Major General (res.) Amos Yadlin had served as head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman) until two years ago. In Israel, the head of Aman is viewed as the country’s “national evaluator,” the man who heads the Subcommittee for Intelligence and Secret Services, a forum in which the Shin Bet and Mossad chiefs also participate, together with the prime minister’s military secretary. At the end of the day, Israel’s national intelligence assessment is in the hands of Aman, the organization that dominates the lion's share of Israel’s first-rate and extremely experienced intelligence community. The role of Aman chief is Israel’s most sensitive, most responsible and most explosive position in the country.
Yadlin is a cautious and reserved man, an outstanding air force pilot who participated in the bombing of the Iraqi reactor. He was born to a political family (his father, Aharon Yadlin, was education minister). He nurtures gentlemanly manners and European breeding in the heart of the rough-and-tumble Middle East. He is partner to some of the incisive criticism brought against Israel’s captains by his colleagues, former Mossad head Meir Dagan and former Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin, but he is careful to express his criticism with the utmost discretion and not air it in the public domain.
He was also partner to the efforts of Israel’s highest security echelons, involving then-chief of staff Ashkenazi, Shin Bet head Diskin and Mossad head Dagan, to forestall Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s manipulations to drag the State of Israel into hair-raising, superfluous and premature escapades between 2008 and 2011. In contradistinction to many others, when Yadlin finished his illustrious military career he did not choose to “look after his own interests,” but continued doing more or less what he had done before, under a different banner. Now he is director of Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies, which is perhaps the single most prominent and important defense-security research institute in Israel.
On Monday, Feb. 4, Yadlin presented the institute’s evaluation of Israel’s strategic situation in 2013. In his quiet, contained manner, Yadlin spilled cold water on the prime minister’s strategic plans.
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