Why did Israel disband an intelligence unit on Iran weeks before the Iranian elections?
The Jerusalem Post reports:
Images of violent clashes between protesters and the authorities in Iran are continuing to flood the Israeli media, but both the defense and academic communities here are suffering from an acute shortage of Persian-speaking experts on Iran who can interpret the scenes of unrest and provide in-depth analyses of internal political affairs.
As reported by The Jerusalem Post in May, just weeks before the Iranian elections and the accompanying wave of turmoil, a special team of analysts headed by longtime Defense Ministry official and Iran expert Uri Lubrani was disbanded.
The Post has learned this week that Lubrani’s staff was made up of two Persian-speaking analysts recruited from the ranks of the intelligence community. They were tasked with analyzing Iran’s internal political situation.
Before the team was disbanded, Lubrani – a former ambassador to Iran – presented its work to Defense Minister Ehud Barak. A third Persian-speaking analyst was fired from Lubrani’s office in 2003 due to budgetary constraints.
A source familiar with these developments, speaking on condition of anonymity, said efforts to understand Iran’s internal political world fell far short of what was needed.
"With this clumsy approach, no one thought that this [wave of unrest in Iran] would happen. I’m not saying Lubrani’s staff could have changed the world, but they could have been activated during this time, and their input would have been better than nothing," the source said.
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