Mkurugenzi wa Mossad, Roman Gofman, amewaondoa maafisa wawili waandamizi wa shirika la ujasusi ambao walihusika kwa karibu katika kutengeneza mpango usiofanikiwa wa kuangusha utawala wa Iran, televisheni ya Israeli iliripoti Alhamisi.
Kwa mujibu wa vyombo vya habari vya Israel, mmoja wa maafisa hao alikuwa amehudumu tangu Desemba kama mkuu wa idara ya ujasusi ya Mossad, na mwingine alikuwa mkuu wa kitengo cha Iran cha shirika hilo.
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Mpango wa Mossad unaripotiwa kuwa na wazo la mashambulizi ya Israeli dhidi ya ngome za Walinzi wa Mapinduzi ya Kiislamu kwenye mpaka wa Iran na Iraq, katika Kurdistan ya Iran. Mashambulizi hayo yalikusudiwa kufungua mlango kwa wapiganaji wa Kikurdi kuvuka kuingia Iran, na kushambulia miji ya Kikurdi kaskazini magharibi mwa nchi hiyo.
Mossad ilitarajia maelfu ya Wakurdi kujiunga na wapiganaji, na kugeuka kuwa harakati ya umati ambayo ingeweza kufika Tehran yenyewe. Ilifikiriwa kwamba hii ingechochea mamilioni ya waandamanaji kuangusha utawala huo.
Ingawa mkuu wa CIA na waziri wa mambo ya nje walipinga mpango wa Netanyahu kama "wa kipuuzi", rais na washauri wake wengi walivutiwa na wazo kwamba uongozi wa Iran ungeweza kuangushwa baada ya kuharibu silaha zake za kijeshi.
Mwanzoni mwa vita mwezi Februari, Israel na Marekani zilifanya mashambulizi makali dhidi ya vikosi vya usalama vya Iran kaskazini magharibi mwa nchi hiyo katika juhudi za kurahisisha njia ya Wakurdi, lakini uvujaji wa taarifa hizo kwa vyombo vya habari, tishio la Uturuki, kuzimwa kwa maandamano feki, na wasiwasi miongoni mwa Wakurdi kupambana na nguvu ya IRGC ulisababisha mission hiyo kufeli.
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Mossad Director Roman Gofman has removed two of the spy agency’s most senior officials who were closely involved in developing an unsuccessful plan to topple the Iranian regime, Israeli television reported Thursday.
According to Channel 12 news, one of the officials had served since December as the head of the Mossad’s intelligence directorate, and the other was the head of the agency’s Iran division.
The network said the two were among the architects of a written operational plan to bring down the Islamic Republic with the help of Iran’s minority groups, encouraging revived mass protests to oust the regime
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
reportedly discussed the plan when persuading US President Donald Trump to go to war in February against the Islamic Republic.
Security sources cited by the network said the two officials and Gofman had clashed from the outset, but stressed their departures were being carried out by mutual agreement as part of a broader reorganization of the Mossad and that both were expected to remain at the agency in other roles.
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The Mossad plan
reportedly envisioned Israeli strikes on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps positions along Iran’s border with Iraq, in Iranian Kurdistan. The strikes were designed to open the door for Kurdish fighters to cross into Iran, according to The New York Times report, and push into Kurdish cities in the country’s northwest.
A female Kurdish fighter from the Iranian Kurdish armed faction Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) passes a poster of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), at a site near the Iraqi border with Iran in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, on March 8, 2026. (Photo by AFP)
The Mossad expected thousands of young Kurds to join the fighters, turning into a mass movement that could reach Tehran itself. It was further thought that this would help embolden a mass protest movement with millions of demonstrators to bring down the regime, according to multiple reports.
The Kurdish offensive was one of the key elements of the plan, which also reportedly envisaged installing former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the Iranian leader.
The New York Times also reported last month that Israel engaged in a multi-year effort to recruit Ahmadinejad, in a campaign that included a meeting with then-Mossad chief David Barnea on the sidelines of an academic conference in Hungary. Ahmadinejad’s office
denied the story.
At the beginning of the war in February, Israel and the US did carry out heavy strikes against Iranian security forces — including regime officials, army bases, missile systems, police stations and Basij sites — in the country’s northwest in an effort to ease the Kurds’ path, but leaks to the media, lobbying by Turkey, and wariness among the Kurds themselves led Washington to pull the plug on the idea.
In addition to creating the conditions for regime change, Israel and the US sought to degrade the Iranian regime’s military capabilities and distance threats posed by Iran — including its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
While Trump’s CIA chief and secretary of state would later characterize Netanyahu’s regime change prediction as “farcical” and “bullshit,” the president and many of his advisers were sold on the idea that Iran’s leadership could be taken out and that its military arsenal could be destroyed, according to a
New York Times report in April.
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