By Chika Abanobi
Hours after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 86-year-old Supreme Leader of Islamic Republic of Iran was assassinated in a series of Israeli air strikes on Saturday, February 28, 2026, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, announced somberly that from the “signs” he seemed to be getting, Khamenei was “no longer with us” (meaning alive).
Though Iranian authorities initially denied the news through an official statement issued on the state media, they later confirmed it before declaring a 40-day mourning period for the martyred leader.
Sources say that the “signs” that Netanyahu was talking about was the photo of the body of Khamenei located following the attack. It was said to be obtained through a high-level intelligence by Mossad, the Israeli foreign spy agency responsible for collecting intelligence information concerning goings-on in other countries, especially Arab countries.
Interestingly, it was the same agency that, through hacking via Artificial Intelligence, of the Iranian security system for high-profile figures, was able to obtain real-time information about Khamenei’s meeting with his senior military/security officials in his massive Tehran compound the morning of that day.
The art of spying: then and now
Mossad which its full meaning in Hebrew language means HaMossad LeModi’in U’LeTafkidim Meyuchadim (The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations) took its motto from Proverbs 11:14: “For want of strategy an army falls, but victory comes with much planning.”
Reputed to be one of the deadliest intelligence agencies in the world today, its widely-acclaimed breakthroughs in modern times have, time and again, served to prove that spying or espionage have since ceased to be something in which you cover its operative agents with dried stalks like Rahab the call-girl, did during the conquest of Jericho, before sending them down its impregnable walls to hide in the surrounding hills forests (see Joshua chapter 2).
Moses also sent out 12 spies to gather intelligence information concerning the Promised Canaan land. But with the exception of Caleb and Joshua, 10 of them came back completely intimidated by the heights of the giants they saw in some parts of the land.
But today, analysts believe that all the spies, the lily-livered and the non-lily-livered, seem to live in Iran where they are busy upending the counterintelligence/counter-espionage tactics and strategies of Iran’s equally deadly intelligence and security apparatuses. They include the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) also known as VEVAK and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Organisation.
Just a few days ago, real-time intelligence information supplied by Mossad agents in Iran aided in the assassination, through air bombardment, of Ali Larijani, the influential Iranian politician, powerbroker and security official who served as the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. As if that was not enough, two days later, Israel also assassinated through airstrike Esmail Khatib, the Iran’s intelligence minister, and Gholamreza Soleimani, head of the dreaded paramilitary force, Basij.
Of moles and counterintelligence
Over the years, the Iranian intelligence and security circles have tried to understand how the Israeli espionage work but all to no avail. They have set up counter-intelligence/espionage units, dissolved them, set up more and later dissolved them.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former President, Islamic Republic of Iran (2005-2013) like to tell a disheartening story of how, in 2021, the Iranian intelligence service (VAJA), now disbanded, set up a secret service division and specifically taxed it with the job of unveiling Israeli spies or Mossad agents working within its ranks.
At the end of the exercise, 20 agents were discovered to be working as moles and leaking sensitive information on Iran’s nuclear bombs development to Israel and United States. But the most shocking of it all was that the head of the counterintelligence unit appointed by the Iranian government to investigate the information received concerning those 20 double agents himself turned out to be an Israeli agent.
Iran’s version of ‘Operation Epic Fury’
In their desperate bid to get to the root of their counter-intelligence failures to smoke out Mossad agents actively operating in their midst, the Iranian government have, over the years, executed people, local and foreigners, they suspected as feeding them with information that enable them operate with ease in Iran.
For instance, on March 18, 2026, Kouroush Keyvani, an Iranian-Swedish citizen was executed by hanging for allegedly providing images and information of sensitive locations to Mossad.
Earlier on in January, this year, one Hamidreza Sabet Esmailipour, an Iranian citizen, was executed, the same way, on charges of espionage and cooperation for transferring funds and vehicles reportedly containing explosives for the same Israeli intelligence agency.
Yet, despite all these precautions taken to curb Mossad’s espionage activities in Iran, on February 28, 2026, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and about 40 henchmen of his regime were wiped out through sensitive intelligence/security information provided by the same Mossad. And, on March 16 and 18, targeted deaths of Larijani and Khatib respectively followed.
Why it is difficult to track down Mossad’s agents
Analysts opine that what these unsettling developments point to is, despite the various extreme security measures taken to track down the Israeli spies in the midst of Iranians, nothing much seemed to have come out of the efforts.
In fact, it seems that the harder the Iranian counterintelligence services try to track down Israeli spies, the more brazen they become. The brazenness was such that, in the 12-day war that took place between Israel and Iran in June, last year, 2025, some of the spies were so bold as to put out on the social media a video of their operations in Iran.
