By: Srijan Sharma & Prakrat Gupta
The colossal intelligence management failures of Mossad on October 07, 2023 when Hamas launched its largest attack on Israel, plunged the Middle East into a protracted and escalating conflict. This setback, which left Israel’s intelligence agency in a precarious position, has now been transformed into a story of redemption and revival. Mossad’s resurgence is a testament to the agency’s ability to reassess its strategies and pivot towards the Octopus Strategy, a precision-based approach that has dealt significant blows to the Axis of Resistance.
Mossad’s Failure
Israel had been caught off guard vis-à-vis Hamas, something which brings back the memories of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Then, too, Israel failed to rightly assess its opponents’ intentions.
Although tensions between the two countries had been rising to that point, Israel did not expect Egypt and Syria to launch an attack on October 6, 1973. The Mossad had not been left completely without warning, however. At almost the last moment, a Mossad asset codenamed “Angel” communicated that Egypt and Syria were about to launch an offensive. However, the Mossad ignored the information as it ran counter to its assessment of Egypt. The institute did not believe that Egypt could attack Israel because it thought it did not possess the necessary technology to counter Israeli airpower. They were wrong. Egypt was able to carry out a compelling and complex offensive against Israel using Soviet SAM-6 missiles for air defence.
The 1973 failure contributed to the fall of Golda Meir’s government and the sacking of its military intelligence chief, Eli Ziera after the Agranant Commission investigated the failure of Israel’s defence forces and intelligence.
A close examination of Mossad’s intelligence misses shows that, then as well as now, the real problem in Israel’s famed intelligence agency does not lie in intelligence gathering or awareness of the threat; the real problem lies in the assessment and feedback part, which is an integral part of the intelligence cycle.
Nations often pay a heavy price for biased or half-baked assessments and underestimated feedback. Israel falters, not in raw intelligence but in intelligence management, either by assessing intelligence through a prejudiced or biased perspective or by underestimating the policy response warranted by the intel in hand.
Although we cannot say so with certainty, Mossad may well have received some prior intelligence on the October 7 attack. Still, they underestimated Hamas’s capability of carrying out a well-coordinated three-pronged attack. Four possible reasons why they thought this is:
1-Overconfidence in Israel’s technology—Iron Dome, border security, surveillance capabilities, etc.
2-Normalization of ties between Israel and Arab nations, which perhaps led Mossad to believe that the situation with Palestine, too, was thawing.
3-Divided Israeli attention in the West Bank and domestic politics. Israel feared that the recent surge in unrest in the West Bank would lead to widespread violence. Israeli citizens, too, were restless. Security establishments were therefore focused on the West Bank and domestic fronts and distracted from Gaza.
Iran’s nuclear obsession kept Mossad under the impression that Iran would not wish to stir the pot because it was engaged in delicate negotiations regarding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action via backchannels with the US. Israel might have been under the valid impression that Iran would not sabotage the nuclear deal by encouraging an offensive action by its ally Hamas, at least for a time. At the time, Iran was lowering the pace of its nuclear stockpiling. The action of lowering stockpiling can be seen as a deception to shift Mossad’s attention and make them believe that Iran was still vigorously pursuing the deal via backchannels. If, as per some reports, Iran was behind the attack, it succeeded in carrying out a covert proxy attack where Iran could exercise clean deniability and play safe. Even if not, the appearance of detente may have contributed to catching Israel off guard.
As strategic affairs expert and national security analyst Praveen Swami notes, “successful conduct of war demands endless intellectual creativity.” This statement underscores the crucial role of continuous innovation and adaptability in shaping effective war strategies, a point that the audience should feel is urgent and essential.
Learning From Failures and Mossad’s Comeback
After failure to pre-empt and prevent the 7th October attacks, Mossad must have gone in introspection and taken a few lessons, which they took fifty-one years back in 1973, where they nearly missed intelligence. The Commission, which investigated this failure, recommended organisational changes in Mossad, but most importantly, Mossad established an analytical capability to challenge the military intelligence assessments. Mossad failed then because their feedback loop was closed and not expansive, and the agency’s inconsistency in analytic objectivity.
