Report: Israel operating hundreds of agents in northern Iraq

In an interview to CNN on Sunday, reporter Seymour Hersh said that hundreds of Israelis, some of them Mossad agents, are operating in the region in order to collect information on Iran's nuclear program and monitor events in Syria.

According to the report, Israel in the past has had many ties with the Kurds, which with the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime are currently being renewed.

Israel is not confident of the success of the American program for the stabilization of the country, the report says, and that is why it is interested in setting up independent connections in the region.

Israelis operating in the region are also attempting to assist Kurds living in Syria, the report says.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/441208.html

PLAN B
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
As June 30th approaches, Israel looks to the Kurds.
Issue of 2004-06-28
Posted 2004-06-21
In July, 2003, two months after President Bush declared victory in Iraq, the war, far from winding down, reached a critical point. Israel, which had been among the war’s most enthusiastic supporters, began warning the Administration that the American-led occupation would face a heightened insurgency—a campaign of bombings and assassinations—later that summer. Israeli intelligence assets in Iraq were reporting that the insurgents had the support of Iranian intelligence operatives and other foreign fighters, who were crossing the unprotected border between Iran and Iraq at will. The Israelis urged the United States to seal the nine-hundred-mile-long border, at whatever cost.

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http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040628fa_fact