Dubai death has little impact on Mossad's work with other countries

Eli Lake:

The embarrassing trail left by a suspected Israeli hit team — a trail that began with doctored European passports, led to the assassination of a Palestinian terrorist in a Dubai hotel room, and ended on the front pages of world papers — has not worsened the country's intelligence cooperation with Western countries, a senior Israeli official insists.

"There is a lot of hyperventilating about this in the public arena," said the senior official, who asked not to be named because he was speaking about sensitive intelligence matters. The official said he was speaking only about the effects on intelligence links and was not confirming Israel's involvement in the hit.

"The countries that coordinate the war on terror with allies like Israel and the United States and Europe are not as exercised about this as some of the public statements," the official said. "There has been no effect on the operational side."

But this assessment stands in stark contrast to the rhetoric emanating from Dubai and Brussels.

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Nonetheless, some details have emerged that do not track with traditional Israeli intelligence tradecraft. The Dubai authorities this week said two of the operatives fled to Iran.

Michael Ross, a retired officer for the Mossad's covert-operations division, said it would be a breach of Israeli protocol for an operative to flee to another target country like that after an operation.

He also said that it was unlikely that Israel would use 26 people for a job that would require far fewer people. "The Mossad believes if two people can do something instead of three people, then send two."

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I suspect that Mossad is too valuable a resource for the other intelligence agencies for them to cut themselves off from intelligence sharing. While there is a reluctance to say it was good to kill this guy, the fact of the matter is that the destruction of Hamas is in the interest of those who want to get a Middle East peace agreement. It want happen as long as Hamas thinks it has a chance of destroying Israel. When you consider that this guy was on a mission to buy Iranian missiles to target Israeli civilians it is pretty ridiculous to get wee weed up about his demise.