U.S. Diplomatic Cables Leak: Israel-Related Contents

On November 28, 2010, the White House confirmed that WikiLeaks was preparing to publish what were claimed to be several hundred thousand classified State Department cables recording private diplomatic discussions.[1] The administration cautioned that field reporting was candid and potentially incomplete, and did not itself constitute official U.S. policy or necessarily determine final policy decisions.[1] The statement also warned that publication could expose private exchanges with foreign governments and opposition leaders, and could endanger diplomats, intelligence professionals, and individuals assisting the United States.[1]

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking on November 29, 2010, declined to comment on or confirm the alleged stolen cables.[2] She characterized the material as consisting of confidential discussions between diplomatic counterparts and diplomats' personal assessments, and emphasized that U.S. foreign policy was set in Washington and was a matter of public record, not determined through cable traffic.[2] At a December 7, 2010 press briefing, State Department spokesperson P. J. Crowley described the cache as 250,000 classified documents and said the release put U.S. and other countries' lives and interests at risk.[3] He also noted that while the released documents broadly came from a database under U.S. control, documents could be altered after leaving State Department control and the department could not verify the validity of every published item.[3]

The department's internal response was substantial. A 24/7 WikiLeaks Working Group was established, a separate group was formed to review risks to individuals, and a Mitigation Team was created to address policy, legal, security, counterintelligence, and information-assurance issues.[4] Chiefs of Mission were instructed to assess possible effects on relations with host countries.[4]

The initial publication began in late November 2010. A contemporary report described more than 250,000 State Department documents and communications as being released through WikiLeaks and in parallel by Le Monde, The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and El País. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates stressed that the cables recorded communications by U.S. representatives rather than official U.S. policy positions.[5]

A Ynet report said approximately 20 cables sent by the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv between 2005 and the end of 2009 appeared in the initial disclosures. The earliest identified cable discussed a 2005 meeting between U.S. Ambassador Dan Kurtzer and Mossad director Meir Dagan concerning Mossad activity in Iraq.[6] The Jewish Virtual Library subsequently organized Middle East material into linked collections concerning Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the wider Arab and Islamic world, illustrating that Israel-related material appeared within a much broader regional archive.[7]

Among the most significant Israel-related cables were those recording Israeli officials' consistently alarmed assessments of Iran's nuclear program. A March 17, 2005 cable summarized Israeli views that Iran represented the country's primary security threat and that the operation of an enrichment cycle could mark a "point of no return."[8] The same cable recorded diverging internal estimates: Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz put Iran less than a year from its goal, while military intelligence placed the threshold at early 2007.[8] The cable itself added a caution, noting that earlier Israeli predictions about Iran's bomb timeline had not always proven accurate and that assessments should be treated with that context in mind.[8]

On Israeli preferences, the 2005 cable recorded a desire for diplomatic pressure, sanctions, and a verifiable suspension of nuclear activities, alongside concern that negotiations would allow Iran to "play for time."[8] Israeli officials also articulated reservations about a military strike: they described uncertainty about the location and dispersal of targets, assessed that an attack would likely delay rather than end the nuclear program, and raised concerns about Iranian retaliation through Hezbollah or terrorism.[8] Additional worries included potential involvement of U.S. forces in the region, harm to cooperation with Russia, provocation of Arab and Palestinian responses, and the risk of freezing the peace process.[8] The cable's concluding assessment noted that Israel was concentrating on diplomacy while keeping military contingency plans current, and cautioned that Israeli intelligence briefings tended to emphasize worst-case scenarios not necessarily shared by U.S. assessments.[8]

A December 2008 cable recounting a meeting between U.S. Representative Robert Wexler and Defense Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin found that Yadlin ranked Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah ahead of Palestinian terrorism as Israel's leading security threats — placing the Palestinians fourth.[9] In a June 2009 cable, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the United States and Israel shared intelligence on Iran but analyzed it differently.[10] Barak argued that any diplomatic engagement required a credible military option, warned that a failure to stop Iran could prompt Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia to seek their own nuclear weapons, and estimated that a window of six to eighteen months remained in which Iran could be stopped before military action would cause unacceptable collateral damage.[10]

