It was a battle planned and fought in the shadows and unleashed with missiles and spycraft. The real winner of the conflict against the looming nuclear threat from Iran—the godfather of terrorism in the Middle East—is Israel’s ruthless spy agency Mossad. The 86-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei, the patron of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, had vowed to destroy the tiny Jewish state. Now Hamas and Hezbollah have been emasculated by the Israeli Army. The Houthis are reeling under US-Israeli air strikes. As Israeli bombs rained down on Iran, and its terror planners died hunkered down in bunkers they thought were impenetrable, Israel turned out not to be so tiny at all. This time Goliath was on its side; a giant who delivered powerful blow to Khamenei and his Caucus of Terror. Mossad—Hebrew for Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations—created almost 80 years ago in the crucible of the Holocaust and the vengeance of the Hagannah established its credentials with whip-smart tradecraft, ultra-modern tech and focused fury to frustrate the vindictive plans of Israel’s enemies. Operation Rising Lion, which shattered Iranian facilities and eliminated much of its top leadership, was Old Testament in wrath and scope.
Fear began on Thursday June 12. Israel warned residents of Tehran’s District 18 to evacuate the city. Hours later, at about 03.30 local time on June 13, Israeli Air Force (IAF) launched a barrage of missiles wiping out the heads of the Iranian terror Hydra. Dead were Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Hossein Salami, commander-in-chief of the feared Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who had threatened to “open the gates of hell” if attacked, Gholamali Rashid, IRGC high-ranking official who coordinated joint Iranian military operations, Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, nuclear scientist Fereydoon Abbasi, former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation, Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, head of the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, Abdulhamid Minouchehr, head of nuclear engineering and Ahmad Reza Zolfaghari, a nuclear engineering professor. They were gathered in an underground facility to plot a strike against Israel. But Israel struck first. So far, 14 nuclear physicists, chemists and engineers have been taken out. Mossad is Iran’s nemesis of dread. The transcript of a leaked call between a mysterious Israeli operative and an Iranian general that transpired on June 13 was published in The Washington Post. In the recording, the general is notified in the Persian language that he has 12 hours to flee with his family before Israel kills him. “I can advise you now, you have 12 hours to escape with your wife and child,” the operative’s voice has been altered to protect his identity. “Otherwise, you’re on our list right now.” The call began with the agent informing the general that he comes from a country that “sent Salami, Bagheri and Shamkhani to hell,” referring to three senior Iranian leaders killed by Israel in its bombing campaign. “We’re closer to you than your own neck vein. Put this in your head. May God protect you,” notifies the voice in the audio. The general is told to send the video via Telegram. He asks where to send the video, though whether he made one or sent it isn’t clear. It is reported that more such calls were made to two- and three-tier generals to sow discord and fear.
Iranian nerves were frayed after IAF aircraft and drones devastated the Shahran oil depot, two major gas fields in Bushehr province, Iran’s defence ministry complex, the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, and an underground storage and launching site for surface-to-surface missiles and cruise missiles in western Iran. Isfahan, location of one of Iran’s nuclear conversion plant, was almost completely wrecked, along with a large air base and a major missile production complex. In April last year, Israel had already damaged Isfahan’s air-defence system. The IAF also devastated the underground nuclear plant at Natanz, where nearly 20,000 centrifuges were stored for uranium enrichment, thereby dealing a serious blow to Iran’s nuclear goals. Mossad’s hard work finally paid off last Saturday when 125 US planes dropped bunker-busting bombs on three Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan—seven B-2 stealth bombers, which took off from the US for an 18-hour journey to Iran, participated in the assault. Twenty-four cruise missiles struck the Isfahan site, fired from an American submarine. However, analysts doubt whether Trump’s bombs were effective enough to wipe out Fordo’s nuclear assets, which are protected inside a concrete facility deep inside a mountain—the Iranians are world leaders in manufacturing a special type of concrete that can withstand any pressure or bombing. To raise the morale of the Iranian resistance and show them the regime is not omnipotent, Israeli jets targeted Evin Prison, where political prisoners and critics of the Republic were kept. On the first day itself, thanks to Mossad agents on the ground, IAF had full control of Iranian skies; Mossad commandos, operating in small teams, launched drones that successfully targeted Iran’s air defence systems. They created a danger-free air corridor for the IAF leading through Jordan, Syria and Iraq to western Iran.
