Israel Denies ‘False Flag’ Op Against US

The Israeli government is denying a report that its intelligence agents posed as CIA officers in an alleged plan to recruit and train Sunni extremists in Pakistan to assassinate Iranian officials.

The Jan. 13 report in Foreign Policy magazine quoted U.S. intelligence officials as saying Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, conducted the operation in 2007 and 2008.

If the allegation were true, a senior Israeli government official told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Sunday, the then-head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, would have been declared persona non grata by the U.S. government and not allowed back into the country.

“Dagan’s foot would not have walked again in Washington,” the paper quoted the official as saying.

Israel’s response to the so-called “false-flag” accusation appeared as a former CIA officer suggested Israel carried out a Jan. 11 assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in order to goad Iran into a military action – perhaps an attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz – which the U.S. has said it will not allow.

“It’s almost as if [Israel’s] intention is to get the Iranians to fire a missile at an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, which will cause a wider war,” Robert Baer, who now writes on intelligence issues for Time magazine, told the MSNBC show “Hardball” on Jan. 12. “It would help them (Israel) because the Israelis would force us into hitting the Iranians.”

The Jan. 11 assassination, the fifth killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist in two years, occurred when a bomb placed on the scientist’s vehicle exploded.

Iran has blamed Israel, the U.S. and Great Britain. Both the U.S. and Britain have denied the charge, and the White House and U.S. State Department condemned the assassination and whoever carried it out.

Israel’s government response to the Foreign Affairs article was unusual, according to the Haaretz report, because the government typically refuses comment on Mossad operations.

The magazine article said that Mossad officers used American money and passports to pose as CIA officials. The mission was to recruit members of a Sunni Muslim extremist group called Jundallah to conduct a covert war against Iran, whose population is largely Shiite.

The article is based on memos drafted during the last years of the Bush administration. One source quoted in the piece was described as having read the memos and a second source was described as being “intimately familiar with the case” for having been involved in investigating and disproving reports that the CIA was covertly supporting Jundallah.

“It’s amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with,” one source was quoted as saying. “Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn’t give a damn what we thought.”