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← How Israel Brought America In

Mossad Inside Iran: The Covert War Behind the Twelve Days

Evidence rating: STRONG. The accounts below come from Israeli television (Channel 12), a former Mossad director speaking publicly, leaked documents reported by The Times of London, and Iranian officials' own statements about infiltration. Israel's government does not publish details of Mossad operations, so each claim is attributed to its source.

The Mossad is Israel's foreign intelligence service. The twelve-day war was not only an air war. It was the visible end of a years-long covert war that put Israeli agents, weapons and drones inside Iran. That matters to Americans because it shows how long the war was planned, and because the same intelligence was used to make the case that brought American bombers in.

"Boots on the ground" at the targets​

Summarizing leaked intelligence documents obtained by The Times of London, Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (a Washington think tank that has long pressed for action on Iran), wrote that they revealed "a decades-long operation that included 'boots on the ground' at nearly every major facility targeted in the recent war" (Dubowitz on X, June 30, 2025). Among the points in his summary:

  • "Mossad and Israeli military intelligence had agents embedded inside Iran's most sensitive nuclear and missile sites for years."
  • "Israel mapped underground layouts, disrupted electric grids, ventilation, and missile guidance/control systems. Many strikes were enabled by years of on-site surveillance."
  • During the war, "Israel and the U.S. struck dozens of nuclear and missile facilities," including Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, SPND (Iran's defense research organization) facilities, the Shahid Meisami site, Parchin, and a carbon-fiber plant at Rasht.
  • "Mossad even considered assassinating Khamenei — a move reportedly rejected by Trump."

"We toured the Fordow nuclear site many times"​

In August 2026, former Mossad director Yossi Cohen (head of the agency from 2015 to 2021) told a conference of Israeli local authorities: "We toured the Fordow nuclear site many times to understand the site," according to Israeli media (@MarioNawfal, citing CBS News, August 12, 2026). He gave no dates. He described the American bombing of Fordow as everything he had hoped for. Even the account that spread the story warned it "should be taken with a grain of salt." But the boast itself tells you whose war the Fordow strike was.

An agent named "Arash"​

In January 2026, Israel's Channel 12 investigative program "Uvda" interviewed an Iranian who said he worked for the Mossad, identified only by the alias "Arash." He said he began working with the Mossad in 2015, trained abroad including in Israel, and was sent back into Iran before June 2025 "to lead a team conducting internal operations before being extracted to Israel, describing himself as 'Mossad eyes inside this mission.'" His teams used rockets and drones deployed inside Iran that "destroyed key air defense systems, ballistic missile launchers, and targeted senior military figures and nuclear scientists in the early hours of 13 June 2025" (as summarized by The Cradle, January 30, 2026). Another summary of the broadcast adds that teams "lived undercover in major cities and hit radar sites and missile batteries," and that "Mossad had been active inside Iran for years and even built a hidden launch site near Tehran" (@tcf_updates, February 1, 2026).

During the war itself an American analyst wrote: "Israel was able to create a 'drone base' in the desert from which their initial attacks were launched within Iran itself," and "overnight the Iranians discovered a remotely-controlled Anti-Tank Guided Missile (ATGM) launcher emplaced outside Tehran, in addition to a small truck that was laden with drones" (S2 Underground, June 20, 2025). He noted that Israel's footage of the Arak strike "appears to have been filmed from an elevated position on the ground... not from a drone." A summary of the Israeli campaign said "Covert Mossad drone teams reportedly sabotaged Iran's surface-to-surface missile assets ahead of airstrikes" (@gwire_pro).

Phone calls to Iranian officials​

On June 13, according to recordings posted with English translations, "intelligence operatives called senior Iranian officials on their cellphones and gave them 12 hours to renounce their support of the Islamic regime or they, their wives, and children would be killed" (@prayingmedic, June 23, 2025). The recordings themselves are in the video attached to that post.

Drones and hacking​

An executive of Israel's drone maker Elbit Systems, Amir Betesh, said that "During the Iran war, nearly 70 percent of Israel's flight hours belonged to drones, not fighter jets," and that Hermes-900 drones found "at least 12 hidden Iranian ballistic missile launchers" (as reported by SK Chakraborty). An Iranian analyst told a newspaper that Israel "hacked into Iran's air defense system & caused over 100 Iranian missile launchers to explode upon activation" (as reported by @firstfusilier, July 23, 2025).

What Iran said about the infiltration​

Iran's Intelligence Ministry said it "had thwarted the assassinations of 23 high-ranking Iranian officials during the 12-day war with Israel, along with 13 other attempts prior to the outbreak of the war" (@OsintExperts, July 28, 2025). Iranian police said they detained 21,000 suspects during the war, including 260 accused of spying (Wikipedia mirror, citing AP). In August 2025 Iran executed a researcher who, according to a post circulating his confession, had briefed Israel on Fordow and Natanz and met the Mossad in Vienna (@ahmadslmanz). In September 2026 Iran's judiciary said it executed a man convicted of passing missile-site intelligence to Israel during the war (Reuters). Iranian officials also accused the UN nuclear agency of leaking the identities of nuclear scientists who were later killed; see Iran Suspends Cooperation.

Why it matters​

Israel's own boasts show a war prepared for years, with agents at the very sites America was later asked to bomb. That is the opposite of a sudden emergency. And the same Israeli intelligence services shaped the case for war that American officials repeated. In March 2026, the former head of America's National Counterterrorism Center said: "All 18 of America's intelligence agencies agreed — Iran had no capacity to develop a nuclear bomb. But Israel was telling us they would be able to assemble ten bombs in two weeks" (video, @allenanalysis). See Joe Kent's Resignation.

Status: Yossi Cohen, Mark Dubowitz and Amir Betesh are alive, as far as these sources show.

Sources​

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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