IDF Chief of Staff Leaves Post Warning About Threat from Iran

Israelis were warned by their highest-ranking military leader Sunday that Iran now poses the greatest menace to their security, including a nuclear threat.

That was the judgment expressed by the outgoing Israel Defense Force chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Shomron, in his final television interview as an active officer of the IDF.

Shomron formally handed over the accoutrements of his office to his successor, Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak, in a series of rituals and ceremonies Monday that ended a 35-year IDF career in which he reached the highest level possible for an Israeli soldier.

Shomron said the damage done to Iraqi forces in the Persian Gulf war altered the military balance of power in the region. He explained that the battering of Saddam Hussein’s army as it was driven from Kuwait deprived Syria, a sworn enemy of Israel, of strategic depth.

That, plus the end of the “Soviet umbrella” over Damascus, reduced Syria’s immediate threat to Israel, Shomron said.

But it also removed a check on Iranian ambitions and the spread of the Iranian-led Islamic revolution, he warned.

Barak, newly promoted from major general, became the IDF’s 14th chief staff in ceremonies Monday morning at Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Office. The two generals and their wives were received by President Chaim Herzog at a ceremony in the presidential residence.

Later, they drove to Tel Aviv for another handing-over ceremony at General Headquarters, where military units representing the land, sea and air arms of the IDF were drawn up in ranks.

Barak, who had been Shomron’s deputy, is a 49-year-old career officer who served as head of the Planning Branch at General Headquarters, as chief of military intelligence and as commander of the central sector, which includes the West Bank.

Born on Kibbutz Mishmar Hasharon, Barak has been in the IDF since 1959. He has served in elite units during his 31-year military career, is a combat veteran of the 1967 Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and has taken part in secret military operations that are still classified.