Mossad makes inroads with Israeli diplomacy in EU - analysis

In many of the above instances, the Mossad’s aid led to retaliation by European countries against Iran in the ongoing nuclear standoff.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
Former Mossad Director Yossi Cohen (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
Former Mossad Director Yossi Cohen
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)
We are in a new era.
Not only has the Foreign Ministry been weaker for some time, but Israeli intelligence has become an invaluable commodity to export, and it is having real results at the policy level in the European Union.
Germany’s decision last week to declare Hezbollah a terrorist group, and not just its “military wing,” was heavily influenced by information provided by the Mossad, Channel 12 reported Saturday night.
“The move is a result of many months of work with all of the parties in Germany,” an Israeli official said, according to Channel 12. “The heads of services must present evidence of direct and proven legal involvement, which ties the organization to clear terrorist activity, and that is what we did.”
The intel was collected by the Mossad throughout several months in a complex operation.
The information included incriminating details about Hezbollah operatives on German soil (terrorism only in the Middle East would not have been enough).
One of the discoveries made thanks to the Mossad intelligence was a collection of warehouses in southern Germany belonging to Hezbollah operatives and containing hundreds of kilograms of ammonium nitrate, which is used to make explosives.
Shi’ite businessmen were involved in transactions and money laundering and transferred millions of euros to bank accounts belonging to Hezbollah.
But Germany is far from the first case where the Mossad’s intelligence led to action against Hezbollah or other adversaries, including Iran, and helped improve relations with a European country.
In December 2019, it was reported that the Mossad was behind successful efforts by Denmark to nab a cell of 20 terrorists planning a wave of attacks.
Danish security officials arrested the terrorists and seized a variety of weapons based on tips from Israel’s elite spy agency.
The Mossad helped provide information that enabled Bulgaria to crack the case of a terrorist attack on Israelis in 2012, in which some Bulgarians participated, as well as to prosecute the Hezbollah agents involved, sources have told The Jerusalem Post.
Earlier in 2019, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad director Yossi Cohen each revealed pieces of the agency’s involvement in providing intelligence to block an ISIS plot to bomb a flight between Sydney and Abu Dhabi.
Netanyahu said while he could not give specifics, people could “multiply by about 50” the Sydney airline terrorist plot, and that would be the number of terrorist plots worldwide (mostly by ISIS) that Israel has helped to prevent thanks to its cyber intelligence powers.
Reports have also emerged about potential Israeli involvement to assist Turkey, Holland, Denmark and Sweden to avoid or solve attacks by Iran and its proxies.
“An Iranian diplomat in Vienna headed” a bomb plot in France," Cohen said, adding: “He is now under arrest, and other [members of the cell] are under arrest in Belgium.”
Members of Israel’s intelligence community “are deeply involved in the effort to thwart these threats before the deaths of innocents occurs,” he said. “We are working shoulder to shoulder with other countries to prevent more deaths.”
In many of the above instances, the Mossad’s aid led to retaliation by European countries against Iran in the ongoing nuclear standoff.
There were situations where some countries had been pressuring the US or Israel about the nuclear standoff, and after Iranian interference, which Israeli intelligence sometimes assisted in unraveling, some of the EU countries became more sympathetic to Israel’s position, at least temporarily.
The biggest change, of course, has been the IAEA’s confrontation with Iran in March over undeclared nuclear material and multiple nuclear sites revealed by the Mossad’s daring January 2018 operation, sources have told the Post.
While even the Mossad cannot bring the EU to endorse all of Israel’s policies, certainly when it comes to Hezbollah, Iran and other adversaries, the agency’s usefulness and rising global profile have helped Israel significantly beyond the incidents the agency assisted with.
Whether with Germany, Denmark, Bulgaria, France or elsewhere, the ever-watchful eye of the Mossad has become a powerful tool not only for gathering intelligence, but also for having deep impacts on policy.
Tamar Beeri and Reuters contributed to this report.