In anger and out of embarrassment, the Iranian security authorities again rounded up some people they felt were behind the success of Israeli operations and summarily executed them. Yet, at the end of the day, all their efforts turned out to be like the case of Chinua Achebe’s often-referred lizards lying on their bellies: no one knows which of them is suffering from bellyache.
Security sources attribute Israel’s agents’ seeming intractability and invincibility to two main factors:
1. The multilayered structure of Mossad:
About 7,000 people worldwide are said to work for Mossad. But sources say that there are many layers of the intelligence agency, all of which make it extremely difficult for an enemy to deeply penetrate the organisation as to know what they are planning or what intelligence information they have access to, at any given time.
For instance, it has what is known in Hebrew language as Sayanim (helpers, servants). These include unpaid Jews/Israelis or nationals of other countries who supply information based on their love for Israel.
Critics say that most of the people that Iranian security officials arrest, accuse, judge and execute for spying for Israel belong to this group. B
ut their executions hardly change anything or affect any information that the higher echelons of the intelligence agency are working on or with. Rahab told the men who were sent by the King of Jericho to nab the Israeli spies seen in her place that they had left through the city gate: “Go after them quickly, for you may catch them,” she said. And, by heeding her advice, the men engaged in pursuing the will-o-the-wisp. Observers say that sometimes Mossad behaves like Rahab by making the enemy’s counterintelligence agents go after the Sayanim.
But beyond the helpers/servants are the Kidons or the Caesaria (otherwise known as the “bayonet”, “javelin” or “spear” unit). These are group of highly skilled or trained/elite group of assassins. Sources say that they receive two years training from field officers on how to penetrate security systems, electronic and non-electronic, no matter how closed. They are aided on their jobs of either targeting an enemy, break-ins or wiretapping by the electronic surveillance unit.
The men that targeted and eliminated many of the Iranian nuclear scientists during the 12-Day war in 2025 belong to this group. So also are the men who oversaw and carried out many high-profile assassinations among Iranians, Hezbollah and Hamas. Their movements are highly monitored, on daily basis, to ensure that they are not compromised in any way by either male or female operatives of the enemy’s counterintelligence unit.
Above the Kidons are the Tzomet or the Katsas. These are the case officers. Staffs that belong to this group operate under many covers, both diplomatic and non-diplomatic. They engage in many technical and non-technical services. Through those services/activities, they are reportedly able to conduct espionage and run agents.
When sometimes in late 1990s Mossad was tipped off that two Iranian agents were in Johannesburg or Jo’Burg to procure advanced weapons systems from a South African state-owned aerospace and military technology, the Mossad agent who posed as a South African intelligence agent before abducting the two Iranian agents and driving them to a warehouse where they were beaten, intimidated and later forced to leave the country unceremoniously, was believed to come from this unit of Mossad operatives.
2. Advanced technology unit:
The technology/cyber unit of Mossad is believed to be so advanced and superior that it can clone a better and more effective version of any technology under the sun. Sources say that if a Mossad agent from this unit stole either your I-Phone, laptop, palmtop or communication gadget and went to clone it in their secret laboratory, after returning it, you will find it difficult to pick your item from the one they cloned from your electronic item.
Worse still, security experts say that they intentionally take time to study the bug-sweeping machines or tools being used by their enemies so that if there is an attempt to locate hidden electronic bugs in the cloned versions they substituted with yours, it will be practically impossible to do so.
This was how they conducted a long-term sophisticated operation that turned pagers and walkie-talkies preferred by Hezbollah fighters, in order to avoid sophisticated Israeli surveillance of their mobile phone numbers, into explosive weapons that could be detonated remotely, as it happened in Lebanon in September, 2024.
In that case, Mossad set up shadowy supply companies to infiltrate the supply chain of the communication devices used by Hezbollah. Thereafter, a small amount of high-grade explosive was secretly implanted inside the devices’ batteries manufactured in a Mossad laboratory facility in Israel.
The devices were designed to detonate whenever a specific remote electronic post was sent to them. And, that was how hundreds/thousands of booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies with “added features” were sold to Hezbollah using an unsuspecting Lebanese saleswoman.
The Igbos say that a bush or forest that houses bees and wasps does not fear “stinging things.” In Israel’s case, as events and developments in the ongoing war between Iran and Israel-United States has shown, the bees and wasps are represented by the seemingly ubiquitous Mossad agents in Iran and many Arab states.
• Abanobi, winner, Governor Olusegun Mimiko Prize for Foreign News Reporter of the Year, 2018 Nigeria Media Merit Award (NMMA), is member, Journalists For Christ International Outreach.