by Yonah Jeremy Bob
The true foundations for Mossad's operations in Lebanon and Iran were laid by Israel's "project manager" for Iran, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
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Mossad Director David Barnea will be forever remembered for the brilliant beeper attacks on Hezbollah last fall and the multifaceted sabotage and assassination attacks against Iran in June.
But the true foundations for both of these operations were laid by Yossi Cohen as project manager for former Mossad director Meir Dagan from 2002-2006, The Jerusalem Post has learned exclusively.
Cohen would later become Mossad director from 2016-2021, but Dagan already had made him the agency’s project manager for new aggressive operations to thwart Iran’s nuclear program.
How Cohen masterminded equipment tampering in Iran
Some kind of sabotage is as old as war, and already after 2002, there were lots of individual operations using the new kind of equipment tampering going on in Iran.Now that Israel has admitted to striking nearly all of Iran’s nuclear facilities – the Mossad made public at least three different kinds of sabotage it carried out, including details about the beepers operation – some of these earlier exploits can be revealed.
Much has been reported about the Mossad’s sabotaged Hezbollah beeper operations shifting into higher gears in 2021 and 2022 and its earlier sabotage operation of Hezbollah’s walkie-talkies, which dates back to around 2014 during the era of Mossad director Tamir Pardo.
There have also been some limited reports about supply-chain attacks against Iran under Dagan.
Mossad has been selling Iran tampered devices since 2002
But little has been revealed until now about such attacks during Cohen’s reign as “Iran project manager,” including the connection between those earlier Iran operations to the most recent ones in June and those against Hezbollah.According to Mossad sources, 2002 was the first Mossad operation of manipulated and tampered equipment and technology as part of a new sustained and systematic campaign in that direction against both Iran and Hezbollah.
Without revealing what, sources told the Post the Mossad had “added something” to each device or piece of equipment.
When Dagan was nominated to be head of the Mossad, Cohen was already head of the subdivision of Tzomet operations for recruiting spies overseas.
Cohen met with Dagan, who was very enthusiastic about the new campaign against Iran, which would also be expanded to include its main proxy, Hezbollah.
The campaign would intervene in a calculated way in a variety of practical Iranian nuclear and military activitiesDagan promoted Cohen, appointing him as the project manager for the program to thwart Iranian nuclear progress, including for that purpose, putting him above some Mossad division managers who would normally outrank him.
Although Cohen and Pardo later would have a falling out, at the time, both Dagan and his deputy director, Pardo, would regularly tell Mossad division heads to carry out any actions needed for Cohen’s plans to tamper with and disrupt Iran’s nuclear program.
THE MOSSAD, through a variety of deceptive “straw men” and “fronts,” would eventually sell the Iranians a substantial amount of tampered equipment in 2003 and 2004, which had dramatic impacts in the realm of sabotage.
In planning the spy agency’s next moves, Cohen always asked himself, “How do I tamper with your organization and disrupt it? How do I enter your secret defense program and your discreet supply lines for purchasing nuclear-related equipment?”
The Post has learned that such major new operations require lots of new intelligence, with sources saying it was critical to map out the supply chain, including: How does the adversary buy the threatening item in question? Who are their international buyers? How do they pay– whether in Iranian currency, using foreign-aid funds, or through bank accounts?
Answering these questions meant the clandestine agency needed to make shifts into different areas of intelligence collection.
Mossad planted 'helpful' items within Hezbollah's inventory
As of 2006, a variety of products were sold to Hezbollah, and a new special operations division in the Mossad, built up by Cohen, had planted many “helpful” items inside Hezbollah’s equipment.According to sources, this was before Barnea entered the picture of equipment-tampering campaigns, though he would later join this unit working under Cohen.
There were three categories of tampering that Cohen pursued: 1) selling equipment that sends back data, such as providing GPS locations of enemy officials; 2) selling equipment that listens to what is happening, such as the walkie talkies; and 3) selling equipment that explodes, such as the beepers.
While the beepers are now viewed as the most exciting, they are for one-time use, because they cannot hear enemy communications or assist in intelligence collection; they just explode.
The walkie-talkies helped with intelligence collection for a long period of time and were much more sophisticated than the beepers, according to some sources.
Still, Cohen approved the use of the first tampered beeper when he was the head of the Mossad, a forerunner for the beepers later used against Hezbollah.
In the strategy behind all of this were certain presumptions by top Israeli defense and political officials.
In the event that a war would be necessary to stop Iran’s nuclear program, these officials always thought that Israel would attack first, the Post has learned.
They never actually thought Iran would attack Israel before acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Tip of the iceberg: How Mossad penetrated Hezbollah
FURTHERMORE, the Post has learned that no one really thought Hezbollah would launch a wider war on Israel first. (Even on October 8, when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel first, it was a limited attack.)So, the idea was that if Israel initiated a war against Iran, there would be a large and surprising opening blow, including clandestine assassinations, the sources said.
In the event of an Israeli attack on Iran before the October 7 massacre, there was heavy concern that Hezbollah would then be ready to retaliate on a large scale, making it necessary to also strike the Lebanese terrorist group with a surprise opening major blow, such as what later became the walkie-talkies and the beepers.
There would be many special operations in southern Lebanon that would lead the 15,000 Hezbollah fighters to suit up with their military vests and walkie-talkies and allow the Mossad to blow them up, the Post has learned.
But tampering with the beepers and the walkie-talkies are only a few pieces of the Mossad’s penetration of Hezbollah.The spy agency is always finding additional ways to penetrate Israel’s adversaries to prepare for the next war, and it will rarely use up all of its tricks in one fell swoop.
As all of these new audacious operations were being planned, there was also a much bigger and more aggressive new push under Cohen to recruit local agents in the home countries, which the Mossad wanted to penetrate wherever that might be, but definitely including Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In addition, already between 2004-2010, the Mossad was using drones to launch attacks in various places, including Iran.
What happened then with the beepers in September 2024 was the realization of nearly two decades of equipment tampering and frequently evolving and expanding of such penetrations.
Likewise, what happened this past June 13-24 in Iran was an enlargement of what the Mossad had already carried out numerous times in the past within Iranian territory.
Dagan kept pushing Cohen and other Mossad operatives to increase the amount of equipment tampering they did.This later included targeting facilities such as Natanz, where public images later picked up huge explosions one could see across the sky – again long before the June 13-24 war.
Later, during Cohen’s era as Mossad director, the Mossad would seize Iran’s secret nuclear archives.
In addition, Tehran would accuse it of blowing up two separate facilities at Natanz, and killing its founding nuclear chief, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, according to foreign sources, as well as providing critical information to the US when Washington assassinated Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.
Yonah Jeremy Bob
Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-859941
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