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- Ex-Mossad station chief in Tehran warns 'we are in a stage of deterioration'
Ex-Mossad station chief in Tehran warns 'we are in a stage of deterioration'
Experiencing first-hand the 1979 Revolution, Tzafrir shares with i24NEWS thoughts on current US-Iran crisis
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Eliezer Tzafrir was the last Mossad station chief in Tehran at the time of the Shah's fall during the fateful 1979 Iranian Revolution that sent ripples throughout the Middle East, in what may have reached peak tensions that we are witnessing today.
“There is a nice saying in the Bible… ‘when your enemy falls, don’t be happy’ -- and I am not happy,” Tzafrir told i24NEWS in an interview aired on Tuesday.
“We are in a stage of deterioration,” he said, referring to last week’s US strike in Baghdad that killed top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani and which led to back-and-forth threats by Tehran and Washington.
Tzafrir said that “Iran has reached a stage in its own policy… [which is] against the rest of the world. Against anyone who is not Shiite or not exactly accepting [of] the Iranian [regime].”
On the issue of Iran’s nuclear program and its strategic danger to Israel and the rest of the world, Tzafrir showed optimism, saying that the situation is now safer because the US “proved it can react correctly as it should.”
Nevertheless, the former Mossad man slammed the Iranian “extremist regime… [that] is doing everything in its power to change the role of history back to the seventh century; to get the Sunni Muslims back under their power.”
But Tzafrir was adamant they won’t succeed as “there are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world and less than 15% are Shiite. But,” he added as a warning, the Iranians are “aggressive and their behavior is illogical completely.”