Nekudat Ha Al-Hazor: Hamodiyin Ha-Israeli Mul Iran Ve-Hizballah
(Point of No Return: Israeli Intelligence Against Iran and Hizballah)
By Ronen Bergman
607 pages, Tel Aviv: Kinneret, 2007 (in Hebrew)

On Aug. 22, 1988, a senior Israeli military intelligence officer briefed the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. At the time, the war between Iran and Iraq, the longest war in the modern history of the Middle East, had been brewing for eight years. The officer stood before the committee and reported, “Based on our best sources, our assessment is that the war will continue for many long years.” On the way back to his office, the officer heard on the radio that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, had agreed to a cease-fire with Iraq.

This is just one of the many examples that Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman recounts in his new book, Nekudat Ha Al-Hazor: Hamodiyin Ha-Israeli Mul Iran Ve-Hizballah (Point of No Return: Israeli Intelligence Against Iran and Hizballah), in which he argues that Israeli intelligence has failed time and again in its wars against both Iran and Hezbollah for the past 30 years. Despite its excellent reputation, he says, Israeli intelligence is just as susceptible to mistakes and inefficiencies as any other.

In researching Point of No Return, Bergman made an impressive inquiry into the Iran-Hezbollah-Israel triangle. He interviewed hundreds of individuals from Argentina to Bosnia to collect material about Iran’s involvement in terrorist operations around the world. He pored over classified military intelligence reports. He amassed an outstanding number of details, many of them...