Israel Claims Ex-Syrian PM Jamil Mardam Bey Was ‘Double Agent’

Jamil Mardam Bey. (Getty Images)
Jamil Mardam Bey. (Getty Images)
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Israel Claims Ex-Syrian PM Jamil Mardam Bey Was ‘Double Agent’

Jamil Mardam Bey. (Getty Images)
Jamil Mardam Bey. (Getty Images)

A new book that will be published in Israel claims that former Syrian Prime Minister Jamil Mardam Bey, who served in office in the 1930s and 1940s, was in fact a “double agent” working for France, Britain and Israel.

Author and Israeli researcher, Meir Zamir revealed that Mardam Bey had provided Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion with “information” and warned him that “Britain was planning to thwart the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.”

Zamir’s book, “The Secret Anglo-French War in the Middle East: Intelligence and Decolonization, 1940-1948,” is due to be published in December. Israel’s Haaretz has released excerpts of the book.

Syrian historians in Damascus questioned the timing of the publication of the book and its citation of “Syrian documents”. They also criticized it for “misinterpretation of Mardam Bey’s position in regional alliances during the early 20th Century.”

Zamir is an expert in intelligence affairs and Syrian history. He has garnered attention for reviewing history from the lens of intelligence agencies. He has, since 2010, been publishing research on the role of French intelligence in planting spies in the Syrian government in 1944. He also claimed that Britain succeeded in 1941 in recruiting a large number of Syrian and Lebanese nationalists under the banner of French mandate.

Many of these figures have been commemorated with streets and squares in Syria, said Zamir. They include former Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli, who served in office in the 1940s, Mardam Bey, who served as premier for two terms, and former Lebanese Prime Minister Riad al-Solh, who was in office in the 1940s and 1950s.

Zamir said the figures were recruited in exchange for financial rewards or were being extorted. Many agreed to cooperate with foreign intelligence agencies because they believed the West will emerge victorious in World War II. They also believed that Britain would back their personal ambition to rise to power.

Zamir said that the British demanded that the agents agree that their countries come under British or Hashemite rule, and oppose, even if covertly, the French mandate. Britain indeed fulfilled its pledges, but the agents did not, and they reneged on their agreement to its rule.

The Palestinian cause at the time was seen as a “secondary” issue, while the British and French vied for power in the post-WWII Middle East.

“In the summer of 1945, no one was more hated by French officials in Syria and Lebanon than Jamil Mardam Bey,” wrote Zamir in excerpts published by Haaretz. “Intelligence information obtained by France revealed that Mardam Bey, the prime minister of Syria under the French mandate there, had been recruited by Brig. Iltyd Nicholl Clayton, head of MI6 in the Middle East, and by Nuri Sa'id, the Iraqi prime minister.”

“Mardam Bey had also reportedly agreed to a plan whereby Syria, after the expulsion of France from its mandated territories, would unite with Iraq and with Transjordan under the Hashemite family, and Britain – which controlled those two countries – would enjoy hegemony in Damascus as well. For Mardam’s part in what was called the ‘Greater Syria’ plan, he received handsome sums and was promised that he would rule in Syria, under the Hashemite monarch.”

“What happened was that the French decided to exploit the situation for their own purposes and began to blackmail Mardam Bey. They threatened to publish the documents in their possession and to leak the information to his political foes. Mardam Bey ultimately resigned in August 1945 after consulting with his British handlers, but they did not know that he had capitulated to blackmail and had become a double agent,” said Zamir.

“In that period, with the future of the region hanging in the balance, Mardam Bey provided the French with valuable information about the intentions of the British military and intelligence services in the Middle East.”

“But the story doesn’t end there. Research in French and Israeli archives, together with a perusal of Syrian government documents, now shows that the Syrian prime minister was actually handled by a Zionist intelligence agent together with the French. (…) It all began in October 1945, when the French encountered a new problem. Mardam Bey had been appointed Syria’s ambassador to Egypt and its envoy to the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, but the French had a hard time utilizing him there without arousing suspicion. The solution was to recruit Eliahu Sasson for the mission of relaying the information provided by Mardam Bey.”

