Shaul Mofaz (; 4 November 1948) is a retired Israeli military officer and politician. He joined the Israel Defense Forces in 1966 and served in the Paratroopers Brigade. He fought in the Six-Day War, Yom Kippur War, 1982 Lebanon War, and Operation Entebbe with the paratroopers and Sayeret Matkal, an elite special forces unit. In 1998 he became the IDF's sixteenth Chief of staff serving until 2002. He is of Iranian Jewish ancestry. After leaving the army, he entered politics. He was appointed Minister of Defense in 2002, holding the position until 2006 when he was elected to the Knesset on the Kadima list. He then served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transportation and Road Safety until 2009. After becoming Kadima leader in March 2012 he became Leader of the Opposition, before returning to the cabinet during a 70-day spell in which he served as Acting Prime Minister, Vice Prime Minister and Minister without Portfolio. Kadima was reduced to just two seats in the 2013 elections, and Mofaz retired from politics shortly before the 2015 elections. Biography Early life Shaul Mofaz was born Shahrām Mofazzazkār () on 4 November 1948 in Tehran, Iran, to Persian Jewish parents from Isfahan, and lived in Tehran until his family moved to Israel. His father was principal of the ORT school in Tehran. Mofaz immigrated to Israel with his family in 1957 when he was nine years old. The family settled in Eilat, where Mofaz grew up. His father's attempt to open a small factory in Eilat failed, and he had to support the family by working as a menial laborer. His family lived in a one-and-a-half room apartment and his parents struggled to put food on the table. At age 10 he had to work in construction to help support his family. Mofaz attended a religious elementary school in Eilat, and at age 14, his father sent him to an agricultural boarding school in Nahalal in the Jezreel Valley, where studies were combined with agricultural work. Mofaz recalled the boarding school as his first real exposure to wider Israeli society, and struggling to fit in and be seen as a "real Israeli", recalling that "you're in class with children from Nahalal who are Israelis with real roots in the country, children of the valley nobility. These princes who live in the big houses on the big farms of Nahalal, and where