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Earlier this month<\/span>, Roman Gofman, the new director of the Mossad, Israel\u2019s shadowy national intelligence agency, dismissed<\/a> the heads of its intelligence directorate and Iran division, known only by their heavily anonymized names \u201cK\u201d and \u201cY,\u201d respectively. The Mossad prides itself on secrecy, and while terminations following the appointment of a new Mossad director aren\u2019t unprecedented, such public oustings, which were reported by Israel\u2019s mainstream news organizations, are almost unheard of. <\/p>\n The last known dismissals for incompetence came in 1997, when a botched attempt to assassinate Khaled Mashal, then chair of Hamas\u2019s political bureau, resulted in the detention of several Mossad agents inside Jordan and a public relations disaster. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government found itself forced to supply the antidote for the poison<\/a> its Mossad agents had administered, bringing down<\/a> both the agency\u2019s director and the director of operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n Israel is now dealing with the aftermath of the largest mistake in its history, one of its own doing: its failed war on Iran. Sold to the United States as an easy war that would quickly bring down the Islamic Republic and its alleged nuclear weapons program, almost nothing<\/a> Israel desired came to pass.<\/p>\n The promise of assassinating Ali Khamenei was that it would bring about governmental chaos and spur a spontaneous national uprising. Instead, it only led to the selection of his younger son as the new supreme leader, a leadership that may prove to be even more antagonistic<\/a> to the United States and Israel than the previous one.<\/p>\n Israel also promised that any potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz would be militarily ineffective. Now, Iran\u2019s ability to hold the world economy hostage<\/a> \u2014 despite relentless claims<\/a> by the U.S. that the waterway is \u201copen\u201d \u2014 is its most valuable weapon.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Mossad\u2019s particular role in this war involved weakening the Islamic Republic\u2019s security structure in hopes of then funneling guns to Kurdish armed groups who would invade the country from Iraq, and then fuel mass demonstrations to topple the state. All of these lofty ambitions completely detonated on impact with reality, with Iran\u2019s security structure remaining intact despite assassinations and airstrikes, Kurdish factions instead suffering constant Iranian military attacks, and no major protests occurring in any Iranian city, despite the massive anti-government protests<\/a> in January that swept through the country.<\/p>\n For those who witnessed the Mossad\u2019s public campaigns to encourage protests and defections<\/a> \u2014 which it deployed in the open through Farsi-language social media accounts on X and Telegram bearing their name and seal \u2014 signs of the inevitable failure of this campaign were becoming evident. While images from June 2025\u2019s Twelve-Day War of Mossad agents operating inside Iran and sabotaging Iranian military operations shocked many inside the country \u2014 that sabotage hampering Iran\u2019s initial military response \u2014 its ability to change fundamental facts on the ground, and to move an entire country\u2019s population against the sitting government, sputtered.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Mossad chose to shift its image as that war began, capitalizing on its perception as an all-powerful and omniscient force to offer its supposedly unlimited power to help the Iranian populace. This shift manifested through cryptic<\/a> social media posts, sarcastic<\/a> quote-tweets of Iranian officials, and offering gifts<\/a> to those who answered questions by direct message. The Mossad offered remote medical services through WhatsApp<\/a>, and former radio host Menashe Amir, who notably hosted an Israeli radio show in Farsi aimed at anti-Islamic Republic Iranians, made videos on the Mossad\u2019s behalf encouraging Iranians to listen to what the intelligence agency had to say.<\/p>\n The effort produced little. Iranian officials openly mocked the campaign online from the start, and it became increasingly desperate as mass protests failed to materialize. AI-generated videos of Iranian prisons having their walls blown open, and of happy Iranians following their defections to Israel, did next to nothing. The Mossad has continued to post AI-generated videos using Grok to encourage collaboration following the ceasefire.<\/p>\n While accusations were levied (and arrests made) of supposed Mossad agents inside the Iranian protests in January<\/a>, their infiltration, alleged or otherwise, did not end up toppling or even shattering the Islamic Republic. Instead, more than 7,000 protesters were killed that month, in addition to hundreds of police officers.<\/p>\n After the plan to arm Kurdish groups, in collaboration<\/a> with the CIA, apparently fell apart \u2014 either by Trump\u2019s veto or, as Trump claimed, because the Kurds simply kept the weapons themselves \u2014 the Mossad apparently came up with a quick Plan B<\/a>. The new bright idea: Overthrow the government via an airstrike campaign against Iranian police stations and checkpoints manned by the Basij, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps\u2019 paramilitary militia component. Despite extensive strikes in broad daylight, with some Iranians tipping off locations<\/a> to opposition media outlets<\/a> to help facilitate this campaign, the mass uprising, once again, did not arrive.<\/p>\n The war did not continue long enough for a comprehensive Plan C to come to fruition on the ground, with the Israeli military beginning to strike railways and manufacturing infrastructure, and Trump taking the lead on calling for the destruction<\/a> of Iran\u2019s energy infrastructure and bridges. Both are unified in their hope to strangle the country economically in hopes of pushing Iranian society into oblivion, but this outcome is only truly possible through American military means. <\/p>\n But even the U.S. has seen itself overextended<\/a>, unable to resupply its missile interceptors for its own bases in the Middle East, and potentially unable to protect Israel as effectively as it had in the past should open conflict break out over its skies again.<\/p>\n News of the dismissal of the Mossad officials was met with disbelief in the Israeli media and by veterans of the intelligence service, who accused Gofman of suppressing<\/a> the agency\u2019s ability to function. By firing two deputies, security analysts accused<\/a> him of foisting the agency\u2019s failure onto underlings to shield the decisions made at the top levels of government from scrutiny.<\/p>\n While overthrowing the Iranian government has remained a popular idea among Israeli officials and other elected politicians, Netanyahu chief among them, other politicians have acknowledged its difficulty. Gadi Eisenkot, the former Israel Defense Forces chief of the general staff, has spoken of the unlikelihood of being able to overthrow the entire Iranian system, instead stating that operations should have continued \u201cin the shadows.\u201d <\/p>\n Reporting<\/a> from Israel Hayom in May revealed that many in the Mossad were opposed to the idea of focusing resources on overthrowing the Iranian government, seeing it as a massive gamble. The Mossad\u2019s former chief of influence operations, known as O., told the newspaper that he felt he had to sell the operation to many in the agency, despite the fact that \u201cno one actually knows how to overthrow a regime or what the chances are that it will succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n In March, just days before he would be killed in an Israeli assassination strike, Ali Larijani, then-secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, told<\/a> the Iranian news outlet ISNA that Netanyahu \u201cseemed to believe that these attacks had set a movement in motion inside Iran and that, by portraying the system as being in disarray, he could incite the public.\u201d But Larijani pointed out that in less than a day, the regime had appointed \u201creplacements for the commanders who had been killed, addressed the public, changed the atmosphere, and, by issuing specific orders, authorized the launch of missiles.\u201d<\/p>\n