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By Elchin Alioglu/Baku Network

In that June night over Iran, a shadow stretched—one cast not by chance, but by an operation years in the making. Across the country, small, tight-knit teams of Iranians and hired guns from neighboring states moved into position, drilled and primed under Israeli tutelage. Their mission wasn’t just bold; it was a direct challenge to the very architecture of the state: slip through its defensive shell, strike at its core, and cripple its ability to hit back.

The motivations were as tangled as a battlefield map. For some, it was personal—a vendetta against a theocracy that had stolen their people’s voice and future. For others, the reasons were transactional: money, medical care for loved ones, a ticket out. But they all shared one thing—an appetite for going where even the most reckless wouldn’t dare tread.

Inside Mossad, the blueprint had been taking shape for over a year, building on the playbook of headline-making missions. Nine months earlier, the same agency had rocked the Middle East with a plan first conceived in 2014 under Tamir Pardo: a wave of pager bombs that gutted Hezbollah’s combat capacity. Thirty of its fighters died, along with twelve civilians, two of them children, and more than 3,500 people were wounded.

This time, at 3 a.m. on June 13, K.S. sent his 70-strong “foreign legion” into action. Drones and missiles, pre-programmed with pinpoint coordinates, chewed through anti-aircraft batteries and ballistic missile launchers. Within twenty-four hours, a second wave—Iranians and regional mercenaries—was in play, methodically ripping apart the country’s defensive fabric.

Official accounts later credited these commando strikes with clearing the way for Israel’s June air assault. The Israeli Air Force, armed with Mossad’s ground intel, carried out a bombing campaign without losing a single jet. In the process, they obliterated roughly half of Iran’s 3,000 ballistic missiles and up to 80 percent of its launchers. Precision strikes also leveled the homes of nuclear scientists and military brass.

Just as in the pager op, the Israelis proved they could slip inside the enemy’s nervous system. At the outset of the attack, Mossad’s cyber unit sent a fake alert to Iran’s top brass, summoning them to a fortified underground bunker. Minutes later, that bunker took a direct hit, killing 20 people—including three chiefs of staff.

All of this played out under the shadow of a global crisis ignited on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages. While the world’s cameras stayed fixed on Israel’s punishing campaign in Gaza—a campaign that claimed tens of thousands of lives and drew sharp international condemnation—the Israel–Iran shadow war was quietly redrawing the strategic map of the region.

It wasn’t their first dance. Back in 2018, operatives trained in Israel broke into an unsecured warehouse in Tehran, cracked safes with plasma cutters, and carted off more than 450 kilos of documents, blueprints, and digital files. Benjamin Netanyahu would later display them in Tel Aviv, claiming they proved Tehran’s deception in the nuclear arena.

Two years later, Mossad assassinated one of Iran’s top nuclear physicists using facial-recognition software to target him with a remote-controlled machine gun hidden on the roadside near his home.

And in the run-up to June’s strikes, Israeli agents quietly smuggled tons of weapons parts into Iran, disguised as “metal equipment” and unknowingly delivered by local truckers.

These moves reflect a deep shift in Mossad’s playbook over the past 15 years. Once, only Israeli operatives took the field. Now, the spear tip is often carried by Iranians and third-country nationals. As senior Israeli officials see it, the regime’s growing unpopularity has made recruitment easier than ever.

Origins of the Shadow War

Mossad put Iran near the top of its target list in 1993—right after the Oslo Accords were signed on the White House lawn, promising to end decades of Israeli–Palestinian bloodshed.

Before the Islamic Revolution, Israel and Iran had been bound by a long-standing strategic alliance with the Shah. But in 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Islamists who toppled the monarchy branded the Jewish state a “cancer” that had to be “cut out of the Middle East.”

Israel’s overriding strategic goal has been to protect its nuclear monopoly in the region. While the country has never formally acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons, experts estimate its stockpile at more than 90 warheads. In 1981, Israeli warplanes flattened Iraq’s Osirak reactor; in 2007, they took out a Syrian facility still under construction.

After the strike on Iraq, Prime Minister Menachem Begin laid down a doctrine: Israel reserved the right to destroy any neighbor’s nuclear program. “We cannot allow a second Holocaust,” he declared.

