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INTERVIEW WITH YITZHAK BEN YISRAEL, HEAD OF THE ISRAELI SPACE AGENCY, DISCUSSING THE NEW ISRAELI SATELLITE TO SPY ON THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM (IBA RESHET BET RADIO, 07:07 (GMT+3) APRIL 26, 2006)(Federal News Service (Middle East) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) (Note - The following was translated from Hebrew) Q: Good morning Professor Yitzhak Ben Yisrael, Maj.-Gen. (res.), Chairman of the Israeli Space Agency and former head of Research and Development in the IDF, and almost a Knesset member of Kadima. YITZHAK BEN YISRAEL: Good morning. Q: What data will this Eros-B provide our defense establishment with? MR. BEN YISRAEL: Eros-B carries a camera and it will add data which can be received by photos. Not everything, you know, can be got from photos, but since from such an angle, from above, it is very difficult to conceal things, there are a lot of things it will be possible to know with the aid of - photography. Q: Such as? MR. BEN YISRAEL: Such as, if today we take the famous example of the known centrifuges in Iran, how is the construction progressing? Are they building under the surface? Is it above the surface? How much have they done already? How much haven't they done? All these things. Is there concrete? How thick is it? It is possible, of course, to know all kinds of things such as these with such a satellite. Q: But you are saying, are they building under the surface, and there is after all news regarding the fact that Iran has a secret plan, a 'Plan-B' for the building of nuclear power, and that plan is probably being carried out in underground facilities, and there we will not be able to photograph. We will not be able to know what is really happening there. MR. BEN YISRAEL: That too, is not precise. For even when you dig a tunnel to the depths, you see it in a photograph. You cannot know what is happening under the ground, but you can see where the location is, where it is, and even finer things, according to the dirt which is being taken out. You can even know how deep it runs. All kinds of things of this type. Q: And will this satellite give us pictures which the U.S. does not have, or which it does not transfer to us? MR. BEN YISRAEL: No. The State of Israel is one of seven or eight countries in the world which launch satellites, and in terms of performance, the quality and the type of the pictures, it is the only country which is before us on that list. The club is small but the U.S. is still before us on the list, which means that everything which we know how to do, the Americans know how to do as well. To our joy, our pictures are better than all the rest (of the members) in the club. But the Americans of course will also be able to do it with their means. Q: And are we not sure that they are doing everything for us? I am referring to the (Jonathan) Pollard case. MR. BEN YISRAEL: (chuckling) Yes. Pollard probably became popular again because of the elections. Q: Well, he transferred materials, at the time, it is irrelevant, but he transferred materials which the Americans did not transfer to us, and he was concerned for Israel's future, and for that he is sitting in jail. MR. BEN YISRAEL: It is true, in general, that this type of data, because it is very unique and very difficult to obtain, and like I said, it is in the possession of a very small number of countries, countries even if they are allies, do not tend to disclose it to their allies, and therefore Israel decided to enter that field and develop an independent capability. Q: Now, there is always publicity on all kinds of very sophisticated things, certainly in the U.S. and in Israel too, now when talking about this satellite Eros-B, we are talking a very high resolution. I understand that it is said that these cameras, the Eros-B camera can identify two separate objects on Earth, if they are only 70 centimeters apart from each other, and the Americans probably have something even sophisticated and you said that, but for instance about Iraq, with all the sophisticated equipment they have, they did not receive correct and true data before they began the war. Now they admit it. MR. BEN YISRAEL: Yes, but that is already another matter. You must know that a satellite can orbit 40 times over your head, and take a million pictures and still it will not succeed to photograph what you do not have. Yes? And that is exactly what happened in Iraq. In Iraq, because the satellites did not photograph nuclear weapons, which it turned out later were non-existent, the satellites did not photograph. There were no photographs. The intelligence people -- Q: -- Colin Powell did present some pictures in the U.N.-- MR. BEN YISRAEL: -- but not of -- (nuclear weapons), he presented photographs of trucks which he claimed were suspected to be biological warfare labs, and the trucks were indeed photographed. Only afterwards it turned out that there were no biological weapons, no labs for biological weapons and so on. Meaning there is always, there is always a need to make a distinction between the intelligence which the different harvesting means - in this case the satellite - give you, and between the interpretation that the intelligence people, the researchers give to the data later on. And that is usually the weak link, in which the people usually make a mistake, and it is not only the American intelligence, but also the British in this case, and the French and the Israeli. We all fell down on the same mistake. Q: The reason could also be that if the man at the top wants a war, then he is provided with the analysis he requests from photographs of trucks. MR. BEN YISRAEL: I wish it was like that, by the way. The reason is much profound. I can tell you, at least about the state of Israel, in which the intelligence erred because it erred. The same, by the way, the investigatory committees in the U.S. and in England found that the intelligence indeed erred. That is, not because the Prime Minister or the President requested it to provide -- Q: -- of war -- MR. BEN YISRAEL: -- the intelligence people sincerely believed that Saddam Hussein had, what later on turned out that he did not have. Q: Now in conclusion, a question by the show's editor, Eliyahu Ben-On, he is very interested to know why of all places, are we sending this satellite from Siberia? MR. BEN YISRAEL: Well, satellites of this Eros type are launched on an orbit which is called 'polar'. It is an orbit which moves from one pole to the other. There is an advantage in an orbit -- from one pole to the other, for then every day it returns at the same time to the same point. That is, it circles planet Earth and the ground underneath it is turning because of it turns around its axis, and therefore the satellite appears every day at the same time. From that standpoint, it is very convenient to send it from a very northern place, directly to the Pole. The satellite is launched northward. It is not launched like we usually launch from Israel, westward. That is, by the way, one of the reasons that such a satellite is not launched from Israel, for in Israel we are free to launch only in the direction of the Mediterranean because of our geographic limitations, and it is impossible to launch a satellite -- orbit which passes from one pole to another. Q: And doesn't the fact that the Russians, who are on good terms with Iran and helped the Iranians build their nuclear capabilities, complicate things for them when they launch our satellite, or in their opinion perhaps the satellite doesn't seem so dangerous to Iran, as we portray it. MR. BEN YISRAEL: No, today in the world, it is customary to make a distinction between two types of satellites. There are military satellites. Israel too has two types of satellites. There are military satellites which the country launches itself. No country launches a military satellite for another country. And there are commercial satellites. Eros-B is a commercial satellite. That is, anyone can, if you want, order pictures from that satellite. You can, it will cost you a few thousands dollars per picture, and you can order pictures. Except of course, from the pictures in sensitive areas, which the company will not sell you, because of commitments we gave to the Americans. The same goes, by the way, -- you talked of before. The satellite is capable of seeing objects better than 70cm. The fact that the company announces that the satellite sees objects which are 70cm apart, that is because this is the commitment we gave to the Americans, that better than this we will not sell to the world. So that is a commercial satellite. Now the Russians have no problem selling commercial satellites here. It is only a matter of business. This launch cost approximately $10 million, and for that they utilized a missile which was once a nuclear ballistic missile and made money. Q: That is the issue. I thank you very much for all your explanations Professor Yitzhak Ben Yisrael. MR. BEN YISRAEL: Thank you. Q: Good morning. |