According to an investigation carried out by one of the most influential news outlets, in 2021, on the direct orders of the head of Israel’s intelligence service, David Barnea, a secret Mossad unit was set up as part of a large-scale restructuring of the agency. Its mission was to destabilize Iran from within – moving beyond classic covert operations and shifting toward the tools of psychological warfare, political manipulation, and subversive activities capable of bringing about regime change.
As a senior Mossad officer explained, the new approach turned out to be cheaper and easier than killing someone. Describing an operation that essentially comes down to systematically compromising targets, the Israeli agent noted that traditionally, Mossad knew how to get rid of people – mostly through assassinations.
A former Mossad officer confirmed that the agency has carried out many such operations inside Iran. The article cites the example of Rostam Ghasemi, a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a high-ranking Iranian official close to the late president Ebrahim Raisi. According to reports, Mossad leaked a photo of Ghasemi online showing him hugging a woman without a hijab during a visit to Malaysia. The image was published in November 2022, right after the killing of Mahsa Amini, which had triggered massive protests. As the story goes, Mossad had held onto that picture since 2011 and released it at an extremely sensitive moment in order to force Ghasemi to step down and to stir up public outrage.
It is also reported that ahead of Israeli operations against Iran, the unit had set up, in the words of a source, a “poison-spreading machine” on social media – a network of fake accounts designed to push out material that undermines the Iranian state. The report also draws on claims from Iran International that Iranian state television channels were hacked during Israeli strikes and ended up broadcasting speeches by Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, urging Iranians to take to the streets.