In recent days, there have been not-so-subtle attacks on Mossad Director David Barnea by nameless sources, seemingly accusing him of misleading both the Israeli and US governments about the likelihood of regime change in Iran.
These anonymous leaks obscure Barnea’s highly complex position on the issue, and seem intent on tarring him and the Mossad by saying that it’s increasingly likely that efforts to topple the regime will fail or take a very long time, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
Some of the sources behind both the Channel 12 Uvda and The New York Times reports may be from either Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s or US President Donald Trump’s entourages, and some may even be from the Israeli military.
All three offices have been constantly questioning why they have yet to get close to the beginnings of a regime change.
The Post understands that anyone familiar with Barnea and his major calls during the last few years of war would know that he consistently presents predictions with many qualifications and almost never talks about massive change being inevitable.
'A company man'
Furthermore, Barnea presents policies and presentations at the order of Netanyahu, and doesn’t seek to push the prime minister into more aggressive approaches than what Netanyahu would want.
Moreover, any presentation that Barnea would have made to Trump administration officials during his widely reported trip to the US in mid-January or during other conversations would also have been tightly controlled by Netanyahu.
In fact, the Post has learned that, during prior years of Barnea’s term, there have been significant points where Netanyahu might have wanted the Mossad to undertake an operation, and Barnea explained that it was unrealistic, despite pressure on him to approve.
When Uvda reported that, on the eve of war, Barnea presented before Netanyahu his prediction that toppling the Iranian regime was possible, it was only later in the article that some of the conditions that Barnea would have placed upon his prediction were detailed.
The report vaguely noted that the Mossad chief “had reservations regarding a developing real-time situation and regarding the amount of time that it was likely to take.”
Likewise, The New York Times report said Barnea told Netanyahu, “Within days of the war’s beginning… his service would likely be able to galvanize the Iranian opposition – igniting riots and other acts of rebellion that could even lead to the collapse of Iran’s government,” saying the spymaster made the same pitch to the Trump administration in mid-January.
The report then blames Netanyahu and Trump for being overly optimistic about the Iran war leading to regime change, which is against predictions by US officials “and some other officials in other Israeli intelligence agencies.”
Next, the report goes on to portray Netanyahu as being impatient with the Mossad’s failure to bring about regime change during the early days of the war, which risks losing support from Trump.
No evidence of differing opinion
Once again, there is no evidence that the Mossad expressed an opinion different from what the IDF has said publicly: that military force can, at most, create the conditions for the process of a post-war regime change.
Finally, the report noted one element of Mossad plans “included supporting an invasion by Iranian Kurdish militia groups based in northern Iraq.”
However, Trump himself has been publicly dismissive of such a move, which the reports seem to claim Barnea convinced him of.
There are also questions surrounding how influential Barnea was during his mid-January visit to the US.
It is possible that Barnea was very influential regarding whatever his nuanced presentation of competing opportunities and risks might have involved.
But, given that Netanyahu rushed to the US for an emergency visit on February 11, almost a month later, and that Trump continued negotiations with Iran roughly 24 hours before the war started, it would be hard for anyone to argue that Barnea had set the entire agenda by mid-January.
Regarding Iran, Barnea generally prefers to temper his aggressiveness with patience.
Before Netanyahu took office in December 2022, Barnea worked under former prime minister Naftali Bennett, in which the two officials co-designed a “death by a thousand cuts” strategy to bring down the Islamic regime over a long period of time.
In early January, X/Twitter statements attributed to the Mossad were issued as Iranian protests spiked over the collapse of Iran’s rial currency and a rise in fuel prices, as well as the crisis regarding the supply of water nationwide.
Regarding the water supply, in an outgoing interview in 2022 in the book Target Tehran, Bennett said that an extensive policy review he undertook when he became prime minister taught him that the regime was “profoundly corrupt and fairly incompetent right now. Large swaths of land don’t get water. You turn on the faucets, and you get mud. You have all these demonstrations, and people are very frustrated with the IRGC.”
There were opportunities, he felt, to take advantage of the regime’s weaknesses, but according to one account, he also impressed upon Barnea that the agency needed to be more creative about being more aggressive. Bennett wanted to make his mark on the new office and would encourage Barnea’s aggressive instincts.
Bennett also conveyed his views about bringing down Iran’s regime in a “death by a thousand cuts” strategy parallel to the US’s Cold War strategy against the USSR, which went far beyond classic military conflict.
According to a parallel narrative, those instincts were not only well developed, but it was Barnea who pressed Bennett to be even more daring and alter the rules of the game with Iran more in Israel’s favor.
In fact, Barnea gave Bennett a book by Peter Schweitzer called Victory: The Reagan Administration’s Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union, a description of dozens of non-military techniques designed by the US to take advantage of the inherent weaknesses of an authoritarian regime to get the USSR to collapse over time.
Critically, none of the reports have discussed the impact of the US and Israel failing to intervene when one million Iranian protesters were oppressed on January 8-9, with 5,000-30,000 of them being killed.
Also, none of the reports have addressed Netanyahu’s reported call to Trump to dissuade him from initiating the war with Iran around the US president’s January 14 tweet that “help is on the way.”
Neither the PMO nor the Mossad had chosen to respond by press time.