A November 2009 cable similarly recorded Israeli officials' doubts that engagement with Iran would change Tehran's behavior, alongside the U.S. position that engagement was not open-ended and that sanctions could follow if it failed.[11] A December 2009 cable described a meeting between U.S. Senate staff and Ron Dermer, then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's policy-planning director, in which Dermer reported that U.S.-Israeli cooperation on Iran had increased after a difficult start to the Obama administration.[12] In cables from the same period, Mossad representatives were reported as telling U.S. officials that Iran was using negotiations to gain time.[5]

Some U.S. officials were not fully persuaded by Israeli urgency. A Ynet report on Iran-related cables noted that certain White House and State Department figures believed Israel had overstated Iran's nuclear progress and suggested Israeli assessments should be taken "with a grain of salt."[13] One U.S. diplomat questioned whether Israeli officials genuinely believed their warnings or were presenting worst-case scenarios to create urgency in Washington.[13] The cables themselves recorded that Mossad chief Dagan was generally described as pessimistic about Iran, though one White House figure called him "surprisingly optimistic" in mid-2007.[13]

In a December 2009 cable covering Netanyahu's meeting with U.S. Representative Ike Skelton, Netanyahu estimated that Iran would be able to manufacture several nuclear bombs within one or two years, and said Iran already had the capacity to produce a nuclear bomb.[14] He expressed approval of international diplomatic cooperation and sanctions, noted that the disclosure of the Qom nuclear site had helped persuade the international community to act, and observed that Arab governments supported steps against Tehran without saying so publicly.[14]

A cable drawing on Israeli intelligence and defense assessments shared with U.S. counterparts in November 2009 described what Israel projected a future conflict with Hezbollah might look like.[15] Israeli officials assessed that Hezbollah's goal would be to launch large numbers of missiles and rockets into Israel, including weapons capable of reaching the Tel Aviv area, with a projected firing rate of 100 missiles a day toward Tel Aviv sustained over two months — amounting to some 6,000 missiles in total.[15] For context, the report noted that the 2006 war had involved approximately 4,000 missiles fired at Israeli cities and that Hezbollah was believed to possess around 40,000 missiles at the time of the assessment.[15]

The same reporting described Israeli concerns about weapons transfers across the region. In remarks to a French diplomat that were forwarded to U.S. officials, Israel was reported to be "convinced that Iran is continuing to ship weapons to Syria via Turkish territory, possibly with the knowledge of Turkish authorities," and to view Turkey as becoming a platform for Iran to evade financial sanctions.[15]

A June 2007 cable summarized in The Jerusalem Post described a meeting between Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin and U.S. Ambassador Richard Jones. Yadlin was quoted as saying Israel would be "happy" if Hamas took over Gaza because the Israel Defense Forces could then treat Gaza as a hostile state; he also reportedly said Iranian influence there would be manageable as long as Iran had no port.[16] The newspaper noted that the Hamas takeover occurred days after the cable was written, characterized the broader assessment as having proven faulty, and said the cable indicated that Yadlin's view did not represent the consensus government position.[16]

Mossad chief Dagan's broader strategic views appeared repeatedly in the cables. He reportedly viewed Syria as strengthened after the Second Lebanon War and advocated international enforcement of U.N. resolutions concerning Lebanon as a way to pull Syria away from Iranian influence.[5] He reportedly told U.S. officials on April 19, 2007, that Russia was playing an "extremely negative role" in the region.[6] A separate cable allegedly described Dagan, in an August 2007 meeting with U.S. officials, recommending support for Kurdish, Baluch, Azeri, and student opposition movements inside Iran.[17] The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which cited this account, characterized the remarks as alleged, did not reproduce the cable, and cautioned that persistent indigenous grievances — not outside involvement — were the primary force behind movements such as PJAK.[17]

One prominent pattern reported from the cables was that several Arab leaders privately expressed alarm about Iran, sometimes in terms more urgent than their public positions suggested. A March 2009 meeting between Saudi King Abdullah and White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan was recorded in a cable reported in 2010. Abdullah reportedly said, "A solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict would be a great achievement," but that "Iran would find other ways to cause trouble."[18] A contemporary analysis used the account to argue that U.S. policy had overstated the Palestinian conflict's centrality to Arab governments' regional concerns.[18]

Saudi King Abdullah was also said in subsequent reporting to have frequently urged the United States to attack Iran's nuclear program, while Bahrain's King Hamad reportedly told General David Petraeus, "That program must be stopped."[19] Emirati Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed answered "I think not" when asked whether Syria might change its behavior and distance itself from Iran.[18] Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak described the Syrians and Qataris as "sycophants to Tehran" and "liars," and was said to be consequently unenthusiastic about dealing with Syria.[18]

