JERUSALEM, (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister  Benjamin Netanyahu extended the tenure of the Mossad chief to an  eighth year yesterday, a testament to the spymaster’s perceived  success in waging shadow wars against Iran and its allies.  Meir Dagan, a former commando and retired general, took over  Mossad in 2002 with what security sources described as a mandate  to monitor and sabotage the Iranian nuclear programme ahead of  any decision by Israel to launch full-scale preemptive strikes.

Mossad also has been credited with spotting an alleged  Syrian nuclear reactor which Israel bombed in 2007, and with  assassinating Islamist guerrillas such as Imad Moughniyah of  Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, who was slain in Damascus in 2008.

“This is an excellent man who, at the head of an excellent  team, has improved the country’s capabilities,” an aide to   Netanyahu quoted him as telling the Israeli cabinet in its  weekly session.

The son of Holocaust refugees, Dagan, 64, has spearheaded  assessments that a nuclear-armed Iran would present a mortal  threat to Israel. Iran — which denies seeking the bomb — could  produce its first such warhead by 2014, Dagan said last week.

He also played down prospects of the current civil upheaval  over Iran’s disputed June 12 election leading to a change in  government, but said Tehran could be persuaded to curb sensitive  nuclear technologies if U.S.-led sanctions are intensified.

Failing that, Israel, which is widely assumed to have the  Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, has hinted at a military  option, though many analysts think Iranian sites are too  dispersed and fortified for its air force to take on alone.
That leaves covert action as a stop-gap countermeasure,  something Israeli officials privately confirm is under way.