In 1973, Mossad believed that Arabs were weak and wouldn’t attack Israel; this same assessment, at least to some extent, prevailed last year when Mossad thought that Hamas would not execute such a significant attack. The rigidity in the evaluation and of diversifying its assessment led to the intertwining of fatalistic intelligence approaches and security policies where Israel’s Mossad was to some extent convinced that Arabs would not attack them as they are weak and prospects of war were relatively weak; however, to their shock, 1973 war happened. The Thumb rule of intelligence assessment says that produced intelligence must run from analysis, free from prejudices and bias. In contrast, Mossad’s strong objectivity, which lacked analysis and sometimes ran into prejudices, caused Mossad to make wrong estimations.
The then chief of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, described Israeli views of the Arabs succinctly: “We scorned them,” and thus, the intelligence process and the policy process became a “cross-fertilisation breeding disaster. In simple words, Mossad didn’t scrutinise the intent and capacity. It picturised a superficial assessment of the enemy, which has a high possibility of being untrue.
Mossad’s core problem was hinted at by the Aghat Commission, which pointed out the agency’s failed assessments. However, this issue was far from solved. Mossad again came into a tight spot after its failure in the 1982 Lebanon Invasion, when the agency encountered a complex intelligence assessment.
The 1982 Failure
In 1982, Mossad and the top echelons of the Israeli security establishment believed that a short war with Lebanon against the Palestinian resistance movement led by Yasser Afarat could alter the balance of power in favour of Israel, for which Israel used the attack on the Israeli ambassador, in London as a critical reason to invade Lebanon.
Mossad believed that on the ground, their right-wing Christian ally-Phalangists (Kateeb Party), who are anti-Palestine and want to drive them out, would support them with on-ground intelligence and combat support. Therefore, Mossad began operational engagements with Phalangists; the agency further believed that strengthening right-wing Christians would help them to establish a pro-Israel government in Lebanon. Mossad strengthened them, but the agency over-relied on their assessments and advocated for them. The agency was not able to assess that these right-wing Christians have extremists face as well, which can backfire and damage Israel’s position both operationally and diplomatically. These right wings carried out brutal Sabra and Shatila massacres, killing Palestine civilians and Shia Muslims. This incident significantly contributed to Israel’s withdrawal from the war, leading to the secret rise of Hezbollah.
Kahan Commission sat to inquiry this massacre, which held Israel as indirectly responsible. However, Mossad was not reprimanded, but Israeli Defence Minister Sharon dismissed as “personal responsibility” for “ignoring the danger of bloodshed and revenge” and “not taking appropriate measures to prevent bloodshed”—Sharon’s negligence in protecting the civilian population of Beirut, which had come under Israeli control.
As for Mossad, the then Director Nahum Admoni put it succinctly: “Mossad tried to the best of its ability to present and approach the subject (of intelligence on Lebanon) as objectively as possible; but since it was in charge of the contacts, I accept as an assumption that subjective and not only objective relations also emerged. The Director acknowledged that subjectivity existed, but the agency preferred objectivity, which led to the limited assessment of right-wing Christian behaviour and the consequences of deploying them in refugee camps, showing the glaring error in Mossad’s assessment yet again.
Fixing The Error and Octopus Strategy
Mossad seems to have gradually fixed its assessment errors by bringing a broad view of its intelligence assessment without prejudices. The successful execution of the targeted assassination of Hams and Hezbollah top leadership and the preparation to handle escalations show three critical improvements in the agency.
- Mossad is considering various dynamics and pre-strike assessments, which were limited earlier
- Giving space for more subjectivity and less rigid objectivity, carefully reading the balance of power instead of acting hastily.
- Following the Octopus strategy of carrying out precise strikes against high-profile targets means going for the head and not for Octopus tentacles, showing operational and strategic patience.
As Mossad redeems its agency’s image and rebuilds Israe’s strategic power steering in the complex dynamic of power balance, the agency must realise that it must continue intelligence flexibility with an analytic-objective approach to reimagine its dominance in the Middle East security and strategic dynamics.
