Iranian missile barrage: Was it an IDF intel failure masked by air-defense success? - analysis

• Published date: 16 April 2024
• Author: YONAH JEREMY BOB
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

IDF intelligence assessed that killing Iran Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Commander for Lebanon and Syria, Mohammed Reza Zahedi, in the heart of Damascus within a diplomatic compound (though not in the Iranian Embassy to Syria itself) would not lead to a major direct attack on Israel by Iran

This estimate was dead wrong.

Iran directly and massively attacked Israel for the first time in 45 years after decades of being content with a lower-key shadow war via proxies.

The only reason there are no calls for a commission of inquiry about the colossally inaccurate assessment which led to Iran's ferocious attack on Israel with around 350 aerial threats, including around 120 ballistic missiles, is that the air force, combined with the US, UK, France, Jordan, and others managed a miraculous shoot down rate that surpassed even the massive failure.

Put differently, due to IDF intelligence underrating the threat posed by an adversary, Israeli losses on April 1 could have been greater than on October 7, and the only difference was the effectiveness of the air force and allied forces.

Why hasn't IDF intelligence learned since October 7 not to underestimate Israeli adversaries?

First of all, most of the core Israeli defense officials who underestimated Hamas on October 7 have still not resigned and were in place on April 1.

IDF intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva has essentially committed to quitting, but more than six months after October 7, has not done so.

The same is true about IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, and while IDF Intelligence Analysis Chief Brig. Gen. Amit Saar resigned on April 4 due to health issues, he was still officially in place on April 1. The IDF declined to clarify who exactly was the top IDF analysis official who gave the final prediction for the operation given that Saar was already sick leading into April 1.

Israel's multi-bodied intelligence system did not pull through

Also, intelligence "pluralism" created by the 1973 Yom Kippur failures did not function properly.

After 1973, the Mossad was given additional resources to establish its own larger analysis division to potentially challenge and compete with IDF intelligence analysis's assessments.

Although the Mossad was consulted on the question of Iran's potential response to assassinating Zahedi, Yediot Ahronot's Nadav Eyal first reported that the agency was not told where the assassination would take place – let alone that it would be in a diplomatic compound.

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