JERUSALEM – Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave an interview Monday to CNN Turkey in which he said Tehran established a special intelligence unit to hunt down Mossad operatives working in the country. Astonishingly, he said the person recruited to head up this elite unit was himself discovered to be a Mossad agent.

Furthermore, the alleged Mossad agent employed up to 20 Israeli agents to work alongside him. Based on Ahmadinejad’s account of facts that had been reported earlier, these agents were responsible for a number of intelligence operations inside Iran, including one of the more spectacular ones of recent years, namely the squirreling out of the country of a half ton of highly classified information about the depth of Iran’s lying to the so-called international community, and the reality of its nuclear program.

It was thought that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s presentation of this evidence to then-President Donald Trump was instrumental in the United States’ decision to pull out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which Barack Obama had so forcefully championed.

“Israel organized complex operations inside Iran. They could easily obtain information. In Iran they are still silent about this. The man who was in charge of the unit in Iran against Israel was an Israeli agent,” he said. Ahmadinejad claimed the double agent at the head of the intelligence unit and all the other operatives are currently living in Israel.

In addition to the theft of the nuclear documents, several high-ranking Iranian scientists – including the person considered “the father of the Iranian nuclear program,” Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, were eliminated. In Fakhrizadeh’s case, the November 2020 hit was apparently carried out via a remotely operated computerized machine gun, which required no on-site operability. However, it is assumed the people who assembled this weapon and placed it in a position most beneficial to taking out the nuclear scientist were at the time on the ground, and are now assumed to be members of this special intelligence unit.

Oopsies! Iran’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “The highest person in charge of the counter-Israel unit at the Iranian Intelligence Ministry was an Israeli agent.”

[Comments made in 2021, but still rather amusing] pic.twitter.com/ylhI4AhoRa

— Arsen Ostrovsky ️ (@Ostrov_A) September 30, 2024

Ahmadinejad, whose term of office ended in 2013, was replaced by Hassan Rouhani. The latter’s former chief of staff – former intelligence minister Ali Younisi – admitted in an interview in 2022, “The Mossad has infiltrated many government departments in the last ten years, to such a degree that all the country’s top officials should fear for their lives,” according to Ynet.

There are such fears about the depth of Israel’s penetration into Iran’s intelligence and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) establishment – particularly following the July elimination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a Guard Corps property – that long-time Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei has been moved to a secret location out of concern for his well being. It is not clear how the people entrusted with either protecting him or the knowledge of his whereabouts are not either compromised in some way, or may indeed be Israeli operatives themselves.

It is not certain why Ahmadinejad has decided to air this information again now, except the timing of it coalesces into the broader picture of just how much intelligence Israel has on Iran, and its Shiite Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah. Although Ahmadinejad has already served as Iran’s president, it did not stop him from throwing his hat back into the ring for the most recent round of (s)elections – in which Masoud Pezeshkian was victorious – and occasioned by the helicopter crash which killed incumbent President Ebrahim Raisi in May.

Until two weeks ago when Hezbollah was hit by the stunning “Grim Beeper operation,” which simultaneously wounded, maimed, or killed thousands of operatives, including those of the IRGC, it was widely assumed the helicopter Raisi was traveling in had indeed plowed into a mountainside as a result of poor weather conditions. However, some more conspiratorial minds have suggested Israel’s intelligence agency may have had a hand in this, too – although, like the beeper operation, it is not something they would publicly acknowledge.