A former senior Mossad official said that a multi-stage Israeli plan to bring down the Iranian regime was interrupted by the United States’ decision in April to halt the war against the Islamic Republic, insisting the plan could still succeed and that the regime’s collapse is only a matter of time.

“We didn’t try all the way. We were stopped along the way,” the official told Channel 12 in an interview. He described a long-term plan prepared over an extended period that had begun unfolding during the war, including the use of Kurdish partners, with the goal of replacing the regime, before Israel’s “strategic power” partner halted the fighting.

The official, identified only as “Aleph,” served in the Mossad for nearly 30 years and rose to senior leadership before retiring last year after concluding he would not be considered for the agency’s top post. His interview aired days after Roman Gofman, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s former military secretary, formally took over as Mossad director from David Barnea following months of legal challenges.

Aleph pushed back against a New York Times report that CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio had dismissed the regime-change plan as “farcical” and in cruder terms after Netanyahu and Barnea presented it to President Trump, saying the American officials lacked his 28 years of Mossad experience. “In the Mossad, imagination becomes reality,” he said.

The former official said he could not predict whether the regime would fall in six months or in three years, but stated flatly that “there is no doubt that this regime will fall.” He expressed hope that the remaining stages of the operational plan would eventually be authorized.

Aleph also described the scope of Mossad activity inside Iran during the twelve-day war in June 2025, saying the agency fielded what amounted to an operational military unit on Iranian soil, equipped with weapons, night-vision gear, and missile-guidance capability. He said the Mossad has dramatically expanded its recruitment of Iranian agents in recent years, many of them motivated by hatred of the regime or a desire for revenge over what was done to their families, and he did not deny that Iranians may have been brought to Israel for training.

Asked about the condition of Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen publicly since being wounded in the strikes that killed his father, Ali Khamenei, on the war’s first day in February, Aleph said he would be very surprised if Israel did not know precisely what his situation is.

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