The Washington Institute's analysis of these disclosures noted that official spokesmen from the relevant governments generally neither confirmed nor disavowed the private remarks.[20] It also noted that some Syrian and pro-Hezbollah outlets dismissed the cables as fabricated or provocative.[20] The Washington Institute specifically cautioned that an Al-Arabiya account claiming Qatar had secretly backed a U.S. attack on Iran in exchange for exclusive gas-field development rights went beyond what the leaked documents actually said.[20]

Several cables touched directly on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, recording positions and frustrations on both sides. A December 2008 cable recounting Yadlin's meeting with Representative Wexler recorded the intelligence chief's view that building trust between Israelis and Palestinians would take time, that a rapid attempt to reach a final agreement risked violence, and that the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — and Gaza had effectively become distinct political entities under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, respectively.[9] He praised security cooperation in Judea and Samaria and argued for a tougher Israeli approach to Gaza.[9]

A February 2009 cable suggested Netanyahu supported a land-swap concept as part of a peace agreement and told U.S. interlocutors that Israel did not seek to control Gaza and Judea and Samaria, but to prevent rockets being fired from them.[14] The Prime Minister's Office responded that he had meant to signal willingness for territorial compromises in a future peace treaty and said other interpretations did not represent his position.[14] A December 2009 cable recorded Dermer telling U.S. Senate staff that the government would make no further concessions to bring Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas back to negotiations, having already taken steps including easing checkpoints, evacuating outposts, Netanyahu's Bar-Ilan speech, and a settlement moratorium.[12] The cable itself noted that Dermer's claim that 70 percent of Israelis opposed the moratorium was likely exaggerated.[12]

A November 2009 cable covering high-level U.S.-Israeli discussions recorded Israeli officials raising concerns about regional arms transfers, Hezbollah, the Lebanese Armed Forces, Egypt's efforts to prevent weapons smuggling into Gaza, the Goldstone Report, and the peace process.[11] A November 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, cited by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, described German Chancellor Angela Merkel's adviser Christoph Heusgen urging the United States to reduce its opposition to the UN Goldstone Report as leverage for an Israeli settlement freeze.[21] Heusgen reportedly argued that Israeli actions in East Jerusalem made it difficult for Abbas to negotiate.[21] U.S. Assistant Secretary Philip Gordon responded that directly linking the Goldstone Report to settlements would "almost certainly be counterproductive," while conceding that settlement policy made it harder for Israel's friends to defend it at the UN Security Council.[21] German officials declined to comment on the confidential dispatches; a German government statement reiterated that partnership with Israel remained a constant of its foreign policy.[21]

A cable based on information gathered on March 13, 2010, recorded Netanyahu asking Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to help repair relations with President Barack Obama after Israel's March 9 announcement of plans for 1,600 homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo during Vice President Joe Biden's visit.[22] Netanyahu reportedly feared the issue could obstruct renewed negotiations with the Palestinians and described the announcement as having been made by "a government official with poor political sensitivity."[22] At the December 7, 2010 State Department briefing, a reporter cited statements attributed to Defense Minister Ehud Barak that U.S.-Israeli talks on restarting negotiations had been put on hold partly because of distractions including WikiLeaks; Crowley replied that U.S. efforts had not been suspended.[3]

A Reuters report carried by Ynet cited three cables published by Norway's Aftenposten in which Israel briefed the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv on its blockade of Gaza. Those cables reportedly recorded Israel telling U.S. officials in 2008 that it would keep Gaza's economy "on the brink of collapse" while avoiding a humanitarian crisis.[23] A separate cable recorded Defense Minister Barak telling U.S. officials that Israel had consulted Egypt and Fatah before Operation Cast Lead, asking whether they would take control of Gaza after Hamas's defeat; both reportedly answered no.[5]

Israeli officials' anxieties about Turkey's shifting orientation surfaced prominently in the cables. In meetings toward the end of 2009, Israeli officials told U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro they had "a bad feeling" about Turkey, expressing concern about its developing ties with Syria and Iran, its distancing from Israel, its support for Hamas's government in Gaza, and what they characterized as a more "Islamic" stance as Turkey sought regional influence.[6] Mossad chief Dagan's views on Turkey were recorded in a cable prepared by U.S. Ambassador in Tel Aviv Richard H. Jones, which described a meeting attended by Under Secretary for Political Affairs William H. Burns and Dagan; Dagan was reported to have asked how long Turkey's military — which saw itself as the defender of Turkey's secular identity — would remain quiet.[24]