“Sasson, who was then the head of the Arab division of the Jewish Agency’s political department, had been appointed by Agency head Ben-Gurion in February 1945 to coordinate cooperation with French intelligence. The Syrian-born Sasson knew Mardam Bey and had met with him in 1937, when the latter had served an earlier term as prime minister. The French, who were well acquainted with Sasson and thought highly of his operational capabilities, began to collaborate with him in handling Mardam Bey.”

“The documents show that on November 12, 1945, Sasson met with Mardam Bey in Cairo; he did so again six days later, when Mardam Bey visited Jerusalem as head of an Arab League delegation to arrange Palestinian representation in the League. Following these encounters, Ben-Gurion met with Sasson, and in a diary entry of November 22, related details of the Jewish Agency official’s conversations with Mardam. This is one of the few occasions when Mardam can be identified directly as an intelligence source of Ben-Gurion’s. In the years that followed, both French intelligence and Sasson concealed by various means the fact that Mardam was the source of information, in order not to expose him.

“From July 1945, Ben-Gurion had prepared for the possibility of an attack by the Arab states should the Jewish state declare its independence. But the information from Mardam Bey turned the spotlight elsewhere. Ben-Gurion learned that the immediate threat to the establishment of the Jewish state lay not in an attack by Arab armies, but rather in the plan of British military commanders and intelligence agencies in the Middle East to thwart that development by various other means. These included declaring the Haganah militia a terrorist organization and disarming it, and implementing the Greater Syria plan, under which a limited Jewish entity would be created in Mandatory Palestine, but not an independent state. It was apparently also Mardam Bey who revealed the fact that British intelligence had recruited an agent who was operating in the Jewish Agency and conveying to his superiors information about the discussions being held by the Agency’s leadership, including copies of the minutes of its most secret meetings,” said Zamir.

“According to the information passed on by Mardam Bey, the Arab rulers who were fearful of Soviet intervention had decided to assist the British in the event of an all-out war in the Middle East between the Soviet Union and the West, while London’s policy was to play for time in order to rehabilitate its economy and set relations with the United States on a solid footing. As to the Palestinian question, in deliberations of the Arab League council concern was expressed that ongoing Jewish immigration to Palestine would allow the Haganah to field an army of an estimated 80,000 troops and that ‘we will never be able to match them in preparation and organization, even if the English help us.’ Accordingly, the Arab leaders wanted the British Army to remain in Palestine.

“(…) On July 14, 1946, the British government was compelled to declare that it did not support the Greater Syria project. Nevertheless, the British military and secret services in the Middle East continued their efforts to establish a Hashemite Greater Syria as part of a regional defense alliance against the Soviet threat.”

“The events that occurred in 1946 confirmed the accuracy of the information conveyed by Mardam Bey about British military intentions in Palestine. To begin with, in May of that year Brig. Iltyd Clayton initiated a meeting of the heads of the Arab states at the Inshas Palace in Cairo. The conference’s resolutions asserted for the first time that Zionism constituted a danger not only to the Palestinians but to all the Arab states. A second meeting of the Arab League council was held in June in Bloudan, near Damascus. Some of its resolutions, which were secret, stated that the danger existed of a military confrontation with the Zionist movement, and in that case the Arab states would be duty-bound to assist their Palestinian brethren with money, arms and manpower.”

“Mardam Bey was present at the Bloudan discussions, as was Sasson, who returned thereafter to Jerusalem with the information about the secret resolutions,” said Zamir.



