Mossad planned recruitment of former Iranian president, says newspaper

Internally named "Puss in Boots", the plan was conducted for almost two years, according to the newspaper, by the director of the intelligence service, David Barnea, under the direct guidance of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and failed before getting off the ground.

According to Haaretz, which interviewed more than 30 people from the country's political, defense and diplomatic leadership, Netanyahu's turn towards the idea of regime change occurred in 2024, after two episodes: the death of then Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, celebrated on the streets of Tehran, and the rapid collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.

The two events would have convinced the prime minister that the Iranian regime was more fragile than previously estimated - an assessment that broke with almost two decades of Israeli caution on the subject, already tested and discarded by former Mossad chiefs such as Meir Dagan and Tamir Pardo.

From there, Netanyahu instructed Barnea to redirect secret service resources to destabilize Tehran. The plan evolved into a multi-pronged operation. Kurdish militias would be armed and trained in Iraq to invade western Iran under Israeli air cover; other minorities would be activated to agitate the country internally; and, in the final stage, Ahmadinejad would take power, promising to abandon the nuclear program.

Haaretz describes weekly meetings held on Fridays at Kirya, the headquarters of the Armed Forces in Tel Aviv, with Netanyahu, Barnea and representatives of the military leadership. According to the report, the atmosphere was informal - Netanyahu usually appeared in a black polo and khaki pants, while Barnea was the only one in the room in a suit.

The report shows that the plan faced strong internal opposition from the beginning. The head of Military Intelligence, General Shlomi Binder, and the head of the research division, General Ofir Mizrahi-Rosen, prepared formal assessments indicating a low chance of success. National security advisor Tzachi Hanegbi stopped attending meetings after concluding that the plans "sounded like science fiction" and had no practical value. Three days before the scheduled date for the offensive, the Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, ordered everything to be stopped. Netanyahu decided to continue anyway.

According to the newspaper, a decisive meeting took place at the White House on February 11 of this year, when Netanyahu would have personally convinced President Donald Trump to support the idea of regime change. The next day, however, Trump's team reacted with skepticism: Vice President J.D. Vance was reportedly suspicious, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the plan "bullshit" and CIA Director John Ratcliffe described it as a "hoax."

Still, the operation progressed. The Mossad estimated that around 16,000 Kurdish fighters would participate in the initial phase of the invasion, with support from Iranian weapons depots captured throughout the advance. In a more optimistic scenario, Kurdish troops would arrive in opposition neighborhoods in Tehran, under Israeli air cover, to help spark a popular uprising.

Days before the attack, new internal friction emerged. Barnea informed the chief of staff that the success of the plan depended on the elimination of supreme leader Ali Khamenei - which would have angered Zamir, who considered the condition an additional risk imposed at the last minute to the military operation.

In the end, the joint attack by Israel and the United States on Iran on February 28 eliminated Khamenei and hit the guard responsible for Ahmadinejad's house arrest, but the Kurdish invasion never happened. According to Haaretz, the cancellation had two decisive factors: a phone call from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Trump, asking the US not to cooperate with the Kurds, for fear of effects on the Kurdish minority in Turkey; and a public statement by Trump on March 7 explicitly ruling out the entry of Kurdish militias into the war.

Without American support, the Mossad even drafted an alternative plan, using the pre-Islamic holiday of Chaharshanbe Suri as a trigger for protests, but the idea was discarded after objections from Military Intelligence, which feared exposing agents without real gain.

Former authorities interviewed by Haaretz classified the episode as a planning failure. Former Mossad director Tamir Pardo said that operations of this type take decades to mature, not months.

Barnea, according to the newspaper, maintains the assessment that the Iranian regime is still destined to fall - within one to three years -, but recognizes that a possible agreement between the US and Iran, with the end of sanctions, could guarantee its survival.