Former Mossad director Yossi Cohen has offered an account of his agency’s global intelligence operations—revealing that the widely-publicized sabotage of Hezbollah’s communications infrastructure in September 2024 is only part of a far broader espionage campaign.

In an appearance on the The Brink podcast, Cohen said the now-notorious “pager operation” — in which operatives within Hezbollah were duped into activating explosive-laden devices — reflected a strategic paradigm he developed more than two decades ago. The method, he said, is known within Mossad as the “manipulated equipment method” or “pager method,” and it was implemented across “virtually every potential theatre of operation.”

“You know how many equipment I mean treated equipment that we have in these countries? You can’t. You don’t. I do,” Cohen said of the scale of the campaign.

“In all the countries that you can imagine,” he added when pressed for geographic specifics.

Cohen traced the origins of the scheme to the early 2000s, saying it was developed in the period 2002-2004 while he led Mossad’s Special Operations division under former chief Meir Dagan. According to Cohen, the logic was simple: if adversaries are purchasing equipment, Israel should intervene by embedding itself into their supply chain and exploiting it. “If I know that … Iran or other countries … are buying something that I can be part of their supply chain, I will do,” Cohen said.

He pointed to the 2006 Second Lebanon War — in which Israel fought Hezbollah — as the initial battlefield where this “manipulated equipment” tactic was tested. Cohen says that the strategic method was then scaled and refined for global use.

Perhaps most striking, Cohen admitted that the system had not been deployed effectively in the Gaza Strip, identifying the region as a “critical shortfall” in Mossad’s intelligence architecture. “Not Gaza. Not enough,” he told the podcast host. He suggested that had the system been operational there, Israel’s readiness in the run-up to the October 7th 2023 attack might have been very different.

Cohen didn’t restrict his critique to foreign targets. He also took aim at Israel’s internal security agencies. He said that when he sought to take responsibility for intelligence operations in Gaza prior to the October 7 attack, he was met with stiff resistance from both Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security service) and the IDF Intelligence Directorate. Cohen claimed the agencies treated Mossad’s proposals with institutional arrogance: “We’re the IDF… we’re Shin Bet… we don’t need you.”

He maintained that his warnings about a deficiency in intelligence coverage were regularly voiced, but went unheeded: “I have told and written that they ‘have nothing sufficient on the level of intelligence’ prior to October 7th.” And he challenged those agencies for failing to publicly dispute the claim.

The revelations raise fundamental questions about how far Israel’s covert operations have extended—and where vulnerabilities remain. By describing a system that is global, meticulously engineered and highly embedded in adversary logistics, Cohen’s account sheds light on the evolving nature of intelligence warfare in the 21st century.

But the admission of a gap in Gaza may fuel renewed scrutiny of Israel’s strategic posture along its southern border. Critics may argue that if Mossad’s capabilities were so advanced elsewhere, why were they unable—or perhaps unpermitted—to deploy them where they were arguably most needed.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)