How the Most Elite Spy Agency Operates

On January 19, 2010, agents posing as tourists  targeted Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Two of the agents disguised as tennis  players followed him to his floor in a five-star hotel in Dubai, in what police say  was an attempt to note down his room number. Hours later, surveillance footage  captured a woman and man standing guard in the hallway as the execution  team ambushed al-Mabhouh in his room.

The agents swiftly left Dubai and evaded  capture, leading to widespread allegations that the operation was orchestrated  by Israel and executed by Mossad. Mossad was founded in 1949, the year after David Ben Gurion proclaimed  the establishment of the state of Israel. After the horrors of the Holocaust,  a UN resolution in 1947 proposed the partition of Palestine, allocating  56% of the land to the Jewish state, which made up about one-third  of the total population.

Six Arab states declared war on Israel,  vowing to crush the Jewish state. Israel won the war. In the aftermath, Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip And Israel ended up with 78% of the land.

Prime Minister Ben-Gurion understood that the key to the survival of Israel lay in  robust intelligence capabilities. Israel has three intelligence agencies. Aman is responsible for military intelligence, gathering information about enemy  armies and other military threats.

Shin Bet handles internal security, focusing on  preventing terrorism and espionage within Israel. Mossad conducts foreign intelligence operations, specializing in espionage, covert missions,  and counter-terrorism outside Israel. Recruiters look for candidates with  specific qualities: reliability, exceptional intelligence, and the ability  to become somebody else entirely.

It is believed that only 1 in  1,000 candidates make the cut. Mossad reportedly employs about 7,000  people globally, making it one of the world’s largest espionage agencies. David Ben-Gurion never uttered the names of Israel’s intelligence agencies.

Never acknowledged that they even existed. They were shrouded in secrecy. That is, until the case of Adolf Eichman.

One of the architects of the Holocaust,  Eichman was captured by Mossad agents in Buenos Aires in 1961, where he had been  living under the alias Ricardo Klement. Mossad captured him and brought him to Israel  to stand trial, where he was sentenced to death. The operation put Mossad on the map  and made headlines around the world, sending a clear message that Israeli  agents could strike anywhere.

But targeting Nazi officials  was not Mossad’s main mission. Its main focus was on safeguarding the  state of Israel against its enemies. In the summer of 1962, Egypt’s  president Gamal Abdel Nassar proudly declared that his rockets  were capable of reaching Israel.

The agent Mossad planted in Cairo, Wolfgang  Lotz, who posed as a German horse breeder, had failed to report the major  progress in Egypt’s missile progran. Nasser's missile program relied heavily  on expertise from former Nazi scientists, like Heinz Krug who managed logistics. In an effort to derail the program,  Mossad targeted key figures with parcel bombs that killed several Egyptian  workers, but none of the major players.

When Krug returned to Munich, Mossad agents kidnapped him and took  him to Israel to be interrogated. He was never seen alive again. But Egypt’s missile program  was still very much alive.

So, in May 1964, Mossad took  an unconventional approach to sabotage the program by making a deal  with former SS officer Otto Skorzeny. He was a prominent Nazi who had direct access  to leading figures in Egypt’s rocket program. Mossad promised protection in  exchange for his cooperation.

By leveraging his contacts, Skorzeny persuaded  one German scientist after another to leave Egypt. This strategy proved effective, and  Egypt’s missile program came to a halt. However, Egypt soon found a new source of  support, as Soviet weapons began flowing into neighboring Arab countries during the Cold  War, to counter Western influence in the region.

The delivery of the modern Soviet combat jet  the MiG-21 to Arab states alarmed Israel. Mossad devised a plan to find an Arab  pilot willing to defect and fly one of the jets to them. MiG-21 jet They persuaded Munir Redfa, an Assyrian Christian  in the Iraqi Air Force who faced discrimination, to defect by offering him money and protection.

Redfa agreed on one condition. He wanted his entire extended family – 21  people – be smuggled out of Iraq. Israel agreed, and Operation Diamond  successfully brought a MiG-21 into Western hands.

Leveraging its superior intelligence, Israel  launched a pre-emptive strike against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria on June 5, 1967, in  response to mobilization by its enemies. Israeli forces defeated the  combined Arab armies in six days. Israel took control of the West Bank from  Jordan, the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria,  humiliating its Arab neighbors.

