Ilana Dayan has the first interview former Mossad director Meir Dagan has ever given to Israeli TV. For many Israelis, it must be a bit like hearing Marcel Marceau speak the first word of his career, as Dagan has a reputation for being exceedingly laconic and unwilling to speak publicly or to the press.In the interview, Dagan rejected the popular but mistaken notion that Iran is led by crazy rulers who are hell-bent on wiping Israel off the map. Silverstein provides the translation:
Dayan is a superb interviewer who both brings out the best in her interviewees by being sympathetic to them, but also by challenging them in a dramatic fashion. For example, at one point she says to him: Barak says we have to act within the next nine months or Iran will have the bomb. You say we have till 2015. What if you are wrong? What if we wait as you suggest and they get the bomb and the Jewish people face a Holocaust? We will then have a situation we never experienced, in which we will face a nation of madmen with a nuclear weapon.
Dagan’s reply is quite interesting. He disagrees with her and says: Iran acts as a rational state. It takes into account the implications of its actions [and those of others]. Therefore, it’s not in a mad dash to get a nuclear weapon. Dayan responds: are you telling me that Ahmadinejad is a rational man [in Hebrew, she calls him a "rational goy" which is an odd, slightly racist locution]? Dagan answers: I think he is a sophisticated individual, but his audience is not an Israeli or western one. The Iranians are sophisticated, quite wise, and we should not make the mistake of dismissing them.
