It sometimes falls on a country’s ex-military men to warn the public of the combative bluster of their elected officials. Retired, they have little to lose and are more familiar with the costs of war than the cycles of elected politicians looking to push their foreign policy de jour onto the public.
 

For example, in the past two weeks, newly-retired Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak were presenting a "mirage" to the public. He said a false dichotomy was being pushed: strike Iran or see a nuclear Iran. Diskin’s comments have been echoed by several ex-military and intelligence figures including 2002-2011 Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who called Israel’s Iran policy ill-conceived and the idea of an attack on Iran "the stupidest thing I have ever heard". Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who ordered the siege of Gaza, even joined the chorus last Sunday.
 

But Likud hawks now face open mutiny from the serving top brass of Israel’s security services. Dagan’s successor Tamir Pardo, said Iran does not pose an existential threat to Israel. Netanyahu's military Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, the man likely responsible for giving the orders to train MEK assassins to strike Iranian nuclear scientists, went on the record to say that Iran was rational.
 

“Rational” is an interesting word in this context because since the early 1990s Israel has employed a propaganda campaign to cast Iran as an irrational actor for the purpose of attempting to check Iran’s power in the region. Mostly for the benefit of its U.S. patrons the story runs that Iran is not a rational political player and is therefore undeterred by the traditional checks and balances that maintain world order. By weaving this fiction Israel encourages the U.S. to take a hard line with Iran and adopt a zero-tolerance policy on its nuclear program.
 

This principle should be kept firmly in mind when interpreting Israel’s rhetoric and actions towards Iran. In November 2011, the IAEA released a paper stating that Iran did not have an active nuclear program (findings which reiterated pervious IAEA reports and two US National Intelligence Estimates). Overnight Israel’s executive and spin doctors created a media storm, briefing on “zones of immunity”, “existential threats” and stirring up images from the Holocaust, with many pundits soberly talking about the inevitability of war. Months later the war drums were muted and some sense was restored: Obama publically chastised Israeli lobby AIPAC, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei twice repeated his fatwa against developing nuclear weapons and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, U.S. Chief of Staff Martin Dempsey poured cold water on Israel’s prediction of imminent armageddon.
 

The problem was that the damage had already been done. By ratcheting up the propaganda to boiling point, an uncontroversial IAEA report resulted in an EU embargo on Iranian oil and “crippling” U.S. on Iran’s financial system causing sharp inflation. The sad fact is that hawkish hysteria from Israel is taken seriously every time and rarely seen for the sham that it is.