Those cables became a source of political controversy in Turkey. A 2011 academic account by Rifat Bali documented accusations from Turkish officials that Israel had been responsible for leaking the documents concerning Turkey, with the accusation advanced by Prime Minister Erdoğan's adviser Yalçın Akdoğan, Interior Minister Beşir Atalay, AKP deputy chairman Hüseyin Çelik, parliament president Mehmet Ali Şahin, and the Islamist newspapers Yeni Şafak, Milli Gazete, and Yeni Akit.[24] Bali presented this as a conspiracy theory rather than an established account of who was responsible for the leak.[24] The reasoning behind the accusations included cables showing that U.S. diplomatic mission staff in Ankara distrusted Erdoğan and regarded him and associates as potentially dangerous Islamists, some of which were prepared during Eric Edelman's tenure as U.S. ambassador in Ankara from August 2003 to June 2005.[24]

On Israeli-Azeri ties, a U.S. Embassy cable from Baku at the beginning of 2009 characterized the relationship as largely hidden from view. Azeri President Ilham Aliyev was quoted as describing the relationship as "an iceberg, nine-tenths of it is below the surface."[25] The cable was discussed in the context of Israeli-Azeri ties and Iranian concerns about growing cooperation between the two countries.[25]

In the aftermath of the January 2009 fighting between Israel and Hamas known as Operation Cast Lead, American Consul General Jake Walles sent a cable in February 2009 to the Secretary of State summarizing a conversation with Saji al-Moughani, a Gaza local and State Department Reconnaissance and Survey Officer.[26] Al-Moughani assessed that much of Gaza's cement had been used to build tunnels, which he described as lit, well-ventilated, mostly more than 30 feet underground on the Gaza side, and largely insulated from Israeli bombardment.[26] The cable conveyed alarm about the growing scale of Hamas's tunnel network as an emerging strategic challenge.

Also among the cables was a March 2006 record of Israel's response to proposed U.S. arms sales to Middle Eastern countries, presented in the context of a U.S.-Israel Joint Political-Military Group meeting.[27] The Israeli position paper defined Israel's qualitative military edge as a credible advantage for deterrence and battlefield superiority, and assessed proposed transfers individually — objecting to some proposed systems for Egypt and Saudi Arabia while stating it had no objection to certain other sales.[27] Israel's concern, as recorded in the cable, was that advanced systems could narrow its military advantage or, in some circumstances, reach terrorist groups.[27]

A cable from Yadlin's December 2008 meeting with Representative Wexler also recorded his view on Gaza policy: he argued for a tougher Israeli approach to Gaza and supported the conceptual distinction between the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria and Hamas's separate governance of Gaza.[9]

Several cables offered candid U.S. diplomatic assessments of Israeli domestic politics and governance. A cable reported by mako characterized the Ehud Olmert government's leadership as "dysfunctional" and attributed to U.S. officials the claim that the IDF sometimes undertook significant military operations without informing the defense minister or the political echelon — though these are characterizations reported from the cables rather than independently established findings.[5]

A February 2010 cable documented debate over a preliminary Knesset proposal to require registration and disclosure of NGO funding from foreign political entities when used for political activity.[28] The cable recorded opposing positions: some NGOs said the draft threatened their ability to operate and speak publicly; NGO Monitor president Gerald Steinberg argued that it would increase transparency about organizations he regarded as political agents; and Justice and Foreign Ministry officials were reported as advising against the proposal or seeking revisions.[28] The cable noted that the draft was expected to change before later readings.[28]

A May 15, 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv to the State Department described Israeli organized crime as having longstanding roots and an expanding global reach.[29] Ambassador James Cunningham wrote that police and courts had mounted a campaign, including a specialized anti-organized-crime unit, but remained unable to address the full scale of the problem; the cable also noted that the embassy tried to prevent Israeli crime figures from entering the United States.[29] The same cable discussed possible organized-crime influence in Israeli public life, while noting that the extent of penetration and corruption was unclear and that police regarded such instances as rare.[29]

