave to him.

President-elect Trump, my friend, congratulations on being elected president of the United States of America. I'm confident that the two of us, working closely together, will bring the great alliance between our two countries to even greater heights. Okay, so that brings us to this current administration and its role in the story. What's your last finding here, Mark? We discovered the scope of Netanyahu's pressure campaign to get Trump to leave the Iran nuclear deal. And what was the scope of that? Well, so it was well known, of course, that Trump hated the deal. It's one of the dumbest deals I've ever seen. Right. He said it a thousand times as a presidential candidate.

The deal with Iran was at the highest level of incompetence. And he, as president, was always talking about Obama's terrible deal. Really stupid leaders. Stupidity. But yet he stays in it for more than a year. And that's because influential figures in his own cabinet were arguing not to leave the deal, but to strengthen it. Don't get out of it. Enter Netanyahu. President Trump, Donald, Sarah and I are absolutely delighted to welcome you.

We've known each other for many years, and it's always good to see you. He thinks that Trump can be influenced. We understand each other and so much of the things that we wish to accomplish for both our countries. Now, that is to be expected. But then something interesting happens. In the beginning of 2018, Netanyahu orders a very risky raid in Tehran, where the Mossad is sent in to steal from a warehouse the sort of secret archive of Iran's nuclear program, to take all of these documents, videos, thumb drives, etc., bring

them back to Israel, and basically use that as greater leverage to get Trump to get out of the deal. And Netanyahu tells Trump beforehand that we're going to do this. Trump asks him if it's risky, but Netanyahu says, yes, it's risky, but it's worth it. After the operation happens, Netanyahu comes to the White House and kind of lays out the findings of the archive and basically says, look, Iran has been lying about its nuclear program for 20 years. What makes you think they can be trusted now? Clearly, they're cheating on the deal, even though the American intelligence community was pretty firm in its findings that Iran was not actually cheating. But Netanyahu continues to work on Trump.

And basically, by then, Trump is convinced. He decides, I'm not going to continue these negotiations to strengthen the deal. I want out. And we found that there was even a discussion of having a joint press conference where Netanyahu would reveal the existence of the archive and Trump would announce he's getting out of the deal. So this one-two punch of Netanyahu and Trump together hardening American policy towards Iran. That would be an extraordinary scene. It would have been. And whatever the plans were, it didn't end up happening.

And Netanyahu goes out on his own in late April 2018 to announce the existence of the archive. I was actually in Israel. I was in a cab listening to it. Tonight, we're going to show you something that the world has never seen before. Tonight, we are going to reveal new and conclusive proof of the secret nuclear weapons program that Iran has been hiding for years from the international community. He is, you know, in his full, you know, theatrical mode.

Iran lied. Big time. Talking about the Iranian threat, talking about how they can't be trusted. And in a few days' time, President Trump will make his decision on what to do with the nuclear deal. I'm sure he'll do the right thing for the peace of the world.

And I think for many people, that speech was seen as kind of an 11th hour appeal to Trump to get out of the deal. But in fact, we kind of found out that it was already baked in, that Trump was already going to get out of the deal in part because he and Netanyahu had discussed this. So where does that leave us?

Well, Trump pulling out of the Iran deal brings us back to the poker game and the three-way bluff. Although this time, Trump is the new player at the table. And there's a bet going on in the White House that it can basically cripple Iran's economy so badly with sanctions that Iran comes back to try to negotiate what in Trump's mind would be a far better deal for him and the United States than Obama did. The question for Iran is, can they

wait Trump out? Yes, the sanctions are having a real impact, but maybe in a little over a year, there's another American president and they don't have to worry about Trump, the sanctions, and American policy could totally shift. For Israel, there's a different calculation. They have an American president who, on one hand, might countenance an Israeli strike far more than either Presidents Bush or Obama did. And even if Trump were to negotiate a deal, Netanyahu told us, this time he'd have far more influence. In other words, Israel this time around could have a far greater influence on what the United States does with Iran than they had under Obama. And the stakes of this three-way poker game couldn't be higher.

Authorities in Iran say they've shot down what they're calling a U.S. spy drone in the south of the country. So that shows how high the tensions are running, how dangerous the situation really is. Just last week we uncovered efforts by Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, to build a terror network in Syria on the Golan Heights. The U.S. says Iran was behind attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Tensions with Iran are intensifying. President Trump is taking... So the big fear is that both countries would be running into a war that none of them really wants. You see Israel striking all sorts of Iranian-linked targets.

In Lebanon and elsewhere. In Iraq. This attack taking place in Camp Ashraf. In Syria. Overnight, Israeli airstrikes hit dozens of Iranian targets in northern Syria. Netanyahu's clearly indicating that, you know, he might push it even further and strike again into Iran. This week, Iran openly violated the nuclear deal. They're hoping that by violating the deal it will be able to blackmail the world

into making concessions and reducing the economic pressure on it. We should do the exact opposite. Now is the time to increase the pressure. Now is the time to stand firm. Now is the time... It's all a bluff until it's not. That's right.

Merck, thank you very much. Thank you. On Thursday night, Iran said it had stopped honoring a key provision of the 2015 nuclear deal in its latest act of defiance since the U.S. abandoned the deal at the urging of Israel. As of now, Iran said it would stop limiting its nuclear research and development, potentially allowing it to move closer to a nuclear weapon.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Unfortunately, Parliament voted yesterday effectively to scupper our negotiating power and to make it much more difficult for this government to get a deal. On Thursday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson officially called for new elections after Parliament passed a law blocking his plan to leave the European Union by October 31st without a negotiated deal. by October 31st without a negotiated deal. So what I want to do now is to really give the country a choice.

We either go forward with our plan to get a deal, take the country out on October 31st, which we can, or else somebody else should be allowed to see if they can keep us in beyond October the 31st. And I have to tell you, I don't think that would be the right way forward. After a series of embarrassing defeats, Johnson now sees an election as the only way to create a majority for his Conservative Party in Parliament and secure a mandate for pulling Britain out of the EU, with or without a deal. And I think if people really think that this country should stay in the EU beyond October 31st, then that really should be a matter for the people of this country to decide.

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