Note to self: Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in  1982 as part of the peace treaty with Egypt. By the end of the Six-Day War, Israel controlled  four times as much land as it did in 1948. Thousands of refugees left their homes  in the wake of the six-day war to seek shelter in the Arab-held lands east  of the river.

For many of them, Jordan had nothing to offer but the squalor  and the misery of the refugee camps. Young Palestinians growing up in refugee  camps became increasingly radicalized, a development Mossad failed to anticipate. The anger led to the rise of militant  groups such as Fatah “fuh-taw”, which eventually became the dominant faction within  the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Yasser Arafat, who founded Fatah,  vowed to wipe Israel off the map. Mossad tried time and time  again to assassinate Arafat, but he managed to evade capture by  hiding in neighboring Arab countries. Arafat became the chairman of the PLO in 1969  and focused on radicalizing Palestinians in exile in Europe, establishing networks in  universities and working-class neighborhoods.

In the 60s and 70s, the PLO carried out  numerous terrorist attacks in Europe and Israel to draw attention to the Palestinian cause, including the shocking attack on Israeli  athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. On September 5, 1972, eight men with  the Black September organization, an offshoot of Fatah, infiltrated the Olympic  Village and took 11 Israeli athletes hostage. The terrorists demanded the release of  over 200 prisoners held in Israeli jails.

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir  rejected the demands and instead offered to help Germany rescue the hostages. However, Germany declined, insisting  on handling the situation themselves. Mossad’s hands were often tied  as European intelligence services preferred to remain neutral in  the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The German authorities pretended to agree to the terrorists' demands to be flown  to an Arab-friendly country. The plan was to stage a rescue operation  at the Fürstenfeldbruck airbase. However, it went horribly wrong as German  police were not trained snipers and were using outdated equipment,  old rifles without scopes.

All 11 Israeli athletes were killed. In response, Mossad vowed to track  down and eliminate those responsible. Within a year, Mossad operatives tracked  down and killed Palestinians in Rome, Paris, Beirut, Athens, and Cyprus.

But it also made mistakes, like in Norway when  Mossad agents mistakenly killed a Moroccan waiter whom they misidentified as Ali Hassan Salameh,  the alleged mastermind of the Munich attack. Mossad ended up taking out  Salameh in a car bomb years later. Mossad’s strategy extended beyond retaliation  and included fostering regional alliances, exemplified by the adage, “My  enemy’s enemy is my friend.

” These connections proved invaluable when  Israelis were in danger far from home. On June 27, 1976, a splinter group  of the PLO hijacked an Air France jet with 260 people on board and re-routed it  to Uganda. 248 passengers and 12 crew members The hijackers released passengers who didn’t  appear to be Jewish but continued to hold 106 others, including crew members, demanding  the release of Palestinian prisoners.

Although Uganda’s dictator, Idi Amin,  was no longer Israel’s ally, Uganda had in the past provided Israel with critical  intelligence on the airport’s facilities. An Israeli company had built the airport,  giving Israel access to detailed blueprints. And a Mossad agent posing as an amateur pilot had  recently taken aerial photographs of the airport.

Operation Entebbe, led by Jonathan  Netanyahu, the brother of future Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,  was an outrageously bold operation. The rescue team flew in a  plane camouflaged to look like a commercial aircraft to avoid detection. The aircraft refueled in  Kenya, another crucial ally, whose support was vital for the mission’s success.

During the raid, Jonathan Netanyahu was killed, along with 45 Ugandan soldiers and three  hostages who died in the crossfire. One rescued hostage, Dora Bloch,  who was later hospitalized after choking on a chicken bone, was  shot dead on Idi Amin’s orders. Despite the losses, the operation was a  success, underscoring Mossad’s ability to leverage its intelligence networks and  alliances to execute daring operations.

But Mossad’s reputation would soon take a hit. In 1970, Egypt saw a new president  come into power, Anwar Sadat. Sadat publicly threatened to reclaim the Sinai  Peninsula, but Israel didn’t take him seriously.

Mossad’s informant, Ashraf Marwan, who was  married to the daughter of Egypt’s former president Nasser, had not alerted them  to the threat. Married to daughter Mona Some believe Marwan became an informant because of the disrespect he felt from Nasser, who  allegedly disapproved of the marriage. In the fall of 1973, Israel’s  military intelligence observed Egyptian and Syrian troop movements along  the borders but dismissed them as routine, believing Marwan would have warned  them if an attack were imminent.