The Shadow over Natanz

Mossad eventually discovered that Iran was building a covert enrichment plant near Natanz, about 200 miles south of Tehran. The intel was passed to an Iranian dissident group, which made it public two years later.

Veteran Mossad hands recall agents—reportedly Israelis posing as European installation and maintenance experts—wandering through Natanz wearing shoes with double soles. The soles were designed to trap dust and soil samples. Lab tests showed the country’s centrifuges were enriching uranium far above the 5 percent limit needed for a nuclear power plant. Medical isotopes require enrichment to 20 percent. A bomb needs about 90.

In 2001, Ariel Sharon—a politician with a reputation for bulldozing through obstacles—became Israel’s prime minister. A year later, he installed one of his most hard-charging allies, Maj. Gen. Meir Dagan, at the helm of Mossad. Both men were known for pushing boundaries—and operating where others wouldn’t dare.

Dagan, who led the service from 2002 to 2011, made dismantling Iran’s nuclear program his personal mission. Like Begin, he was haunted by the lessons of the Holocaust. On his office wall hung a photograph of Nazi soldiers tormenting his grandfather. “I swore it would never happen again,” he told a rally in 2015. “And I believe I did everything in my power to keep that promise.”

Under his watch, Mossad launched a campaign of covert strikes against Iran. In Tehran, motorcycle-riding hitmen attached magnetic bombs to the cars of nuclear scientists. Agents raided warehouses, rigged missile launchers with explosives, and took down air-defense systems.

The Art of Recruitment

What Dagan prized most was Mossad’s ability to find agents among Iranians and their neighbors. Israel’s analysts saw the country’s ethnic map as an opportunity: roughly 40 percent of Iran’s 90 million citizens belong to ethnic minorities—Arabs, Azerbaijanis, Baluchis, Kurds, and others.

“The best recruiting pool is Iran’s ethnic and human mosaic,” Dagan said shortly before his death in 2016. “Many of these people are in opposition to the regime. Some hate it outright.”

Before Dagan, Mossad relied largely on “blue-and-whites”—native-born Israelis. The new strategy flipped that script: agents would increasingly be Iranians, émigrés, and citizens of the seven countries surrounding Iran.

Recruitment ran on two tracks. Some recruits signed on for classic espionage—gathering and passing along information. Others were willing to go further: carrying out assassinations and sabotage.

The Psychology of Betrayal

Convincing someone to betray their country is never a one-shot deal—it’s a slow slide. “It’s not a single moment of decision,” recalls a former senior Mossad officer. “It’s gradual. You start with a small favor, something harmless. Then another, a bit riskier. If they pull it off, you give them more. If they refuse, by that point you already have leverage—pressure, threats, blackmail.”

Still, he says, seasoned handlers avoid leading with fear. “It’s always better to guide someone to take that first step themselves. Voluntary cooperation is worth far more than anything forced.”

The real currency in running agents is trust. “An asset has to feel loyal and emotionally connected to his handler,” the ex-officer explains. “Like a soldier pushing forward because he trusts the comrade beside him, an agent completes a mission because he believes in his handler—and feels personally responsible to them.”

Most people who agreed to work for Israel expected a payoff for the risk. But current and former operatives say the engine that drives betrayal often runs on deeper fuel—human passions. “Money matters,” admits one former field officer. “But sometimes emotions—hate, love, dependency, revenge—are stronger. It’s even better when those emotions come with a tangible benefit. Not necessarily cash, but help they can touch with their own hands.”

For decades, one of Mossad’s favorite recruitment tools has been medical aid. The agency cultivated ties with doctors and clinics worldwide, using the promise of expensive surgeries or treatments as a ticket to someone’s loyalty. The method was used with Palestinian groups, but especially often with Iranians.

In recent years, the arsenal has expanded to the digital front: targeted websites and social media posts aimed at Iranians suffering from serious illnesses. These discreetly embed contact channels, promising assistance—and, when necessary, tapping Mossad’s global network to find a trustworthy clinic “that won’t ask questions.” Payments are made directly, quietly, and without a paper trail.

Another proven lure: overseas education. Israeli recruiters know how much Iranians value quality schooling. Even under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s religious regime, academic advancement is officially encouraged. Offers of placement at Western universities or elite schools can be irresistible.

