Israelis celebrated Friday many believe that Mossad, the foreign intelligence agency of their country, saw it as a stunning new success.
Israeli officials said they said Mossad agents were in the depths of missiles and explosion drones inside the Iran conference, aiming to target targets near Tehran, after launching 200 waves of fighter jets on Iran..
Similar precision weapons were fired on trucks smuggled into the country and hidden in a “drone base” near Tehran, according to an unnamed security official introduced to Israeli media. Officials said it was established before Friday's attack and used to destroy Iran's air defenses.
Mossad, the abbreviation of the Institute of Intelligence and Special Operations in Hebrew, has achieved many such victories in nearly 80 years of undercover operations, earning a unique reputation for bold espionage, technological innovation and ruthless violence.
Just 10 months after the new operation in Iran, the department has managed to destroy thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Lebanon's Hezbollah agents, a attack that killed 37 people and injured 3,000 people while weakening the radical Islamic group.
The service then led to an air offensive, which eliminated Hezbollah's leadership within a few days.
For decades, Mossad has established a deep network of informants, agents and logistics in Iran. This allows for a range of actions, including assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientists with remotely controlled automatic machine guns, speeding on cars on remote roads, malware of computers with key parts of Iran's nuclear program, and theft of theft of archives of nuclear files. Last year, Hamas' political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated and the bomb was placed in a government hotel in Tehran in his favorite room.
“Of course, this latest operation is impressive, but Iran has been an open book for Israeli intelligence for decade or more.”
Those who set up missile launches in the granular video released by Mossad may be Iranians, Melman said. “The boots on the ground inside Iran are not Israeli, so they must be recruited, trained, equipped and deployed. Then all components of all weapons have to be smuggled. It all takes a lot of professionalism and skill.”
Abnormally, Israeli officials stressed the role of the Military Intelligence Agency Aman in establishing targets for the Israeli offensive.
Although Aman and Mossad often work closely, most of the focus is on diplomatic services, which are much smaller. Even then, most of Mossad's works have never been strictly restricted outside.
Few have even heard of Mossad for decades, which was officially established in 1949.
Yossi Alpher participated in the service’s most famous operation in the 1970s, telling the Guardian last year: “Everything in Mossad was quiet and no one knew. It was a completely different era. Mossad just didn’t mention it.
Senior Mossad officials have long been more likely to spend their time on sensitive diplomatic missions, introducing senior Israeli policymakers to regional political dynamics or foreign relations to higher Israeli policymakers, rather than recruiting spies or attacking Iran this week.
Related: From Munich 72 to October 7: Mossad's Square History
For decades, Mossad has overseen years of secret efforts to build “enemy of Israeli enemies”, such as the Kurds in Iran, Iraq and Syria, and now Christians in South Sudan. As with many efforts, this has achieved different success.
Mossad was blamed by some for neglecting warnings about the reputation of Lebanon’s Maron Christian militia for cruelty and national hatred and encouraged Israel’s catastrophic invasion of the country in 1982, in which thousands of civilians were killed.
Mossad played an important but little-known role in the secret weapon supply as part of the Saddam Contra scandal of Iran’s Saddam Hussein during his presidency in Ronald Reagan.
Mossad’s mythical reputation was supported by films and TV series, while screenwriters attracted some of the most famous loopholes in the service.
One of the most famous is the captives in Adolf Eichmann, Argentina in 1960, where Nazi officials were the main organizers of the Holocaust. Others include stealing warships from the French Navy in 1969, warning about the impending attacks in Egypt and Syria in 1973, and providing critical intelligence for Entebbe, Uganda in 1976, which freed Jewish and Israeli passengers, hijacked by Pallestinian and German extremists.
In 1980, the service was established and operated a diving resort on the Red Sea coast of Sudan to cover the feudal Ethiopian Jewish community to secretly transport thousands to Israel. Mossad spies lived among tourists and were then forced to close operations five years later.
Mossad led a campaign to undermine responsibility networks and groups after the deadly attack on Israeli athletes by Palestinian extremists at the Munich Olympics in 1972. The effort ended when a Mossad team shot and killed a Moroccan waiter, a security officer of the Palestine Liberation Group, and then made further mistakes that led to their arrest and trial by local authorities.
In 1997, when the Mossad team was caught by local security forces, efforts to kill powerful Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal made a mistake. Israel was forced to hand over the antidote and its relations with Jordan were severely damaged. In 2010, during another assassination, CCTV cameras in Dubai were arrested.
Then, no warning could be learned about the Hamas attack that entered southern Israel by October 7, killing 1,200 Israelis, mainly civilians, and resulting in 251 kidnappings. The attack prompted an Israeli offensive in Gaza, where it is currently partying with Hezbollah and Islamic parties, fighting Hezbollah with the new Islamists.
Former Mossad official said the service will only be noticed if there is a problem. This is not true, though – as the release of the Iranian video shows.
One of Mossad's goals, especially in propaganda – is to sow fear among Iranians. “The purpose is psychology,” Melman said. “It's also a good way to increase public morale in Israel.” ”
