The prestige of Mossad, the espionage agency that for decades cultivated its legend of omniscience, is going through low times. The Israeli secret service, which once boasted of knowing the streets of Tehran better than those of Tel Aviv, now drags the consequences of the failure of its most ambitious plan: to overthrow the regime of the ayatollahs. The internal crisis also breaks out at the worst possible moment for Israel, with the October elections just around the corner, half a dozen open fronts between Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank, and a conflict with Iran that, far from closing, has become entrenched.
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The new director of Mossad, Roman Gofman, has dismissed two of his senior officials, directly involved in the design of that plan. According to the Israeli Channel 12 last Thursday, Gofman has removed from their positions the head of the Intelligence Directorate of the secret service – in office since December – and the head of the division in charge of Iran. Both were part of the team that devised the operation to overthrow the Islamic Republic relying on the country’s minorities and a resurgence of massive protests against the regime.
Security sources cited by the Israeli channel say that the two officials and Gofman had tensions since he took office, although they insist that the departures have been by mutual agreement, as part of a broader reorganization of Mossad, and that both will continue working in the agency in other roles. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz adds that the internal review of the Iranian operation has not even concluded yet, and that the head of the Influence Directorate, who led the operation, had already been dismissed when Gofman took the reins of Mossad in June.
The project contemplated Israeli attacks against Revolutionary Guard positions along the Iran-Iraq border, in Iranian Kurdistan. Those bombings were supposed to open the door for Kurdish fighters to cross into Iranian territory and advance on the Kurdish cities in the northwest of the country. Mossad expected thousands of young Kurds to join the offensive, generating a mass movement capable of reaching Tehran and emboldening in turn massive popular protests that would end up overthrowing the regime.
The Kurdish offensive was only one piece of the plan, which also envisaged installing the ultraconservative former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new leader of Iran. The New York Times had already reported last month that Israel had been trying for years to recruit Ahmadinejad, in a campaign that included a meeting with then Mossad chief David Barnea at an academic congress held in Hungary. Ahmadinejad’s office denied that information.
At the start of the war, in February, Israel and the United States did carry out intense bombings against Iranian security forces in the northwest of the country – including regime officials, military bases, missile systems, and police stations – with the aim of facilitating the Kurdish advance.
But leaks to the media, diplomatic pressure from Turkey, and the Kurds’ own distrust led Washington to deactivate the initiative. Besides promoting regime change, Israel and the United States sought to degrade Iran’s military capacity and neutralize the threats from its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
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A Mossad member criticized in an interview with Haaretz Gofman’s decision to dismiss the two senior officials. “Gofman was one of the main drivers of the plan to change the regime in Iran when he was Netanyahu’s military secretary. The dismissed seek to help Netanyahu distance himself from the responsibility that the Iranian government did not fall,” said that source, who described the measure as a “cowardly act” towards officials who “have dedicated many years of their lives to Israel’s security.”
According to the same testimony, “the plan to change the regime in Iran did not fail. It simply was not executed because it did not receive Trump’s approval. The person responsible for obtaining that authorization is the prime minister, not the Mossad officials.”
In March it was already known that then Mossad chief David Barnea assured Netanyahu that the agency could mobilize the Iranian opposition in a matter of days and provoke disturbances capable of overthrowing the Tehran regime. Barnea presented that same proposal to senior Trump Administration officials during a visit to Washington in mid-January.
Netanyahu, according to U.S. media, took as his own Mossad’s optimistic assessment of the possibilities of a popular uprising to convince Trump that regime change was a realistic goal, while privately showing his frustration because those expectations were not met.
Other sources consulted by Haaretz deny that version of events. According to them, in the deliberations prior to the attack on Iran, the Mossad chief calculated that protesters could only be brought to the streets of Tehran once the war was over, and that the regime replacement process could last many months afterwards.
Besides the Iranian case, Gofman ordered in June to reopen an internal investigation into Mossad’s actions on October 7 and during the subsequent war, a process that does not intend to replace previous inquiries but is part of his own takeover process at the head of the agency.
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