Once a candidate is identified, the first meeting usually happens in a neighboring country—easier for an Iranian to reach. Thailand and India are frequent picks, thanks to quick online visas.

What follows is a series of meetings and psychological screenings. Through one-way mirrors, psychologists watch how the candidate carries themselves. They fill out detailed life questionnaires, including intimate personal history, and undergo polygraph interviews. Even after recruitment, agents are regularly retested on the lie detector.

Training is tough, oversight constant. Recruits are coached on what to wear, where to buy clothes, what to drive, how to store and spend money—everything geared to keeping them invisible.

“A handler isn’t just a boss,” says the former Mossad officer. “He’s a confessor, a babysitter, a shrink, a mentor—sometimes almost family.” The goal is to build a bond so tight that the agent feels shielded, supported—and willing to share anything, down to the most personal secrets, including their private life.

The Human Mosaic and the Kill List

For Mossad, any detail in an agent’s life could be a potential asset—whether it was a vulnerability to exploit or a network of connections that could be leveraged for an operation. Handlers always pressed the same core questions: Who’s in this person’s orbit? Can that circle be used for intelligence work?

Those tapped for the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists went through long, punishing training with Mossad specialists—learning to maneuver motorcycles through Tehran traffic, fire point-blank, and plant explosives in moving cars. The mission was twofold: eliminate the country’s top experts and scare younger scientists off the nuclear track. Between 2010 and 2012, the Israelis killed at least four scientists; another survived only by sheer luck.

Every mission was run down to the last detail—directed from neighboring countries or straight from Mossad headquarters north of Tel Aviv. On occasion, Israeli officers slipped into Iran themselves to personally oversee the hit.

Operation “The People as a Lion”

For years, Israel weighed the idea of halting Iran’s nuclear program with a massive airstrike. But time and again, political leaders pulled back—under pressure from U.S. presidents wary that such a strike could spark a regional war and plunge the Middle East into chaos. Hezbollah, Tehran’s top ally in Lebanon, had stockpiled tens of thousands of rockets capable of slipping through Israel’s air defenses and hitting its largest cities.

That calculus shifted in 2024. In the spring and fall, Iran launched direct missile and drone attacks on Israel. Almost every projectile was intercepted with help from the U.S. and allied militaries, while Israeli counterstrikes destroyed much of Iran’s air defense network.

By mid-2024, the IDF General Staff was actively gaming out a bombing campaign designed to finish within a year. After Donald Trump’s victory in the November election and the effective neutralization of Hezbollah, Jerusalem decided the moment had come.

Since 2016, Israeli pilots—trained in the United States—had been secretly flying over Iranian territory, mapping terrain and plotting radar-evading flight paths.

The Fordow Problem

One target posed a unique challenge. The uranium enrichment plant at Fordow was buried nearly 300 feet inside a mountain. Iran had concealed the facility for years, but Mossad, working with U.S. and British intelligence, tracked suspicious activity there. In 2009, President Barack Obama publicly exposed the complex, and UN inspectors later confirmed it was built to house up to 3,000 advanced centrifuges.

Only the American-made GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator—the most powerful non-nuclear bunker buster in the world—could hope to crack it.

Without a comparable weapon in its own arsenal, Israel’s military drafted an audacious plan: send in an elite commando unit to infiltrate the site, seize control, blow up the centrifuges, extract the enriched uranium, and get out.

David Barnea, the new Mossad chief known as “Dadi,” had made his name as a hardliner on Iran—in 2020, he oversaw the high-profile operation using a remote-controlled machine gun. But he viewed the Fordow raid as a step too far. The risk of losing elite operatives—or seeing them paraded in Iranian custody—was, in his view, unacceptable, especially with the national trauma still raw from Hamas’s hostage-taking after October 7, 2023.

Barnea and his team opted instead for coordination with the Trump administration. The fallback plan: if Israel struck, the U.S. would drop its bunker busters on Fordow. Trump himself had publicly vowed multiple times never to let Iran get the bomb.