As It Attacks Iran's Nuclear Program, Israel Maintains Ambiguity about Its Own

FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
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As It Attacks Iran's Nuclear Program, Israel Maintains Ambiguity about Its Own

FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)
FILE - This file image made from a video aired Friday, Jan. 7, 2005, by Israeli television station Channel 10, shows what the television station claims is Israel's nuclear facility in the southern Israeli town of Dimona, the first detailed video of the site ever shown to the public. (Channel 10 via AP, File)

Israel says it is determined to destroy Iran’s nuclear program because its archenemy's furtive efforts to build an atomic weapon are a threat to its existence.

What’s not-so-secret is that for decades Israel has been believed to be the Middle East’s only nation with nuclear weapons, even though its leaders have refused to confirm or deny their existence, The Associated Press said.

Israel's ambiguity has enabled it to bolster its deterrence against Iran and other enemies, experts say, without triggering a regional nuclear arms race or inviting preemptive attacks.

Israel is one of just five countries that aren’t party to a global nuclear nonproliferation treaty. That relieves it of international pressure to disarm, or even to allow inspectors to scrutinize its facilities.

Critics in Iran and elsewhere have accused Western countries of hypocrisy for keeping strict tabs on Iran's nuclear program — which its leaders insist is only for peaceful purposes — while effectively giving Israel's suspected arsenal a free pass.

On Sunday, the US military struck three nuclear sites in Iran, inserting itself into Israel’s effort to destroy Iran’s program.

Here's a closer look at Israel's nuclear program:

A history of nuclear ambiguity Israel opened its Negev Nuclear Research Center in the remote desert city of Dimona in 1958, under the country's first leader, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. He believed the tiny fledgling country surrounded by hostile neighbors needed nuclear deterrence as an extra measure of security. Some historians say they were meant to be used only in case of emergency, as a last resort.

After it opened, Israel kept the work at Dimona hidden for a decade, telling United States’ officials it was a textile factory, according to a 2022 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an academic journal.

Relying on plutonium produced at Dimona, Israel has had the ability to fire nuclear warheads since the early 1970s, according to that article, co-authored by Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists, and Matt Korda, a researcher at the same organization.

Israel's policy of ambiguity suffered a major setback in 1986, when Dimona’s activities were exposed by a former technician at the site, Mordechai Vanunu. He provided photographs and descriptions of the reactor to The Sunday Times of London.

Vanunu served 18 years in prison for treason, and is not allowed to meet with foreigners or leave the country.

ISRAEL POSSESSES DOZENS OF NUCLEAR WARHEADS, EXPERTS SAY

Experts estimate Israel has between 80 and 200 nuclear warheads, although they say the lower end of that range is more likely.

Israel also has stockpiled as much as 1,110 kilograms (2,425 pounds) of plutonium, potentially enough to make 277 nuclear weapons, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a global security organization. It has six submarines believed to be capable of launching nuclear cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles believed to be capable of launching a nuclear warhead up to 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles), the organization says.

Germany has supplied all of the submarines to Israel, which are docked in the northern city of Haifa, according to the article by Kristensen and Korda.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST POSE RISKS

In the Middle East, where conflicts abound, governments are often unstable, and regional alliances are often shifting, nuclear proliferation is particularly dangerous, said Or Rabinowitz, a scholar at Jerusalem's Hebrew University and a visiting associate professor at Stanford University.

“When nuclear armed states are at war, the world always takes notice because we don’t like it when nuclear arsenals ... are available for decision makers,” she said.

Rabinowitz says Israel's military leaders could consider deploying a nuclear weapon if they found themselves facing an extreme threat, such as a weapon of mass destruction being used against them.

Three countries other than Israel have refused to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: India, Pakistan and South Sudan. North Korea has withdrawn. Iran has signed the treaty, but it was censured last week, shortly before Israel launched its operation, by the UN's nuclear watchdog — a day before Israel attacked — for violating its obligations.

Israel's policy of ambiguity has helped it evade greater scrutiny, said Susie Snyder at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a group that works to promote adherence to the UN treaty.

Its policy has also shined a light on the failure of Western countries to rein in nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, she said.

They “prefer not to be reminded of their own complicity,” she said.