The former head of Israel’s intel service has admitted that Mossad deliberately exposed its clandestine operations in order to trigger a wave of arrests in Iran. What was intended to be a clever piece of intelligence work raises a far more troubling question as to how far a state will go in order to achieve its strategic aims when the inevitable outcome is to have completely innocent people arrested.
On 25 October 2026, The Jerusalem Post published a remarkable report of comments by former Mossad head David Barnea. At a closed session of the Priority Summit, Barnea is reported to have said that Mossad did, in fact, release videos of its operatives at work inside Iran during the June 2025 military operation. The point was not simply to show off the capabilities of Israeli intelligence. The intention was to get the Iranians to arrest so many people that they would be completely unable to tell the difference between a real Mossad agent and an innocent person.
An Intelligence Operation Designed to Overwhelm
On 13 June 2025, as Israel launched Operation Rising Lion against Iran, Mossad released three videos of its covert operations targeting ballistic missile infrastructure, air defences and attack preparations. The agents’ faces were all covered up, but there was no doubt it was Mossad.
Barnea says the decision to release the footage was in part a move to protect the agents. The Iranian authorities would respond with a wave of arrests, which would create such confusion that it would be very difficult to work out who the real Israeli agents were.
Barnea reportedly said that the IRGC arrested some 21,000 people on the second day of the fighting. He went on to suggest that once you have that many people in custody, you’re going to end up with the situation where you can’t possibly tell who the actual agents are and who aren’t, and so you’re going to have to release them.
The former Mossad chief also admitted that a large number of those arrested or executed as alleged Israeli agents had absolutely no connection to the organisation whatsoever.
The 21,000 figure is Barnea’s figure, not an independently verified count of arrests as a result of the videos. It doesn’t in any way establish that every arrest or execution was a direct result of the Mossad’s publicity campaign. Nevertheless, his strategy does raise a very fundamental question: if an intelligence service deliberately incites mass repression in an adversary state, can it just walk away and say the resulting suffering of the civilian population is someone else’s problem?
The strategy may have been designed to protect the Mossad personnel. It seems to have been predicated on a fairly predictable reaction from the Iranian security establishment: a wave of suspicion, detentions and the indiscriminate targeting of people who might have had absolutely nothing to do with Israel.
That’s not just an intelligence success story. It’s a deliberate gamble involving human lives and will make it harder for Mossad to hire local agents in the future in any part of the world.
The Legal and Moral Limits of Covert Warfare
States have for decades used espionage, sabotage, deception and clandestine networks as instruments of national security. Mossad is by no means unique in this. But secrecy does not create a legal vacuum. Nor does the label of national security provide unlimited protection from scrutiny.
International Humanitarian Law makes a clear distinction between combatants, civilians and individuals taking part in the hostilities. The status of an intelligence officer is very much dependent on the circumstances in which they operate, including the nature of their activities, their relationship to the armed forces and whether they are, in fact, entitled to combatant status. Spying in itself does not make an operative a lawful combatant and a captured spy may well be subject to prosecution under domestic law. Conversely, a civilian is not automatically a legitimate target simply because an intelligence agency has operated in their country.
The Mossad strategy as reported by the Jerusalem Post raises a rather more specific point about responsibility for foreseeable harm.
If an intelligence service is going to publicise its clandestine operations in a situation where it knows the other side is going to respond with a wave of arrests and possible murder, it can’t just sidestep the ethical issue by saying that the other side did the arrests. Whether or not such conduct would amount to an international crime would require a much more detailed analysis of intent, knowledge, causation and the relevant law. Barnea’s reported comments hint a war crime has been committed.
The moral issue is there. A strategy which treats the predictable detention of the innocent as an acceptable means of operational deception is clearly a strategy which crosses a very fine line.
There’s also a wider contradiction. Israel and its Western allies will routinely invoke the defence of democratic values, the rule of law and the protection of civilians in order to justify their security policies. Those principles cannot be selectively applied. They cannot simply be set aside when the means are secret, politically expedient or directed against an adversary.
Israel’s Strategic Success and Its International Credibility
The Mossad strategy also has to be viewed in the context of Israel’s overall international standing. The fact that the agency appears to be able to penetrate the Iranian security apparatus is a clear demonstration of its capabilities. Effectiveness in the field is not the same as political legitimacy, though.
An intelligence operation can be a tactical success and at the same time create long-term strategic costs. It can damage the credibility of this and future operations; it can deepen the hostility; and it can reinforce the view that the lives of civilians are disposable in the pursuit of state objectives.
Israel’s soft power is already in a state of serious decline in the international arena, particularly as a result of the Gaza destruction, the occupation of Palestinian territory by brutal settlers and the ongoing regional conflicts. Its overall neighbour strategy is to have failed states to better control them. Iran would be just another one. Therefore, its relationship with various elements of the European political establishment and with various constituencies which have traditionally been pro-Israel are increasingly strained.
The criticism is no longer just coming from governments, human rights groups and activists. It’s also coming from within the Jewish and pro-Israel establishment.
Ronald Lauder (President of the World Jewish Congress and one of the most prominent figures in the international Jewish communal scene) has been very publicly disappointed with Israel’s political direction. In an interview with Haaretz he criticised what he sees as the country’s drive towards dominance rather than peace and has warned that Israel is too quickly losing ground politically with both of the major American parties.
Lauder’s criticism points to a significant development: concern about Israel’s policies is no longer the preserve of the traditional critics. It is now very much in evidence amongst those who have been on the Israel side for many years.
This is a strategic problem for Israel. Military superiority, intelligence and diplomatic protection can all be of use in the short term. They can’t in any way offset the damage to international credibility.
According to the 2026 Democracy Perception Index, Israel has the lowest net perception score in the world (out of 65 countries), below Afghanistan and North Korea. Pew Research independently confirms the extent of the negative international perception, with a median of 67% of respondents across 36 countries having an unfavourable view of Israel. In most European countries, this rate is around 90%.
The same is true of the political protection Israel gets from Washington and various European capitals. Western governments’ credibility is undermined when they invoke international law against an adversary yet are unwilling to apply the same rules to an ally. Germany and the UK, in the same way as the US, should be judged on the consistency of their positions rather than just on what they say.
The issue isn’t whether Iran’s security services have been guilty of abuses. One government’s misdeeds don’t give another government the right to use civilians as pawns.
The comments of David Barnea should therefore be met with more than just admiration for the operational skill of Mossad. They should be the catalyst for a proper examination of the responsibilities of the intelligence services, the protection of civilians and the political culture which enables covert warfare to operate with such complete impunity.
There’s a difference between outmanoeuvring an opponent and intentionally creating circumstances in which innocent people become expendable. When intelligence agencies, such as Mossad, start to see mass arrests as an operational asset, then the line between tactical brilliance and moral bankruptcy is very quickly erased.
The true test of an intelligence service isn’t how well it can deceive its enemies. It’s whether its methods stay within the line that separates intelligence work from the abuse of human life.
If Barnea’s version of events is to be believed, then Mossad has given the world an unusually frank look at the rationale behind its clandestine operations. The issue now is whether governments, the press and the international community will take that rationale seriously or whether once again the language of national security will be used to silence the victims.
Ricardo Martins – Doctor of Sociology, specialist in European and international politics as well as geopolitics
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