None of this would have been possible without Israel’s intelligence agency. Whatever were the methods and complexities of the espionage effort, the intelligence mission had three objectives:
1. Assemble and launch drones from the warehouses to destroy Iran’s air defence systems, especially the ones that escaped damage in the 2024 attacks
2. Support IAF by giving the planes targets, location of weapon sites, identification and timings to take out Iranian nuclear scientists
3. Gather real time intelligence for strikes
Mossad spies were the vanguard of Israel’s campaign against Iran’s nuclear personnel working on its nuclear effort—the “weapon group” on the third stage of building a nuke. Three days before Israel launched the strikes with Donald Trump’s full knowledge and support, scores of elite Israeli operatives infiltrated sensitive areas of Iran. Trump, it seems, was playing by Mossad’s initial motto: “By way of deception, you shall do war.” The agency’s campaign against Iran had the precision of an Einstein equation and the secrecy of Freemasons. In the middle of June, Israeli agents reached pre-prepared locations all over Iran, aided by local helpers hostile to the ayatollah’s brutal rule. Meeting points, vehicles, safe houses, communication equipment, weapons assembly factories, and warehouses stocked with weapons and ammunition were already in place. Mossad had already smuggled drone components into Iran. Just before the execution of the final enterprise, Israeli operatives coded “blue and white”, had stopped operating directly inside Iran to avoid risk of capture and torture, but provided logistical support with their detailed knowledge of hostile terrain. Part of the mission was remotely operated from outside Iran. To sabotage the enemy’s air defences and missile systems, precision weapons brought into Iran by Mossad agents—especially the small, armed drones—were unleashed against Iranian surface-to-air missile sites at a close range of 3-5
km. The operatives had taken a leaf out of Ukrainian strategy against Russia: they launched the drones from Hilux vehicles, pickup trucks, and small vans. A clandestine base for kamikaze drones had been established by Mossad near Tehran to target the Asfaqabad base. In central Iran, Mossad commando units deployed precision-guided weapons in open areas near the Iranian air defence bases, unseen. Mossad also capitalised on popular hatred towards the regime to create a non-Israeli “international force” driven by revenge, money and even the promise of adventure. Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran Parliament Speaker, said, “A large proportion of the enemy’s strikes aren’t military attacks, but have been carried out through internal agents.” Israel released footage of agents operating deep inside Iranian territory, assembling and firing missiles and explosive drones at enemy targets. Intelligence experts point out that the operatives were Iranian, not Israeli. The Wall Street Journal reported the spies who entered Iran were trained in a third country, not Israel. It was clear that Mossad’s new creed— ‘Where there is no guidance, a nation falls, but in abundance of counsellors there is safety’—was taken seriously as the agency collaborated with the military for three years to prepare the ground for operations against Iran’s accelerating nuclear programme. Barack Obama had reportedly bribed the ayatollahs with millions of dollars in cash to bring the nuclear deal into fruitions; when Trump pulled out, the Iranians were back to enriching uranium to make a bomb. After a fragile ceasefire was announced on June 24, IRGC arrested more than 700 people accused of working for Israel. “Since the beginning of Israel’s attack on Iran, the Zionist regime’s spy network has been highly active in the country,” announced Fars News. Three people accused of collaborating with Israel were executed. Former IRGC commander Hossein Kanani Moghaddam admitted Iran’s “enemies had been planning this operation for at least a year”, and the strikes were planned in a joint operations room occupied by Mossad, the CIA, and MI6.
In October, after the Hamas attack happened, Netanyahu cleared Operation Rising Lion, although an anti-Iran op had been in the works for some time. Israeli defence and intelligence officials used Artificial Intelligence to analyse the mountains of data collected from the ground and air to hit Iran. The Associated Press reported the IDF’s use of American AI systems to monitor communications, movements of terrorists, and locations of top Iranian generals at work and play. Targets were divided into various groups—leadership, military, civilian, and infrastructure. Special attention was paid to IRGC officials in charge of Iran’s ballistic missiles.
Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi, who heads the Israel Defense and Security Forum think tank, told a reporter, “It was the result of Israeli intelligence working extensively for years in Iran and establishing a very strong robust presence.” In January 2018, in the middle of the night, a dozen Mossad agents silently broke into a storage facility in an industrial district, 20 miles from Tehran where 32 safes were kept. The intruders knew the most important safes. In less than seven hours, they melted the locks of 27 of them, and made away with half a tonne of classified nuclear archives. In the 2000s, about 1,000 of Iran’s 5,000 centrifuges were rendered useless by malware created jointly by the Israelis and Americans. In January 2007, Iranian nuclear scientist Professor Ardeshir Hosseinpour of the Isfahan facility was found dead in his home; cause of death was not released. Mossad’s fingerprints were evident in the assassination of Dr Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, a rabid anti-Israel nuclear scientist, who later became the head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran. In 2010, agents on a motorcycle stuck a bomb on his car in Tehran, but he survived. But Mossad would not give up. On June 13, 2025, he was killed in a joint Mossad-IAF operation. The video of his killing was released: a PsyOps strategy to strike terror in the heart of the Iranian leadership.
Israel’s spy agency possesses an almost mythical stature in the world of espionage. Its track record against Iran is spectacular: after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which brought the ayatollahs to power, being a Jew was declared a capital offense in Iran. After the Islamic regime executed Jewish leader Habib Elghanian, it was no longer safe for Jews to remain in the theocratic dictatorship. From 1979-1981, Mossad arranged the covert migration of over 10,000 Persian Jews from Iran to Israel through secret routes via Pakistan and Turkey. The effort to destroy or sabotage Iran’s nascent nuclear plans started in the 1980s, when Mossad used shell companies and sting operations to preempt Tehran’s efforts. Pakistani nuclear scientist AQ Khan was consistently monitored by Israeli agents. It was a battle for time; Mossad temporarily crippled Tehran’s nuclear ambitions by sabotaging shipments and scientific equipment. It leaked details of Iranian front companies to the media. The Israelis too used front companies and global smuggling networks to send malfunctioning components to disrupt the Iranian nuclear supply chain using modified explosive kits timed to go off at a specific time. There were mysterious malfunctions and explosions in Natanz and Isfahan plants. In May 2022, a blast at a major Iranian military and weapons base near Tehran killed an important Iranian engineer. Many other explosions followed, sabotaging Iran’s ballistic missile programme. Between 2006 and 2007, several IRGC aircraft carrying engineers and officials working in sensitive military or nuclear projects crashed mysteriously; the Iranians saw Mossad’s hand behind the crashes. The most spectacular of recent Mossad ops was the “Beepers Operation” in Lebanon in September 2024, which injured and killed thousands of Hezbollah terrorists, dealing a psychological death blow to the outfit that had terrorised Lebanon for years at Tehran’s behest.
Much before Operation Rising Lion, Mossad had been operating with impunity inside Iran itself, and even publicising its achievements. In July 2024, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was liquidated by Mossad with a bomb hidden in his bedroom in Tehran. On June 29, Israel discovered plans to kill its citizens in Cyprus after they caught Yusef Shahbazi Abbasalilu, an IRGC operative. He was interrogated in Iran itself by Mossad operatives. Israel scored a publicity coup, airing footage of Shahbazi’s confession and his boarding pass for a flight from Istanbul to Iran. In the video Shahbazi names his Iranian recruiter, and several experienced IRGC killers of Pakistani nationality. In April 2022, Israeli media reported details of Israeli agents trapping and questioning another IRGC agent in his own home in Iran; an audio file of his confession of an assassination plot against an Israeli diplomat in Turkey, an American general stationed in Germany, and a journalist in France was published in the media. In 2022, the Iran International channel published details of yet another Mossad interrogation and confession of IRGC official Yadollah Khedmati inside Iran, that Tehran transferred weapons to Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. All these show the reach of Mossad inside the Islamic Republic itself, where it could kidnap and interrogate Iranian officials on enemy territory. Tehran confirmed most of these confessions, and denied some others. Since 2009, Israelis have assassinated many officials linked to the IRGC and the country’s nuclear programme.
