How Mossad trained young, angry Iranians as secret commandos to help Israel crush the regime

At 3am on June 13, ST and a foreign legion of roughly 70 commandos opened fire with drones and missiles on a carefully chosen list of anti-aircraft batteries and ballistic missile launchers. The next day, another group of Iranians and others recruited from the region launched a second wave of attacks inside Iran.

In detailed interviews, 10 current and former Israeli intelligence officials described the commando raids and revealed a wealth of previously undisclosed details of the country’s decades-long covert effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb. They requested anonymity so they could speak freely.

The officials said the commando attacks were pivotal in June’s airstrikes, allowing Israel’s air force to carry out wave after wave of bombing runs without losing a single plane.

Informed by intelligence gathered by the Mossad’s agents on the ground, Israeli warplanes pounded nuclear facilities, destroyed around half of Iran’s 3,000 ballistic missiles and 80 per cent of its launchers, and fired missiles at the bedrooms of Iranian nuclear scientists and military commanders.

Israeli spies took advantage of their ability to penetrate their adversary’s communications systems. Early in the aerial attack, Israeli cyberwarriors sent a fake message to Iran’s top military leaders, luring them to a phantom meeting in an underground bunker that was then demolished in a precision strike. Twenty were killed, including three chiefs of staff.

The strategic map of the region has been dramatically redrawn since the October 7, 2023, attacks in which Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages.

ST grew up in a working-class family in a small town near Tehran. He enrolled in college and was living a seemingly ordinary student life, when he and several classmates were arrested by Iran’s feared Basij militia and taken to a detention centre where they were tortured with electric shocks and brutally beaten.

ST and his friends were ultimately released, but the experience left him enraged and eager for revenge. Soon after, a relative living overseas provided his name to an Israeli spy whose job was to identify disaffected Iranians. Messages were exchanged via an encrypted phone app, and S.T. accepted a free trip to a neighboring country.

A case officer from the Mossad invited him to work as a covert operative against Iran. He agreed, asking only that Israel pledge to take care of his family if anything went wrong. (Iran summarily executes anyone caught spying for foreign countries, especially Israel.

He was trained for months outside of Iran by Israeli weapons specialists. Just before the attack was to begin, he and his small team slipped back into the country to play their role in one of the biggest and most complex military operations in Israel’s history.

One key to the spy agency’s success is the ethnic composition of Iran. Israeli officials noted in interviews that roughly 40 per cent of the country’s population of 90 million is made up of ethnic minorities: Arabs, Azeris, Baluchis, Kurds and others.

Shortly before he died in 2016, Meir Dagan, the legendary Mossad chief from 2002-2010, told us that “the best pool for recruiting agents inside Iran lies within the country’s ethnic and human mosaic. Many of them oppose the regime. Some even hate it.”

Present and former officials said Dagan championed the shift to relying on foreign-born agents. In the early years of the effort to penetrate Iran, the spy agency had relied mostly on Israelis, known to Mossad insiders as “blue and white” — a reference to the colors of Israel’s flag.

Under Dagan, the Mossad’s leadership came to believe they could find highly effective agents in Iran or among Iranian exiles and others living in one of the seven countries that border it. But it was not an easy task. Given the risk of summary execution, many had initial doubts.

“Convincing someone to betray their country is no small feat,” said a former senior Mossad officer who oversaw units handling foreign agents. “It’s a process of gradual erosion. You start with a minor request, an insignificant task. Then another. These are trial runs. If they perform well, you assign them something larger, more meaningful. And if they refuse — well, by then you have leverage: pressure, threats, even blackmail.”

Spymasters, he said, try to avoid threats or coercion. “It’s better to guide them to a place where they act willingly — where they take the first step themselves,” the former officer said.

Most of the people who agreed to work for Israel expected payment for the risks they were taking. But the present and former officials said the driving force for people who agree to spy on their own country is often more primal.

“Financial reward is, of course, important,” the former Mossad officer said. “But people are also driven by emotion — hatred, love, dependence, revenge. Yet it always helps when the recruit’s motives are supported by some kind of tangible benefit: not necessarily a direct payment but some type of indirect help.”

This is how ST was recruited.

His handlers said he was consumed by hatred toward the regime and what had been done to him by the Basij militia. But what finally pushed him to cooperate was the Mossad’s offer to arrange medical treatment unavailable in Iran for a relative.

Once a candidate is identified, the Mossad sets up an initial meeting in an accessible location — often in neighbouring countries such as Turkey, Armenia or Azerbaijan, which are relatively easy for Iranians to enter. Other options include destinations in south east Asia like Thailand and India that allow Iranian citizens to apply online for business, medical or tourist visas.

Candidates undergo a series of meetings and psychological evaluations. Psychologists observe their behaviour, often from behind one-way mirrors.