In the run-up to Operation Am KeLavi—“The People as a Lion”—Mossad and the IDF’s military intelligence branch, Aman, ramped up surveillance of Iran’s military leadership and nuclear facilities. According to planners, under Barnea the agency significantly expanded “Tzomet”—the unit dedicated to recruiting and training non-Israeli agents.

The shift was deliberate: this foreign legion would get state-of-the-art Israeli gear for sabotage, secure communications, and covert movement. Every cover story was vetted through layers of checks, scrubbing even the smallest inconsistency that might trigger suspicion from Iran’s counterintelligence.

Geography worked in Mossad’s favor. Iran is ringed by seven countries—Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan. In the borderlands, smuggling is part of the daily economy. Thousands make their living hauling drugs, fuel, and electronics over mountain passes on donkeys, camels, in trucks, or packed into small cars.

Israeli intelligence embedded itself deep into that shadow economy, cultivating ties with smugglers and with state security services in all seven of Iran’s neighboring countries. “Moving equipment in and out was relatively easy,” recalls a logistics specialist who worked with Mossad. “We used front companies to ship crates by sea or overland border crossings, clearing them as legitimate cargo.”

Once inside Iran, the gear went to so-called “infrastructure agents”—Mossad operatives already in-country, who stashed it in hidden caches until needed. Sometimes the equipment sat for years in safe houses, periodically refreshed and serviced.

According to Israeli sources, prepping foreign agents for the strikes on Iranian targets took roughly five months. Some were brought to Israel, where full-scale replicas of the targets had been built for training. Others drilled in third countries under the supervision of Israeli instructors.

In the end, two commando strike forces were formed—each made up of 14 teams of four to six operatives. Some had been living in Iran for years; others—anti-regime exiles—slipped in shortly before the operation.

Every team had its own mission but remained in live contact with Israeli planners, who could alter the plan in real time. The primary task for most: destroy components of Iran’s air defense system, working off a hit list drawn up by the Israeli Air Force.

In Mossad’s tradition of precision, each team and mission was assigned a codename composed from musical notes—an operation designed like a score.

On the night of June 12, the teams moved into position. The order was absolute: leave behind no useful evidence. Mossad’s directive was to either recover all gear or abandon only items of zero operational value. Iranian media later claimed the “infiltrators” panicked and fled, dumping equipment. Jerusalem shot back with dry sarcasm: what the Iranians found was “the equivalent of chewing-gum wrappers.”

“One hundred percent of the air-defense batteries designated to neutralize the Israeli Air Force were destroyed,” a senior intelligence official declared. Most of those systems were near Tehran—areas where Israeli jets had never dared to venture before.

In the opening hours of the war, one commando team disabled an Iranian ballistic missile launcher. Israeli analysts believe the strike had an outsized psychological impact, forcing Tehran to pause an immediate counterattack out of fear that other launchers could be hit deep inside Iranian territory.

The military logistics for the campaign were built by Aman and the Israeli Air Force. Over 11 days of intense air raids, they hit more than a thousand targets. But Israeli officials acknowledge that Mossad’s critical contribution to Operation Rising Lion was pinpoint intelligence for targeted killings.

The agency compiled exhaustive dossiers on 11 top Iranian nuclear scientists—down to the floor plans of their homes and the exact location of their bedrooms. At dawn on June 13, Israeli fighter jets fired air-to-ground missiles at those coordinates, wiping out every target.

Only later did Iran respond with a barrage of missiles. Most were intercepted, but those that landed caused serious damage. By Israel’s count, 30 civilians were killed and repairing the infrastructure will cost $12 billion. Iranian state media, for their part, claimed more than 600 fatalities on their soil.

Program Delayed—or Fueled?

Whether the operation truly derailed Iran’s nuclear project is still up for debate. Donald Trump has insisted that U.S. strikes on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan “destroyed” the program. Analysts in both Israel and the United States are more cautious.

“This war set them back significantly,” says former Aman chief Maj. Gen. Tamir Hayman. “They’re no longer on the nuclear threshold like they were on the eve of the fighting. But they could regain that status in a year or two if the Supreme Leader decides to break for the bomb.”

Hayman—now head of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies—warns that such strikes can have the opposite effect, hardening Tehran’s resolve to acquire a weapon it sees as the ultimate insurance against future Israeli attacks.