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Israeli Intelligence and the Iraq War: "An Old Wives' Tale"

Evidence rating: STRONG. Every quote below is from an Israeli official, lawmaker or analyst, as reported by The Guardian, the Washington Post, the Associated Press and the Carnegie Endowment.

The best sources on Israel's part in the Iraq war are Israeli. They cannot be dismissed as hostile outsiders. What they describe is the same pattern seen in 2025: worst-case Israeli assessments, shared with Washington, that turned out to be wrong.

Israeli lawmakers, 2004​

In February 2004, after no weapons were found, Israeli lawmakers spoke openly (The Guardian, February 4, 2004):

  • Yossi Sarid, member of the Knesset's foreign affairs and defense committee, to the Associated Press: "It was known in Israel that the story that weapons of mass destruction could be activated in 45 minutes was an old wives' tale," and "Israel didn't want to spoil President Bush's scenario, and it should have."
  • Ehud Yatom, on the same committee, disagreed: Israel had told the Americans it believed the weapons existed but had not seen them.
  • Roman Bronfman, another lawmaker, said that if the critics were right, ordering Israelis to prepare sealed rooms and gas masks had misled the Israeli public.
  • Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector, told the Israeli news site Y-Net that Israeli intelligence "reached the conclusion years ago that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction," and: "if the Israeli intelligence knew that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, so the CIA knew it and thus British intelligence too."
  • Efraim Halevy, a former head of the Mossad, had told a closed NATO meeting in 2002 that there were "clear indications" Iraq had renewed its weapons efforts after inspections stopped in 1998.

An Israeli intelligence veteran, 2003​

In November 2003, Brig. Gen. (ret.) Shlomo Brom of Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center published "The War in Iraq: An Intelligence Failure." As summarized by the Carnegie Endowment (Carnegie, December 11, 2003):

  • "Israeli intelligence, which was in full agreement with American and British intelligence estimates, has, however, remained 'in the shadows.'"
  • "Israeli intelligence tends to adopt the worst-case scenario," and "Inflated threat assessments exact a heavy price."
  • Analysts "feel that by giving bleak assessments they decrease the threat to themselves: if the assessment ends up being correct they will be heroes, and if it ends up being untrue, no one will give them any trouble."
  • On the evidence: "All signs indicated that on the eve of the war, Saddam was trying to convince the international community that he did not possess weapons of mass destruction."
  • The cost: foreign services become "wary of accepting Israeli intelligence."

The Washington Post reported the finding under the headline "Israel Shares Blame on Iraq Intelligence, Report Says" (Washington Post, December 5, 2003). A 2004 Knesset report found that "Israeli intelligence was influenced in shaping its assessment by assessments transferred to it from allied intelligence services, and that those services were similarly influenced by it" (as quoted by Rossomando).

The 2025 echo​

Brom's warning fits June 2025 exactly. According to former US counterterrorism chief Joe Kent, "All 18 of America's intelligence agencies agreed — Iran had no capacity to develop a nuclear bomb. But Israel was telling us they would be able to assemble ten bombs in two weeks" (video, @allenanalysis). The Jerusalem Post reported that "much of the IAEA report" used to justify the war "is based on evidence from the Mossad" (as quoted by @DanLinnaeus). A worst-case Israeli assessment, shared with Washington, again became the case for an American war.

Status: Ehud Yatom, Roman Bronfman, Scott Ritter, Efraim Halevy and Joe Kent are alive, as far as these sources show. Yossi Sarid is deceased (2015). Shlomo Brom: Unknown.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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