They receive extensive training and supervision. To avoid arousing suspicion, they are told what to wear, where to buy their clothing, what cars to drive, and even how, when and where to deposit the money they receive.

The agent-handler relationship is critical, as a former Mossad operative who “ran” agents explained. In many cases, the handler is simultaneously confessor, babysitter, psychologist, spiritual mentor and surrogate family member.

Over the years, the Mossad and Israel’s military repeatedly drew up plans to halt Iran’s nuclear programme by bombing its key facilities. Israel’s political leaders always drew back under pressure from American presidents who feared an attack would trigger a regional war, destabilizing the Middle East.

Those calculations shifted dramatically in the past year.

In April and October of 2024, Iran fired missiles and drones directly at Israel. Nearly all were shot down with the help of the United States and allies. The Israeli air force responded with airstrikes that destroyed much of Iran’s air defenses.

The Israeli military had begun planning a bombing campaign against Iran in mid-2024 that it hoped would be ready within a year. With Donald Trump’s victory in the November election, and Hezbollah neutralised, Israeli officials saw a window of opportunity.

To prepare for what would be dubbed Operation Rising Lion, the Mossad and the military intelligence agency, Aman, stepped up their tracking of Iran’s military leaders and nuclear teams.

The Mossad’s espionage efforts were helped by a geographic fact. Iran is bordered by Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. Smuggling is a way of life in the region, as thousands of people earn their living using donkeys, camels, cars and trucks to carry drugs, fuel and electronics across the borders.

The Mossad had developed contacts with smugglers — and often with the government intelligence agencies — in all seven nations.

“Bringing equipment in and out is relatively easy,” said an Israeli who has worked with Mossad on logistics, “and the Mossad also used front companies that legally shipped boxes and crates by sea and on trucks driven legitimately through border crossings.”

The material was delivered to “infrastructure agents”, Mossad operatives inside Iran who store the material until it is needed. Mossad veterans said the gear can be hidden in safe houses for years, updated as technology evolves or maintenance is needed.

Officials said the Mossad spent about five months training the non-Israeli agents who were to attack Iranian targets. Some were brought to Israel, where models had been built to enable practice runs. Others rehearsed their missions in third countries where they met Israeli experts.

There were two groups of commandos, each with 14 teams of four to six members. Some already lived in Iran. Others were anti-regime exiles who slipped into the country on the eve of the attack.

Each had their instructions, but they were also in touch with Israeli planners who could change or update the attack plan. Most of the teams were tasked with striking Iranian air defences from a list of targets provided by the Israeli air force.

The Mossad had code names for each of the teams and their assignments, which were based on combinations of musical notes.

On the night of June 12, the teams arrived at their positions as orchestrated. The Israelis in charge of the covert operations directed the agents to leave little or no equipment behind. (Iranian media reports after the attack asserted that the infiltrators had missed their targets and fled without their gear; Israeli officials said what the Iranians found were insignificant components — the equivalent of gum wrappers.)

“One hundred per cent of the anti-aircraft batteries marked for the Mossad by the air force were destroyed,” a senior Israeli intelligence official said. Most were near Tehran in areas where the Israeli air force had not previously operated.

Officials emphasised that the military logistics of the plan were the work of Aman and the Israeli air force, which hit more than 1,000 targets over the 12 days of airstrikes. But officials agree that the Mossad contributed key intelligence for one aspect of Rising Lion: the assassinations of senior Iranian commanders and nuclear scientists.

The Mossad compiled detailed information on the habits and whereabouts of 11 Iranian nuclear scientists. The dossiers even mapped the locations of the bedrooms in the men’s homes. On the morning of June 13, Israeli air force warplanes fired air-to-ground missiles at those coordinates, killing all 11.

The question of how far Iran’s nuclear efforts were set back remains in dispute. Trump has insisted the American airstrikes on the nuclear enrichment sites of Fordo, Natanz and the plant in Isfahan “obliterated” Iran’s program. Analysts in Israeli and American intelligence have been more restrained.

“This war significantly set them back,” said a former head of Aman, Gen. Tamir Hayman. “Iran is no longer a nuclear threshold state, as it was on the eve of the war. It could be able to return to threshold status in one or two years at the earliest, assuming a decision by the Supreme Leader to break out toward a bomb.”

Hayman, who now heads the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel, said it was possible the assault might have the opposite of its intended effect, if Iran becomes even more eager to build a bomb that could deter future Israeli attacks.

Yossi Melman is a commentator on Israeli intelligence and a documentary filmmaker. Dan Raviv is a former CBS correspondent and host of ‘The Mossad Files’ podcast. They are the co-authors of ‘Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars.’ This article is a shortened version based on article published by Propublica