The head of an Iranian secret service unit set up to target Mossad agents working in the Islamic Republic turned out to be an Israeli agent himself, according to former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Speaking to CNN Turk, Ahmadinejad claimed Monday that a further 20 agents in the Iranian intelligence team tasked with monitoring Israeli spying activities also turned against Tehran.
The alleged double agents provided Israel with sensitive information on the Iranian nuclear program, according to his comments in the interview, which were widely picked up by international media.
Ahmadinejad said the agents were behind some key Mossad successes in Iran, including the 2018 theft of nuclear program documents that were taken from Tehran to Israel and revealed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The trove is thought to have been a factor in convincing then-US president Donald Trump to pull out of the nuclear agreement between world powers and Iran.
The head of the counterintelligence unit was revealed as a double agent in 2021 but he and all of the other alleged Mossad moles were able to flee the country and are now living in Israel, claimed Ahmadinejad, a firebrand populist known for his hardline anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric and for the violent crackdown that followed his disputed 2009 reelection. He was prevented from running again for president earlier this year.
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Other Iranian officials have in the past remarked about Mossad’s penetration in Iran. A former Iranian minister who served as an adviser to former president Hassan Rouhani said in 2022 that senior officials in Tehran should be fearing for their lives due to the “infiltration” of Israel’s spy agency, according to the London-based Persian-language Manoto news site.
Damaged buildings at the site of the assassination of Hezbollah terror group leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut’s southern suburbs, September 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Ahmadinejad’s assertions came as Israel has been battling Iran’s proxy terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon, and achieving remarkable success apparently based on profound intelligence. In the past two weeks, thousands of Hezbollah handheld communications devices exploded in Lebanon, injuring at least 1,500 of its members in incidents the terror group blamed on Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility. In addition, airstrikes have killed almost the entire top tier of Hezbollah’s command structure, including the terror group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in a Friday airstrike on his Beirut bunker.
French newspaper Le Parisien, citing a Lebanese source, reported Saturday that Israel was tipped off about Nasrallah’s presence by an Iranian mole.
Immediately after news broke of Nasrallah’s death, the Iranians rushed their Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to a secure location.
In July, the Hamas terror group’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed by an explosion at the Tehran guesthouse where he was staying during a visit to attend the funeral of Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi. Although Israel has not commented on Haniyeh’s death, Iran has vowed to retaliate.
Days after Haniyeh’s death, Iran arrested at least two dozen people for suspected connection to the assassination, The New York Times reported at the time, citing two Iranians familiar with the investigation.
Those arrested included senior Iranian intelligence officers, military officials, and staff at the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-run guesthouse, the report said. Iranians feared a major security breach among high-ranking officials made the daring assassination possible.
An unverified image of the Tehran building where Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh was killed on July 31, 2024. (Social media, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)
A series of mysterious explosions and other setbacks have plagued Iran’s nuclear program over the years.
In November 2020, top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in Iran in what The New York Times would later report was a sophisticated hit led by a Mossad team that reportedly deployed a computerized machine gun.
Tehran frequently claims to foil Mossad operations in the country, but the veracity of such claims is unclear.
Last month, the Revolutionary Guard claimed that 12 people had been arrested on suspicion of serving as operatives collaborating with Israel and planning acts against Iran’s security.
Israel has been at war with the Hamas terror group in Gaza and engaged in daily fighting with the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon — both Iranian proxies — since Hamas committed its massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Agencies contributed to this report.
