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ANALYSIS / Even the CIA gets its Iran updates via Twitter
By Amos Harel
Tags: intelligence, barack obama 

1. The Israeli perspective. The debate in Israel over what is happening in Iran is shifting between two problematic poles: The media coverage, which suffers from overt dramatization - some events are fateful enough on their own - and the political establishment's observations, which are far too jaded.

The sometimes violent conflict is not about the sons of light against the sons of darkness. To a degree, as Professor David Menashri from Tel Aviv University had already pointed out, it's a kind of family dispute: Factions that were part of the regime inspired by the Islamic Revolution are now challenging its authority.

This is true about "moderate conservatives" like former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and even reformists like former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi. Even now, and even if the uprising is suppressed, we can conclude that Iran has changed over the past 10 days. But it's unclear if even a successful revolution can detach Iran from the influence of its radical religious establishment.
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On the other hand, Israel - which hopefully is refraining from excessive meddling in the events - has something to gain from each of the scenarios. If conservative rule prevails it will be at the price of a brutal suppression of the protests. The international community, which over the years has developed a disturbing apathy toward Iranian threats to annihilate Israel, is much more concerned about the crushing of democracy in Tehran. This trampling of democracy may bring about a much harsher approach by the United States and European Union if the dialogue over the Iranian nuclear program fails and the sanctions are intensified.

At the same time, a victory by the moderates, committed as they may be to the nuclear project, might render Iran more open to the West and allow for understandings that will block the project, even if this is achieved at an uneasy price for the international community. Israel will then be more concerned about the conduct of the U.S. administration. The inaction demonstrated by President Barack Obama in the face of a taunting North Korea, as well as the gap between the passionate speeches and hesitant conduct on the ground is disconcerting.

2. The limits of intelligence. It's not much of a surprise, but what's happening in Iran, from the election results to the enormous protests, is a stark reminder of the limits of intelligence. We might even assume that the CIA is getting more information on the events from CNN (constrained as it is by the Iranian authorities), the blogosphere and Twitter, than from its agents deep in the land of the ayatollahs. Western intelligence has been focusing on the nuclear program a lot more than the Iranian regime's stability.

One of this week's big questions was why intelligence organizations didn't predict what was about to happen. But the events in Iran have taken the world by surprise, and one wonders if even Iranian intelligence had any idea what was about to unfold. Unlike counting tanks and centrifuges, less "physical" processes like leaders' intentions, election results and nations' willingness to rebel against oppressive regimes are much more difficult to predict.

Even a single database can lead to completely opposite conclusions, such as the ones provided by Military Intelligence and the Mossad on the benefits of negotiating with Syria. GOC Northern Command Gadi Eisenkot often says his service as military secretary to then-prime minister Ehud Barak taught him a valuable lesson. "I would be sitting in the same room with him and I would often have no idea what he was thinking and planning," Eisenkot has said. "How do we expect our intelligence to know what is on Assad's mind?"

Brig. Gen. (res.) Shalom Harari, who helped oversee the Israel Defense Forces' activities in the territories, says he experienced the limitations of intelligence at close range when the first intifada broke out in 1987. "Anyone can say that the existing situation is unbearable and will lead to an explosion, but virtually no one can predict at which point during a decade this will happen," he says. New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote last weekend: "The real action is out on the streets. The future course of events is maximally uncertain.

"The fate of nations is determined by glances and chance encounters: by the looks policemen give one another as a protesting crowd approaches down a boulevard ... by a captain who either decides to kill his countrymen or not; by a shy woman who emerges from a throng to throw herself on the thugs who are pummeling a kid prone on the sidewalk."

Brooks also relays a quote from Michael McFaul, a democracy expert who serves on the National Security Council: "In retrospect, all revolutions seem inevitable. Beforehand, all revolutions seem impossible." Former defense minister Moshe Arens used to say that intelligence people possess "perfect backward vision."

Intelligence and media both missed the eruption in Iran, much like the financial media and analysts didn't see the economic crisis coming. The lesson here is that intelligence is a limited instrument intended to provide information for leaders, but it cannot replace the actual decision-makers. The trouble starts when you mix the two and intelligence officials are pretentious enough to dictate policy.

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