How Mossad’s network of agents helped Israel strike inside Iran

Iranian authorities have acknowledged that much of Israel's attack on Iran, ongoing since last Friday, has been carried out from inside Iran through operatives working with Israel's Mossad.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran's parliament speaker, admitted last Monday: "A large proportion of the enemy's strikes aren't military attacks, but have been carried out through internal agents."

This prompted Iran's authorities to launch an intensive security campaign to catch these operatives, which saw around 200 individuals arrested within four days of the Israeli assault.

Two-pronged attack

According to Iranian military expert Morteza al-Moussawi, who spoke to The New Arab's Arabic edition, the Israeli assault against Iran since last Friday was being carried out in two ways.

First, through "Mossad operational cells on the ground" and second, through aerial bombardment using F-15, F-16, and F-35 fighter jets, which have violated Iranian airspace via Iraq.

Moussawi said during the first four days of the assault, there were consistently between 50 to 70 Israeli fighter jets in Iraqi airspace, refuelling mid-air over Syria and the surrounding region with assistance from the Americans, British, and Germans.

He explained that the first method was more significant, with around 70 percent of Israel's attacks in Iran so far attributable to covert Mossad cells.

These consisted of recruited agents, some from Iranian opposition groups like the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), which is considered a terrorist group in Iran.

He explained that prior to Israeli missile strikes against military bases, "these terrorist cells […] would target the sites according to a pre-arranged plan with Mossad."

He noted that over the past few days, these cells had been targeting radar systems and air defence units using drones and shoulder-launched missiles from distances of 3 to 5 km.

"The agents launch drones from Hilux vehicles, pickup trucks, and small vans - similar to military operations seen in Ukraine - making them harder to intercept, and highlighting the importance of information and tip-offs from citizens," he said.

Israeli infiltration

Meanwhile, reports in Israeli media have outlined how Mossad had taken significant steps to smuggle large quantities of weapons into Iran long before launching the current attack.

For example, one Israeli security source spoke about Mossad agents establishing a base for kamikaze drones near Tehran long before last Friday, which had been used to attack Iran's Asfaqabad base during the current assault.

According to Israeli officials, a number of different operational intelligence systems had been activated during the attack.

For instance, in central Iran, Mossad commando units deployed operational systems for precision-guided weapons in open areas near the sites of Iranian air defence surface-to-air missile systems.

At the start of Israel's attack, as Israeli airstrikes bombarded Iran, these systems were activated, and precision missiles were launched directly at their targets simultaneously.

Furthermore, in order to fully disable Iran's air defence capabilities, Mossad cells had covertly planted advanced attack systems on vehicles, which were activated to devastate Iran's air defence systems as the attack began.

Moussawi pointed to "significant losses" in Iran's air defence systems due to these internal attacks.

However, he also cited informed sources saying that the Iranian armed forces had been able to quickly replace the damaged systems with new ones, which meant Iran's air defences had managed to continue responding despite the huge volume of attacks.

Joint operations

Former IRGC commander Hossein Kanani Moghaddam said these security breaches revealed that Iran's "enemies had been planning this operation for at least a year."

He noted that a large number of intelligence agencies around the world – including Mossad, the CIA, and MI6 - are currently "operating within a joint operations room against Iran."

Iranian analyst Salahuddin Khadiv said several factors had contributed to the high level of Israeli infiltration and Iran's failure to counter it.

Chief among them, he said, was rampant corruption in Iran. Alongside this, he added that there was a decline in the appeal of the ruling ideology, the spread of opportunism, cronyism, and the absence of proper standards in selecting personnel.

Khadiv also said political polarisation and internal conflicts were factors. He added that Iran's authorities had failed to learn from past incidents such as the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, as well as assassinations within Hezbollah and the pager explosions, although such events had "definitely rang alarm bells for the political and security leadership of the regime, and perhaps some measures were taken."

However, he noted that besides the vast scale of infiltration, there was also "a significant technological gap between Iran and Israel." In his view, due to these two factors, "the authorities have not had sufficient opportunity to close the security gaps."

The current situation has caused some to reflect on the words of Iran's former intelligence minister, Ali Younesi, who commented in an interview with Iran's Jamaran website in 2021, that although the country "had been cleansed of terrorist groups" and their influence in recent decades, "the influence of the intelligence services, especially Israel's, has been overlooked."

He warned then 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."

This is an edited and abridged translation from our Arabic edition. Al-Araby Al-Jadeed correspondents in Tehran, Beirut and Haifa contributed to this report.