The cable cited former minister Gonen Segev's 2004 arrest in an ecstasy-smuggling case and concerns raised by Inbal Gavrieli's 2003 election to the Knesset, including her effort to use parliamentary immunity to block investigations into her father's business.[29] Police sources cited in the cable estimated that Russian organized crime had laundered as much as $10 billion through Israeli holdings; the cable also alleged cooperation among Jewish and Arab Israeli criminals in drug, car-theft, and extortion rackets, and alleged links between some Amsterdam-based Hasidic groups and international drug smuggling.[29] The cable acknowledged relying in part on an anonymous source and conceded that the full scope of the alleged activity was not known.[29]

A later WikiLeaks release covered a distinct historical set of U.S. diplomatic cables from 1973 to 1976, known as the "Kissinger Cables," with more than 5,000 documents dealing with Israel.[30] These documents had been declassified in 2006 and were later published by WikiLeaks; they constitute a separate historical tranche from the November 2010 cable release.[30]

The Kissinger Cables addressed Israel's nuclear posture across several meetings. A May 1975 cable described Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin telling U.S. Senator Howard Baker that Israel had pledged not to be the first state to introduce nuclear weapons into the region and had kept its word.[30] Defense Minister Shimon Peres was quoted saying Israel had not constructed a military nuclear device, and Foreign Minister Yigal Allon told Senator Charles Mathias in January 1975 that Israel had the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons but did not then possess or intend to manufacture them.[30] These are statements attributed to Israeli officials as recorded in the reported cables, not independent confirmation of Israel's nuclear status.[30]

The cables also described secret Israeli-Iranian military contacts predating Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. U.S. Ambassador to Iran Richard Helms reported that Rabin, Peres, and Allon visited the Shah in 1976, followed by a visit to Israel by Iranian vice minister of war Hassan Toufanian.[30] Helms wrote that the precise nature of arms cooperation remained unclear, while describing the Shah's apparent aim as exchanging or gaining access to weapons not subject to U.S. congressional control or veto.[30]

The Kissinger Cables also touched on early territorial deliberations. The Times of Israel reported that the material included a 1973 proposal associated with Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to grant Israeli citizenship to residents of Ramallah and Bethlehem while retaining Israeli control over Judea and Samaria.[30]

Israel had advance warning of the release. An Israeli government source told The Jerusalem Post that Washington had warned Israel it might be mentioned in the cables, and the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv contacted Israelis named in the documents, including Foreign Ministry officials and aides to prime ministers.[31]

Netanyahu's public response was notably measured. On November 29, 2010, he said he did not think Israel had been damaged by the leak and argued that Israeli leaders' private and public positions were not substantially different.[32] He warned that exposure could make diplomats less candid and suggested leaders might withhold their real views in private conversations, while acknowledging that diplomacy required confidentiality even though transparency was necessary.[32] In a separate report, Netanyahu said the disclosures would make diplomats' and journalists' work more difficult because officials would become more cautious about what they said and to whom, predicting fewer participants in meetings and more direct conversations by phone or face-to-face.[33]

In December 2010, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claimed to possess 3,700 documents relating to Israel, most not yet published at the time, and said the material concerned the Second Lebanon War and the killing of senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, promising further disclosures.[34] This records Assange's reported claim at that time, not a verification of the archive's contents or of later publication.[34]

The source base for the Israel-related disclosures is mixed. Some sources reproduce the text of diplomatic cables, while others summarize or analyze material reported through newspapers and WikiLeaks releases.[8][15] The State Department cautioned at the time that documents could be altered after leaving its control and that it could not authenticate every published item.[3] Statements, intelligence estimates, and allegations recorded in the cables therefore remain attributable to the speakers and cable authors rather than independently established findings.

Several specific claims were disputed or qualified at the time of publication. The December 2009 cable explicitly questioned the accuracy of Dermer's claim about Israeli public opposition to the settlement moratorium.[12] The interpretation of Netanyahu's February 2009 remarks on land swaps was disputed by the Prime Minister's Office.[14] The Meir Dagan remarks about supporting Iranian opposition movements were characterized as alleged by the Combating Terrorism Center, which did not reproduce the cable or obtain direct confirmation.[17] The claim that Israel engineered or orchestrated the leak of cables concerning Turkey was presented by academic researcher Rifat Bali as a conspiracy theory rather than an established account.[24] Regional media responses were not uniform: Syrian and pro-Hezbollah outlets dismissed some cables as fabricated or provocative, and at least one Al-Arabiya report about Qatar overstated what the leaked documents actually contained.[20]