Meir Dagan, the former head of the Israeli Mossad, died on Thursday morning at the age of 71, the Israeli spy agency said in a statement.
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Dagan directed the Mossad from 2002 to 2011. Under his leadership, the Mossad reportedly carried out covert attacks against Iranian nuclear scientists and unleashed cyber-attacks, including the Stuxnet virus, developed in cooperation with the USA, that delayed the Iranian nuclear program.
But weeks before he stepped down, Dagan suspended convention by summoning Israeli reporters to Mossad headquarters, where he disputed Netanyahu’s assessment of the imminence of an Iranian threat and declared readiness to launch a pre-emptive war to foil it.
Mr Dagan served in the IDF for 32 years, before becoming Israel’s counter terror advisor under Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Born Meir Hubermann in 1945 in Kherson in what is now Ukraine, Mr. Dagan was the son of Holocaust survivors. He was married with three children and a number of grandchildren.
After leaving office, Mr. Dagan became a surprisingly outspoken critic of the prime minister for dangling the possibility of an Israeli military strike on Iran.
Dagan was a keen analyst of Israel’s political leadership, Livni went on, alluding to his criticism of various Netanyahu governments.
In the 1970s, Sharon, then general of the southern command, selected Mr. Dagan to lead a special forces unit in Gaza.
The Mossad described Dagan as a distinguished member of the Israeli establishment community revered by many both at home and overseas.
President Reuvin Rivlin, who is now in Moscow for a state visit, hailed Dagan as a “man of counsel, a man of wisdom, a loving man and a man beloved in his roughness, a leader and a man of the people”.
Less than a decade later, according to Israeli news accounts cited by the New Yorker magazine, Netanyahu observed that Mr. Dagan’s impact on the Mossad had been even greater than Sharon expected.
Mr. Dagan traced his zeal for Israel to the slaughter of European Jewry during the Holocaust.
Dagan was appointed to head the Mossad by the late former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and shared his tendency to disregard traditional protocol to achieve military goals, said Ronen Bergman, who covers intelligence affairs for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth and is working on a history of the Mossad.
Like Netanyahu, Rivlin noted how the murder of Dagan’s grandfather in the Holocaust impacted his life. Meir Dagan, the giant of all giants – as he was known, symbolized for many the rebirth of the State of Israel from the ashes of the Holocaust.
That man was Dagan’s grandfather.
The Mossad has never confirmed such operations. Asked by Army Radio on Wednesday whether Dagan had effectively scotched an Israeli attack on Iran, Netanyahu’s defence minister at the time, Ehud Barak, said: “Could well be”.
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“For 45 years I have served this country – all of them dedicated to safeguarding its security as a Jewish and Zionist state”.
