Reply #13: Interview With Seymour - What are the Israelis doing in Iraq?

[seemslikeadream]

Interview With Seymour Hersh LATE EDITION

Edited on Sun Jun-20-04 04:40 PM by seemslikeadream


What are the Israelis doing in Iraq?

SEYMOUR HERSH, "THE NEW YORKER" MAGAZINE: They're in Kurdistan in northern Iraq. They're not in Iraq central. They're in northern Iraq, and they're working with the Kurds. Their long-time friends.

And what the Israelis did, as I write about, they decided six months ago, this was a no-win for us. We were in real trouble without a major change in policy.

And one of the Israeli issues all along had been that the United States was very slow to recognize the fact that Iran was playing a peaceful but very aggressive role in helping the insurgency against us. And they tried, they batted heads against us, and we would not listen. This is the White House and the Defense Department.

So they took the option of going in there with their old allies, the Kurds, and they're beginning run operations against the people they really are frightened of, the Iranians, nuclear issue, and the Syrians. They like to pose trouble for the Syrians.

The only problem with their operation is that it puts them face to face with the Turks.

BLITZER: Well, we're going to get to that in the moment because the Israelis have a long-standing, very good relationship with Turkey, as well.

But what you're saying is that there are Israeli operatives in northern Iraq, in Kurdistan, the Kurdish part of northern Iraq, that are, what, engaged in actions against Iran?

HERSH: Intelligence-gathering. There's no gun play here. We're talking about Israeli operatives, and many of them are going in -- some Masad people go in without passports. They're not wearing uniforms. They're undercover.

How many? A few hundred probably is the best guess, maybe more even. But what they're doing -- and don't forget, there's always been, as I say, a long ties, a lot of economic ties, a lot of Kurdish Jews are very friendly with -- emigrated to Israel. There's a lot of ties.

What they're doing is they're -- Kurdistan puts them very close to some very central potential nuclear sites in Iran, and they're running operations with the Kurds into Iran setting up, you know, the kind of devices, you have the sniffers, the kind of activity you get to see what kind of nuclear goings on might be going on.

BLITZER: So it's basically an intelligence-gathering operation for the Israelis in cooperation with the Kurds, the Iraqi Kurds.


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