Special Investigations

Press Freedom Defense Fund

The Mossad Suffers a Crushing Defeat Entirely of Its Own Making

High-profile firings show that none of the Israeli spy agency's promises about the war with Iran have come to pass.

Earlier this month, Roman Gofman, the new director of the Mossad, Israel’s shadowy national intelligence agency, dismissed the heads of its intelligence directorate and Iran division, known only by their heavily anonymized names “K” and “Y,” respectively. The Mossad prides itself on secrecy, and while terminations following the appointment of a new Mossad director aren’t unprecedented, such public oustings, which were reported by Israel’s mainstream news organizations, are almost unheard of.

The last known dismissals for incompetence came in 1997, when a botched attempt to assassinate Khaled Mashal, then chair of Hamas’s political bureau, resulted in the detention of several Mossad agents inside Jordan and a public relations disaster. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government found itself forced to supply the antidote for the poison its Mossad agents had administered, bringing down both the agency’s director and the director of operations. 

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 Israel desired came to pass.

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 to the United States and Israel than the previous one.

How the War Strengthened Iran’s Hand Against the U.S. and Israel

Israel also promised that any potential closure of the Strait of Hormuz would be militarily ineffective. Now, Iran’s ability to hold the world economy hostage — despite relentless claims by the U.S. that the waterway is “open” — is its most valuable weapon. 

The Mossad’s particular role in this war involved weakening the Islamic Republic’s 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’s 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 in January that swept through the country.

For those who witnessed the Mossad’s public campaigns to encourage protests and defections — which it deployed in the open through Farsi-language social media accounts on X and Telegram bearing their name and seal — signs of the inevitable failure of this campaign were becoming evident. While images from June 2025’s Twelve-Day War of Mossad agents operating inside Iran and sabotaging Iranian military operations shocked many inside the country — that sabotage hampering Iran’s initial military response — its ability to change fundamental facts on the ground, and to move an entire country’s population against the sitting........

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