October 21, 2013 | Quote

Turkey Outing of Mossad a Betrayal, Say Former Spies

Turkey's outing of agents for Israel spying on Iran is a major blow to Western agencies trying to gather intelligence on an Iranian nuclear bomb and shows the NATO member is no longer trustworthy, says a former chief of the Mossad, Israel's spy agency.

“If true … what they did breached all rules of cooperation between intelligence organizations,” said Danny Yatom, a retired Israeli general who headed the Mossad from 1996 to 1998 and served in the Israeli parliament from 2003 to 2008.

The incident will damage U.S. intelligence efforts on Iran too, “because we will be much more reluctant to work via Turkey because they will fear information is leaking to Iran,” Yatom said. “We feel information achieved (by Israel) through Turkey went not only to Israel but also to the United States.”

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA operations officer who handled Iranian intelligence sources in Turkey, said he doubts the Iranians who were compromised were crucial Israeli assets.

“The Israelis would not be sharing sensitive foreign intelligence assets with the Turks,” he said. “They might share reporting but not operational details that would allow them to identify the assets.”

If they did, it's a sign of sloppy trade craft, Gerecht said. The Turkish intelligence service, known by the acronym MIT, “is not the kind of service you get intimate with,” he said. “It's not like the British-Israeli or British-American relationship.”

Such an incident by Turkey, a 60-year NATO ally of the United States, would be a betrayal of a Western fraternity of spies, he said.

“It's easy to imagine lots of Western countries shutting down an Israeli operation,” he said. “I can't imagine any Western country ever ever cooperating with the Iranians to compromise and kill Israeli agents. That would never happen.”

It's a sign that Turkey and its prime minister cannot be trusted with sensitive information and equipment, Gerecht said.

“If anything is going on with the Turks that you don't want the Iranians to know about, it should be stopped,” he said.

Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the incident “raises questions of how trustworthy (the Turks) are because they ceased to play by the rules of the game.”

Schanzer says that under Erdogan, Turkey has been taking stands that conflict with its Western allies over Egypt, Syria and possibly Iran.

Turkey recently rejected an American Patriot missile defense system in favor of a cheaper Chinese system, which Schanzer said could result in the transfer or sensitive NATO military technology to the Chinese. Turkey's ongoing support for the Muslim Brotherhood also conflicts with the policies of President Obama and U.S. Arab allies in the Persian Gulf, he said.

And in March it was revealed that Turkey bought Iranian natural gas with gold in violation of international sanctions, showing it was a willing facilitator of the Iranian nuclear program, Schanzer said.

On the other hand, Turkey has been a vocal opponent of Syria's dictator Bashar Assad and supported Obama's plan to launch a military strike against Syria. Obama's eventual backtracking on the strike was portrayed in Turkish media as as a betrayal of Turkey, whose border areas have been struck by Syrian aircraft without military reprisal from NATO or the USA.

Schanzer says the report on the Israeli spy report raises questions about whether Turkey is shifting away from the United States when it comes to Iran.

“Have the Turks decided the Israelis and Americans won't be able to stop the Iranian nuclear program, and decided to cast their lot with Iran?” Schanzer said.

Read the full article here.

Issues:

Iran Turkey