They were humbled by Hamas. Now Israel's resurgent spy agencies have Iran truly spooked

Caught off guard on 7 October, Mossad last week took the fight to an enemy it knows well. Alexi Mostrous, head of investigations, explains how intelligence agents recovered so rapidly

- Alexi Mostrous

At 6.30am on 7 October 2023, Miri Eisin, a former colonel in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), woke up in Israel to an air-raid siren. "I said to my husband: is this the beginning of the Hezbollah attack?

A military intelligence specialist, Eisin assumed the Iranian-backed paramilitary group was firing missiles into Israel. “All our intelligence capabilities were built up to look at Hezbollah and the Islamic regime in Iran,” she said. “Then we saw it was coming from the south. And we were like, Hamas? Oh, my God.”

Almost 20 months ago, Israel’s intelligence agencies were humiliated when Hamas launched its surprise attack from Gaza, killing 1,195 people and taking more than 250 hostages. The commander of Israel’s military surveillance agency resigned and public support for organisations such as Mossad fell to an all-time low.

In last week’s attack on Iran, Israel’s spies have taken the opportunity to rebuild their tattered reputation. This time, they were fighting an enemy they knew inside out. “When you look at what we've done in the last six days, you see capabilities that have been built over 20 years,” Eisin said.

By the time Israel's advanced F-35 jet fighters had crossed into Iranian airspace in the early hours of 13 June, Mossad was well established behind enemy lines. As jets buzzed overhead, the agents activated armoured drones and other weapons that had been smuggled into Iran months before. In a matter of hours, entire aerial defence units were destroyed before they could fire on a single jet.

At the same time, Israeli intelligence pinpointed the locations of key Iranian targets, enabling six top nuclear scientists to be assassinated in a single airstrike. On Tuesday, Israel killed Iran’s top military commander only four days after an airstrike took out his predecessor.