Mossad Shake-Up After Failed Iran Regime Change Plan, Two Senior Officers Removed

Israel’s Mossad has reassigned two senior officers who led a failed regime-change plan targeting Iran’s government, according to Israeli Channel 12, in a report whose central claims remain unconfirmed by independent sources. New Mossad chief Roman Gofman removed the officers — one who had headed the agency’s intelligence directorate since December, the other who led its Iran division — from their positions.

According to Channel 12, the two officers had drafted a written operational plan aimed at toppling Iran’s Islamic government by reviving opposition movements among the country’s ethnic and linguistic minorities, particularly Kurdish groups, and triggering nationwide protests to bring down the government. The report says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had considered the plan and referenced it in February while attempting to persuade President Trump to support war against Iran.

The Kurdish dimension formed the plan’s operational core. Under the proposal, Israel would conduct airstrikes on IRGC positions near the Iran-Iraq border, specifically in Iranian Kurdistan, intended to clear a path for Kurdish fighters to enter Iran and reach Kurdish-majority cities in the northwest. Mossad reportedly expected thousands of young Kurds to join these fighters, sparking a broader popular movement that planners believed could eventually reach Tehran and draw millions into anti-government protests nationwide.

The report includes another striking claim: that the plan proposed returning former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. This connects to earlier New York Times reporting last month that Israel had spent years attempting to build contact with Ahmadinejad, including a reported meeting between former Mossad chief David Barnea and Ahmadinejad at an academic conference in Hungary — a meeting Ahmadinejad’s office has firmly denied took place.

Channel 12 suggests partial early implementation of the plan, reporting that Israel and the US conducted heavy strikes on security institutions, military bases, missile facilities, police centers, and Basij militia positions in northwestern Iran during the war’s early phase, ostensibly to ease the way for Kurdish fighters’ advance. However, the report says the US ultimately withdrew support for the broader plan after details leaked to media, Turkey intervened diplomatically, and Kurdish groups themselves showed hesitation about participating.

Security sources cited by Channel 12 say friction between new Mossad chief Gofman and the two officers existed from the start of his tenure. According to these sources, the officers weren’t dismissed but reassigned by mutual agreement as part of broader organizational reforms underway within Mossad, with both expected to take on other responsibilities within the agency.

Notably, the report says the CIA director and US Secretary of State later described Netanyahu’s position that Iranian regime collapse was imminent as ridiculous and nonsense — a sharp public rebuke from Washington’s own senior officials regarding an Israeli prime minister’s assessment. Despite that pushback, separate New York Times reporting from April indicated Trump and several of his advisers had become convinced Iran’s current leadership could be removed and its military structure severely damaged.

None of the specific claims in either the Channel 12 or New York Times reports have been independently verified through outside sources. Israeli government officials, Mossad, and Iranian authorities have not formally commented on most points raised in these reports. The disclosures arrive at a moment when regional security and intelligence activity is already drawing intense scrutiny following the sustained Iran-Israel-US conflict, adding another layer of unverified but potentially significant detail to understanding how deeply regime-change planning may have factored into the war’s broader strategic calculations — including the apparent gap between Netanyahu’s stated confidence in Iran’s imminent collapse and the more skeptical assessment offered by senior US intelligence and diplomatic officials.