When Marwan did send an urgent message  warning that Egypt planned to attack within hours on Yom Kippur, the holiest day  in the Jewish calendar, Mossad was skeptical. Israel’s hesitation proved costly. Although Israel won the Yom Kippur  War, it suffered massive losses.

Over 2,600 Israeli soldiers were killed. Marwan’s identity as a Mossad  informant was exposed 30 years later. In 2007, he mysteriously fell to his  death from his balcony in London.

In the years following the war, Egypt and  Israel began to mend their relationship. By negotiating peace with Israel, Egypt  aimed to improve its relations with the U. S.

, a key ally of Israel, and break  away from Soviet influence. During secret negotiations, Israel’s foreign  minister Moshe Dayan, made a covert trip to Morocco, where he was seen wearing dark glasses  instead of his trademark black eyepatch. Later, Anwar Sadat became the  first Arab head of state to visit Israel and speak before the Knesset,  Israel’s House of Representatives.

U. S. President Jimmy Carter hosted  the tough talks between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian  President al-Sadat, resulting in the Camp David Accords and the signing of a  historic peace treaty on March 26, 1979.

Israel agreed to withdraw  from the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt officially recognized the State of Israel,  becoming the first Arab country to do so. The landmark agreement shocked the Arab world.

Sadat’s bold move led to Egypt’s  expulsion from the Arab League and, tragically, his assassination three years later. The treaty marked a pivotal  moment in Middle Eastern history, showcasing Mossad’s ability to not  only wage war but broker peace. However, the regional landscape shifted dramatically with the advent  of the Iranian Revolution.

Iran had been one of Israel’s secret allies since the 1950s under the rule of  Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Iran sold oil to Israel, and in return, Mossad provided internal security support  and military intelligence training. Then, in 1978, huge protests erupted, led by Islamic cleric Ayatollah Khomeini who  was in exile first in Iraq and then in Paris.

The Shah, facing mounting pressure,  appealed to Mossad to assassinate Khomeini, but Israel refused out  of concern for regional stability. Eventually, the revolution broke out,  and Iran’s secret police lost control. The Shah fled the country, and Khomeini  returned to establish a theocracy, executing military generals  and solidifying his rule.

Iran, once Israel’s critical partner in the  region, now became its greatest adversary. Iran openly declared its  goal of annihilating Israel, which delighted the PLO under Yasser Arafat, who found common cause with the new Iranian regime  in their opposition to both the U. S.

and Israel. Mossad aimed to dismantle the PLO, which had established a base in Lebanon  after being expelled from Jordan. Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon  were increasingly infiltrating Israeli territory.

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon aimed to purge the  PLO from Lebanon with a military strike. However, they needed to be able to  justify invading a foreign country. The attempted assassination of Israel's  ambassador to the UK, Shlomo Argov, by a radical Palestinian faction, provided them with  an excuse, despite the PLO not being involved.

Mossad allied with Lebanon’s Christian militias, which saw the PLO as a mutual enemy, though  Mossad had doubts about their reliability. On June 6, 1982, Israeli soldiers invaded Lebanon in hopes of destroying the PLO and  installing a pro-Israeli regime. Two months after the invasion, the  PLO retreated, and Bashir Gemayel, leader of the Christian militias,  became the new president.

However, his assassination three months  later plunged Lebanon back into civil war, which confirmed Mossad’s fears about  the Christian militias’ reliability. The catastrophe in Lebanon forced Prime Minister  Begin and Defense Minister Sharon to resign, with Mossad also facing criticism  for misjudging the situation. Mossad’s mission extended beyond warfare; it was committed to protecting Jewish  lives wherever they were in peril.

In the early 1980s, tens of thousands of  Ethiopian Jews were at risk of violence and hunger Thousands had fled to refugee  camps in neighboring Sudan. Mossad was tasked with bringing them to Israel. But the operation had to be carried out in  secret as Sudan’s dictator, Jaafar an-Nimeiry, needed to maintain a public stance of opposition  to Israel to avoid political backlash.

Mossad operatives disguised as European  and American staff set up a diving resort on the Sudanese coast, where they managed  it by day and smuggled Jews out by night, transporting them by boat  across the Red Sea to Israel. When smuggling by boat became too risky, the refugees were secretly  airlifted out of the country. New challenges soon emerged for Israel.

In the late 1980s, anger in Gaza, which Israel had  occupied for over 20 years, erupted into violence. This led to a mass uprising called the  Intifada, which caught Mossad off guard. As the violence escalated and Israel intensified  its efforts to suppress the Palestinian uprising, demands for a diplomatic solution  grew louder within Israel.

