Israel’s government might be flailing, but the Mossad is flourishing
Tom Rogan
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government might be in chaos, but Israel’s foreign intelligence service is flourishing.
The Mossad’s latest publicly known victory came on Tuesday when Israeli and Greek officials announced the disruption of a planned terrorist attack on Israeli tourists in Greece. The Associated Press reports that a Jewish restaurant in central Athens was one target. Two Iranian-born Pakistani nationals have been arrested and are being linked to a broader Iranian cell that has previously planned attacks in Turkey.
In a statement, the Mossad observed that “After the start of the investigation of the suspects in Greece, the Mossad rendered intelligence assistance in unraveling the infrastructure, its work methods and the link to Iran … [the men are] part of an extensive Iranian network run from Iran and spanning many countries.”
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This finding of Iranian culpability is very likely accurate, although the degree of direct operational control between Iran and the suspects is unclear.
Regardless, since the U.S. killing of Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Gen. Qassem Soleimani in 2021, Iran has escalated its already significant attack posture against Israeli, U.S., and Iranian dissident targets. This has included assassination plots against dissident reporters in London, a Russian mafia-contracted assassination plot against a dissident journalist in New York City, and active plots to kill former and active senior U.S. government officials (the Washington Examiner was the first to report on a plot by the IRGC to assassinate former national security adviser John Bolton). Iran has also pursued numerous lines of effort in order to kill Israelis around the world.
Still, it’s clear that Mossad retains exceptional insight into Iran’s terrorism export industry.
Matching calculated aggression to its exceptionally high-risk tolerance, Mossad has infiltrated the range of Iran’s security apparatus, including the IRGC’s Quds Force and the MOIS civilian intelligence service. I also understand from informed sources that Mossad and its Aman military intelligence counterpart have placed physical signal intercept and cyber-intrusion tools across Iranian networks. This allows Israel to see into Iranian plots that are being conducted even over highly encrypted networks. Like the CIA, Mossad has also taken great advantage of corruption, personality tensions, and paranoia within Iran’s security apparatus. When it comes to Mossad’s operational skill and aggression, one Western intelligence source succinctly put it to me that “They are f****** insane.”
While the Mossad is viewed with a mix of awe and suspicion by its foreign counterparts, such as the CIA and Britain’s MI6 (which tends to apply a two-person rule for meetings with the Mossad in case of blackmail or manipulation-designed recruitment efforts), Mossad’s key benefit to foreign partners comes via its resourcefulness. Both highly creative and fixated on Israel’s vulnerability as a safe harbor for the Jewish people, Mossad offers an operational character. Also relevant here, Mossad takes advantage of a general U.S. political disinterest in challenging its more aggressive actions on U.S. soil. Unlike other close U.S. allies, including even the French DGSE (which loves to steal U.S. intellectual property), Mossad engages in aggressive recruitment of human sources and very bold technical access operations across the U.S.
In short, as tensions over Iran’s nuclear program continue to escalate, expect the Mossad to play a heavy role in whatever comes next.