Did Netanyahu know and approve the slayings? Waving the archive papers stolen in January from the secret safes, he exposed IRGC scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s role in Iran’s “undeclared nuclear weapons programme” at a press conference in April 2018 in Tel Aviv. He warned, “Dr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, remember that name.” Fakhrizadeh was killed two years later in November 2020, gunned down with a robotic machine gun on a public road in Tehran. Iran’s greatest trepidation is that Mossad has penetrated its highest levels: its most senior IRGC spycatcher was outed as an Israeli agent. In 2013, numerous IRGC commanders, intelligence officers and even religious officials were arrested for spying for the Mossad. One of the officers arrested was Iran’s counter-intelligence chief dedicated to anti-Israel ops—an Iranian Revolutionary court convicted him in secret, and executed him secretly. Iran’s former intelligence minister, Ali Younesi, commented in an interview with Iran’s Jamaran website in 2021, that although the country “had been cleansed of terrorist groups” in recent decades, the penetration of other “intelligence services, especially Israel’s, has been overlooked”. He warned that “Mossad’s influence across the country has grown to such an extent that all officials in the Islamic Republic should be concerned for their lives”. Going by precedent, Younesi could be right, ceasefire or not.
In the beginning wave of the IAF attacks in early June, war planes destroyed the notorious ‘Destruction of Israel’ countdown clock in Tehran’s Palestine Square. It had a countdown to 2040, the year Ayatollah Khamenei vowed Israel will be destroyed. The clock was the one destroyed 8,411 days after its installation. Perhaps, only Mossad can decide when the Islamic regime’s time is up.
Mossad Milestones
Operation Rising Lion (2025)
Mossad played a crucial role in the Iran-Israel conflict through intelligence gathering, cyberattacks, and covert operations. It monitored Iran’s nuclear and military activities, sabotaged key infrastructure, and carried out targeted assassinations of important figures. Mossad also disrupted Iranian-backed groups in the region and fostered strategic alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia to counter Iran’s influence
Assassination of Imad Mugniyeh (2008)
Imad Mugniyeh, a top Hezbollah terrorist, was responsible for major attacks, including bombings in Beirut and Buenos Aires. In 2008, the Mossad, working with the CIA, tracked him to Damascus. A targeted car bomb killed him on February 12, 2008, ending the threat he posed to Israel and the world.
Operations Mural and Yachin (1961-1964)
In 1961, the Mossad launched Operation Mural to secretly bring 630 Moroccan Jewish children to Israel. The operation was cut short after rumours spread, successfully relocating 530 children. This was followed by Operation Yachin (1961-1964), which helped 100,000 Moroccan Jews emigrate, with Israel compensating Morocco for the economic impact
Operation Diamond (1966)
In 1964, Mossad launched Operation Diamond to acquire a MIG-21 fighter jet. After failed attempts, they recruited Iraqi pilot Munir Redfa, who was dissatisfied with his treatment. In exchange for money, citizenship, and a job, Redfa flew the jet from Iraq to Israel in August 1966, evading radar. Mossad also smuggled his family to Israel. The MIG-21 was analysed by the US and later returned to Israel, where it was dubbed ‘007’ in honour of James Bond
Operation Moses (1984-1985)
In the 1980s, Ethiopia’s Jewish community faced persecution and famine. The Mossad launched covert operations to evacuate Ethiopian Jews, starting with a resort-based cover operation in Sudan. In 1984-1985, Operation Moses airlifted 6,000-8,000 Jews to Israel, with help from the CIA. After Sudan halted the flights, Operation Joshua brought another 500-800 Jews. Together, these operations saved one-third of Ethiopia’s Jewish population
The Mossad’s Man in Damascus (1962-1965)
In the 1960s, Israel recruited Eli Cohen, a Syrian-Jewish man, as a spy in Syria. Under the alias Kamal Amin Ta’abet, Cohen infiltrated Syrian society, gaining the trust of top officials. His intelligence, including details on Syria’s water diversion plans and military defences, was crucial to Israel’s security. In 1965, Cohen was caught, tortured, and sentenced to death. He was publicly hanged in Damascus, and his grave remains undiscovered despite Israeli efforts
Operation Wrath of God (1972)
After the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, Mossad launched Operation Wrath of God to assassinate those responsible. Targeting members of Black September and related groups, Mossad also coordinated with Israeli forces for Operation Spring of Youth. The operation paused in 1973 after a mistaken killing in Norway but resumed in 1979 with the assassination of Black September’s “Red Prince,” Ali Hassan Salameh
Operation Damocles (1962)
In 1962, Israel launched Operation Damocles to stop Egypt’s missile programme, developed by former Nazi scientists. Mossad used intimidation, bribery, and violence, including the assassination of financier Heinz Krug with the help of ex-SS officer Otto Skorzeny. The operation ultimately succeeded in halting the threat