In 1993, Israelis and Palestinians  met on neutral ground in Oslo, Norway, to discuss a possible compromise. Israel agreed to withdraw its troops  from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, transferring these territories  to Palestinian self-government. Remarkably, Yasser Arafat, the  head of the PLO who had earlier vowed to wipe Israel off the map, now  recognized Israel's right to exist.

The peace treaty was signed in  Washington, and both Israeli Prime Minister and Arafat received the  Nobel Peace Prize the following year. However, the peace process  faced significant challenges. Arafat no longer spoke for all Palestinians, and the PLO struggled to maintain  peace as a new radical force emerged.

Founded by Sheikh Ahmad  Yassin during the Intifada, Hamas remained steadfast in  its goal of destroying Israel. Israel had expected the PLO to rein in Hamas,  but the PLO was slow to act, allowing Hamas to grow stronger and launch a devastating wave  of suicide bombings against Israeli cities. In 1996, Israel’s new prime  minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, came to power with a mandate  to pursue a policy of strength.

Netanyahu instructed Mossad to target key  Hamas leaders in order to stop the attacks. In the summer of 1997, Mossad's  first target was Khaled Mashaal, the then chief of Hamas'  politburo in Amman, Jordan. The plan was to poison him in broad daylight  to make it appear as though he died of natural causes, avoiding disrupting the good  relationship between Israel and Jordan.

As Mashal walked with his children and bodyguard, two Mossad agents posing as Canadian  tourists sprayed Fentanyl in his ear. However, Mashaal's bodyguard intervened, and  the Mossad agents were exposed and captured. King Hussein of Jordan was appalled by the  incident and warned that if Mashaal died, he would face a Palestinian uprising and have  no choice but to execute the Israeli operatives.

Israel agreed to provide the  antidote to save Mashaal's life. Khaled Mashal survived and  became Hamas' new leader. Suicide attacks in Israel persisted,  culminating in the second Intifada, which saw a significant rise in violence.

As Israel faced ongoing attacks, a  new and powerful adversary emerged. Iran was frustrated by its exclusion  from Middle East peace negotiations. It increased its aid to Hamas  and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and established a network among Israel’s  enemies.

Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria and supporting Shitte Hezbollah militia  in Lebanon with arms, money, and fighters In 2002, Meir Dagan, the new head of Mossad,  identified Iran as Israel’s main adversary. He reformed the agency with  a more aggressive approach. Under Dagan's leadership, Mossad focused on dismantling anti-Israeli terror networks  and countering Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran maintained its nuclear program  was strictly for civilian purposes, but Israel perceived a significant threat. Mossad analysts believed that Iran could  develop nuclear weapons within a few years. Israel wasn’t going to let that happen; it was the only country in the Middle East with  nuclear weapons and wanted to keep it that way.

But Mossad ruled out an airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities as it could  have drastic repercussions. Instead, it tried to cripple Iran’s  nuclear program with a computer worm. The covert operation believed  to involve the CIA and Mossad, spread the Stuxnet worm to computers  at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility.

Stuxnet targeted the centrifuges that produced  enriched uranium, causing them to burn out. I did a video on Stuxnet, which  I’ve linked in my description The operation disrupted Iran’s nuclear program, but concerns remained, leading to this  famous 2012 UN speech by Netanyahu: Where should a red line be drawn? A  red line should be drawn right here.

In 2015, Iran signed a long-term  agreement with the U. S. under the Obama administration to curb its nuclear  activity in exchange for sanctions relief.

However, in 2018, Mossad obtained  documents that allegedly showed Iran was still pursuing its nuclear program,  leading President Trump to cancel the agreement. Since World War II, Israel has reportedly been  responsible for more assassinations than any other Western country, with estimates suggesting  it has carried out at least 2,700 assassinations. Yet, there are limits to  Israel’s intelligence gathering.

On October 7, 2023, during a  music festival in southern Israel, Hamas launched a surprise attack from  the Gaza Strip, killing 364 people. Israel and Hamas engaged in intense fighting,  resulting in thousands of casualties. The surprise attack represented a  stunning failure of Israeli intelligence, which has been crucial to Israel’s  strength and survival until now.

The reasons behind the lapse will be the subject  of intense scrutiny and analysis by Israel and its allies for years to come. Being chosen to be a Mossad agent is incredibly rare. But even the most skilled and resilient individuals can face  moments of uncertainty and need support.

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