Thread by @udschachter

Former Head of the Mossad Intelligence Directorate, Zohar Palti, recently gave a very interesting interview on @NadavPerry's podcast.

Here are his main arguments regarding 10/7, the Iranian nuclear program, the Abraham Accords, and the Syrian regime change:

1. "When I woke up this morning, Iran still did not have nuclear weapons, which means someone is doing something right. They have not yet made a decision to go nuclear.

2. We can debate the definition of a “threshold state,” but what is certain is that they do not have a bomb as of now. Over the last 20 years, I have "read in the newspapers" about a vast chain of events—Stuxnet, explosions, etc. But that doesn’t mean we can relax.

3. What happened here in April was insane. What the Israeli Air Force and CENTCOM accomplished during the Iranian attack was incredible. If you want to make a movie, this is the story to tell.

4. People do not grasp the power of the US: They understood, through our shared intelligence, that an Iranian attack was imminent. The Americans called all the ME leaders and told them, “Friends, listen—starting in two hours, there will be no civilian flights in the entire ME".

5. Then, the radar screens were practically empty. No "good guys" were in the air, only "bad guys." This made it much easier to identify targets. This is a level of power that has never been demonstrated before.

6. The double-edged sword of the Iranians’ use of their Ground-Ground Missles is that they "forced us" to attack in Iran. Now, this psychological barrier no longer exists. We have already done it twice. And this is even before Trump reenters the picture.

7. Trump is unpredictable, and we don’t know if the Americans will commit to this, but even on a bad day, the Americans know how to dismantle the Iranian nuclear threat in eight hours. The Americans have capabilities that no other power in the world possesses in this regard.

8. They just need to make the right decision. Whether they will or not, I cannot say—that’s why we’ve built up many of our own capabilities over the years. We saw some of these capabilities during the last war, and I hope we won’t have to use them.

9. Regarding the pagers and future ops, I won’t address specific ops, but each operation of this kind is a 3-10 years of work. Let’s assume that the people who knew how to execute the pagers operation also know how to conduct similar operations on a larger, state-level scale.

10. In the early 2000s, what we call the “axis of evil” began to form. But there is no longer such an axis. Assad has fallen, Hezbollah is not in the same state as last year, and Iran has wasted many of its GGMs. And, as I "heard" it lost some important defense systems lately.

11. Contrary to Iranian and Nasrallah’s theories, Israelis are very resilient. That’s why, unlike the nuclear threat, the “ring of fire” (Iran's proxies) and their war of attrition are not existential threats.

12. Israel and the USA have invested billions in building a “canopy of defense,” including the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow 2. Soon, we’ll also have laser interceptors, which will upgrade the system.

13. Even if, God forbid, a nuclear weapon were to appear one day, these systems would know how to intercept it. But I’m not suggesting we allow a nuclear weapon to exist just so we can intercept it. On the contrary!

14. We need to continue doing what we’ve done over the past 40 years to prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons. If necessary, we will attack. The psychological barrier has already been shattered.

15. Nasrallah’s mistake was thinking he understood Israel, but he didn’t. He saw division in Israeli politics but failed to grasp what you and I, as Israelis, understood immediately: at the moment of October 7th, politics no longer mattered.

16. In the end, the Iranians lost the most stable and balanced leader they had. Nasrallah, at one point, was practically a regional leader, dictating trends. That’s gone now.

17. Over the years, in the Arab world, he set the tone against Israel. But not anymore. Moreover, they spent tens of billions of dollars over 40 years to build a force that essentially disappeared within six weeks.

18. There are both achievements and new threats. On the one hand, we eliminated a series of threats. On the other hand, there are new challenges that concern me now. The situation is troubling, not so much because of Syria itself, but because of how it might affect Jordan.

19. If anything is most important to Israel, it’s the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. These are the two most stable elements of the past few decades. If, God forbid, anything destabilizes them, we will find ourselves in uncharted territory.

20. The so-called "rebels" are eager to overthrow Jordan. We must be aware of this. Moreover, now that the Iranians have lost Syria, where will they turn? Perhaps to Jordan? I constantly wonder where we might be caught off guard from an intelligence perspective.

21. I don’t want to be an alarmist, but we will need to invest significant resources to address the developments around Jordan. Jordan is crucial to many issues—Palestinian matters, the Gulf states’ strategic depth, and the land connection between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

22. If there’s an agreement with the Saudis, imagine the tremendous economic flow that could flow through Jordan.

23. In the meantime, Erdogan is gaining disproportionate power. I don’t yet know his ultimate ambitions, and I have many questions about this new reality. There’s a reason we didn’t rush to intervene in Syria in 2014—the situation there is incredibly complex.

24. There’s no doubt that there are opportunities here as well. But first, let’s resolve this situation so our people can return home. Israel is ultimately a resilient and happy state, but the kidnapping incident has affected us all in ways I’ve never experienced before.

25. If we emerge from this current situation, Israelis are hard-working people, and I believe our economy will create opportunities. The world will recognize this, and investments will return—but it depends on whether we can stabilize ourselves internally.

26. Regarding the Abraham Accords, as someone who had the honor of signing the security component of the Accords, I can tell you that military power was the last thing that interested them.

27. MBZ, who I believe is an amazing leader, wanted us as friends because of our high-tech expertise. He’s interested in our artificial intelligence, intelligence systems, and the Israeli genius behind all these patents—not just the security-related ones.

28. For example, consider the flights. Besides El Al, which airlines continued flying to Tel Aviv during the war? Etihad and Fly Dubai. The Americans and Europeans forgot their friendship with us in this context, but the Emiratis made an amazing strategic decision.

29. The Abraham Accords, still "young" at just three years old, have faced their biggest crisis. Yet Bahrain, the UAE, and Morocco have all upheld their agreements. I think that’s remarkable.

30. Two more countries—Saudi Arabia and Indonesia—are still missing, but they would provide a tremendous economic boost.

31. In conclusion, with all due respect to the pagers and James Bond-style operations, let’s not forget the human cost. We saw families lying next to each other. My father was part of the formation of Nahal Oz (a Kibbutz that was attacked on October 7th).

32. Hearing a 91-year-old man talk about October 7th—it’s a trauma we will carry for years.

33. For anyone who thought coexistence with the Arabs here was possible, forget about it. For the next 20 years, at least, nothing will happen. In the next 20 years coexistence with Gaza and the West Bank is nonsense.

34. We need to think about long-term visions, not solutions that will materialize in a day or two.

35. Finally, the intelligence community must deeply reflect on its structure, processes, and personnel training. Why didn’t younger voices speak up?

36. This demands a lot of work Its primary responsibility is to protect Israeli citizens, and in this instance, it failed. We cannot afford such failures for the sake of our children, women, and infants.

Link to the podcast:

Hebrew Version of this thread:

https://x.com/udschachter/status/1876582342711706109