TEL AVIV (WDN) — Israel’s intelligence establishment is reportedly facing a dramatic internal shake-up after two senior Mossad officials were dismissed over their alleged roles in a covert strategy aimed at destabilizing Iran’s government—an extraordinary development that, if confirmed, could expose the scale and ambition of Israel’s clandestine confrontation with Tehran.
Israeli media reports say the dismissals were ordered by newly appointed Mossad Director Roman Goffman, who assumed the agency’s leadership in June, succeeding David Barnea. Goffman is reportedly undertaking a sweeping review of the agency’s senior leadership and operations, including missions that failed to deliver their intended results.
According to Israel’s Channel 12, the two dismissed officials were among Mossad’s most senior intelligence figures. One reportedly served as the agency’s intelligence operations chief since December 2015, while the other headed the division responsible for Iran-related operations.
Their identities have not been publicly disclosed, reportedly because of the extreme sensitivity surrounding Israeli intelligence operations.
A Covert Strategy Targeting Tehran
The reports allege that the two officials were involved in developing an ambitious intelligence strategy designed to intensify internal pressure on Iran’s government by exploiting opposition networks, encouraging mass protests and supporting activities capable of generating political instability.
According to the reports, the strategy sought to combine covert external support with existing domestic opposition movements in an attempt to create conditions for significant political change inside Iran.
Among the alleged elements of the operation were contacts with armed Kurdish groups, efforts to strengthen opposition activity and attempts to encourage large-scale demonstrations in major Iranian cities.
The reported strategy bears similarities to information previously attributed to The New York Times, which described alleged Israeli efforts to increase internal pressure on the Iranian leadership.
If accurate, the revelations would point to an intelligence campaign extending far beyond conventional espionage—one aimed at influencing the internal political trajectory of one of Israel’s most formidable regional adversaries.
Netanyahu and Trump
Israeli media reports have also claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented elements of the strategy to then-President Donald Trump during discussions in March.
According to those reports, Netanyahu sought to persuade Trump to support military action against Iran, arguing that military pressure combined with internal unrest could accelerate political change in Tehran.
The alleged strategy therefore appears to have rested on a highly consequential assumption: that external military pressure and carefully cultivated internal instability could reinforce each other and ultimately weaken Iran’s political leadership.
But according to the Israeli reports, the expected outcome did not materialize. The failure reportedly triggered a reassessment of Mossad’s Iran operations and contributed to the decision to remove the two senior officials.
A Rare Glimpse Inside Israel’s Shadow War
The reported dismissals are significant not simply because of the seniority of the officials involved, but because they potentially offer a rare glimpse into the extraordinary lengths to which Israel and Iran have gone in their long-running shadow war.
For years, the two countries have confronted each other through intelligence operations, cyber activity, covert actions, proxy networks and increasingly direct military threats. Iran’s nuclear programme, regional influence and military capabilities have remained at the heart of the confrontation.
Against that backdrop, an intelligence strategy designed to generate political upheaval inside Iran would represent one of the most ambitious forms of covert intervention imaginable. Yet it would also carry enormous risks.
Attempting to manipulate political unrest inside a country as large, heavily securitized and politically complex as Iran is a formidable undertaking. A failure could expose intelligence networks, damage operational credibility and provoke countermeasures from Iranian security agencies.
Mossad Remains Silent
Neither the Israeli government nor Mossad has publicly confirmed or denied the reports concerning the dismissals or the alleged Iran operation.
Iranian authorities have likewise not publicly responded to the claims regarding an alleged Israeli strategy to destabilize the government in Tehran. That silence leaves important questions unanswered.
Were the two officials removed because the operation genuinely failed? Was the dismissal part of a broader leadership restructuring under Goffman? Or do the reports reflect only one part of a much larger reassessment of Israel’s strategy toward Iran?
For now, those questions remain unanswered. But if the reports are eventually confirmed, the episode could prove to be far more than some internal personnel change at Mossad. It would offer a remarkable window into the intensity of the Israeli-Iranian intelligence war—and into the extraordinary risks being taken behind the scenes as both countries struggle for strategic advantage across the Middle East.
In the opaque world of intelligence, where successes are rarely acknowledged and failures are often buried in secrecy, the reported removal of two senior Mossad officials would itself be an unusually revealing signal.
It would suggest that, somewhere inside Israel’s most secretive institution, the Iran file has become important enough—and contentious enough—to shake the agency at its highest levels.
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