Iranian regime could still fall, but US stopped war too early, ex-Mossad agent says

A plan developed by Israel and the Mossad intelligence agency to topple the Iranian regime could still succeed if given time, but it has not been carried out to completion due to the United States’ decision in April to halt the war against the Islamic Republic, a former senior Mossad official told Channel 12 on Saturday. In any event, he insisted, the regime will fall sooner or later.

“We didn’t try all the way — we were stopped along the way,” said the ex-Mossad official, identified only as “Aleph,” who retired last year. “This is a multi-stage plan that has been prepared over time and has been paused for the time being. In this war, we went out with a partner, a strategic power that at some point stopped the fighting, but these stages started and developed, including the use of Kurdish partners, with the goal of replacing the regime.”

According to Channel 12, Aleph served in the Mossad for almost 30 years, rising to senior leadership, until he retired last year when realizing he would not be considered for its top position. In December, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed his military secretary, Roman Gofman, as the new Mossad director to replace David Barnea. Gofman entered his role on Tuesday, after months of legal challenges and controversies.

Asked about a New York Times report according to which CIA Director John Ratcliffe and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described Israel’s plan for toppling the Iranian regime as “farcical” and as “bullshit,” after Netanyahu and Barnea presented it to US President Donald Trump, Aleph pointed out that the US officials did not have his 28 years of experience working in the Mossad.

“It’s a pity that they don’t have that experience, but [the plan] was certainly not bullshit and not farcical,” he stressed. “In the Mossad, imagination becomes reality.”

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Aleph expressed hope that the next stages of the operational plan would be authorized at some point.

“A plan like this is a long-term plan that can take a long time, and you have to persevere in all its stages,” he noted.

Despite the plan not being carried out to fruition, the former Mossad official appeared to believe that the conditions had been created so that eventually the regime would lose power.

“Whether it will fall in six months or in three years, I cannot predict, but there is no doubt that this regime will fall,” he said.

In the interview, Aleph described how, during the twelve-day war against the Islamic Republic in June 2025, the Mossad operated in Iran in ways that would have been unthinkable even a few years before.

“It was an operational military unit working according to advanced operational training, with weapons, night vision devices, and the ability to guide missiles, inside Iran,” he said. “This is something we couldn’t have seen six years ago. This is the great revolution that has taken place in the Mossad [under Barnea].”

According to Aleph, the Mossad stepped up recruitment, training, and trust in agents from enemy countries in recent years, relying on them to carry out operations that previously would have been entrusted only to Israeli agents.

Agents from an enemy country may decide to work for Israel for several reasons, including personal gains or fear of personal secrets like extra-marital affairs being exposed.

In Iran, many are motivated by their opposition to the regime.

“Many of them hate the regime, hate what is being imposed on them, hate what is happening to their daughters and their wives,” Aleph said. “For some, it’s a sense of revenge for things that happened to their families.”

Aleph did not deny that Iranians might have been brought to Israel for training.

Asked about whether Israel knows anything about the condition of the new Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the official said he would be “very surprised if Israel did not know precisely what his situation is.”

Khamenei has not been seen or heard in public since being wounded in strikes that killed his father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the US-Israeli war with Iran on February 28.