Regime Change in Iran: Easier Said Than Done
Yossi Alpher — July 20, 2026
Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
Q. Last week we learned from a dramatic scoop in Haaretz that the Mossad had been planning to engineer a coup d’etat in Iran and crown a suddenly cooperative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as leader in Tehran. The plot flopped. What can we learn from it?
A. We can learn a lot about how Israel’s most senior planners, beginning with Prime Minister Netanyahu and then-Mossad Head David Barnea, misread the region and miscalculated their capabilities.
An entire Mossad unit devoted to ‘influence operations’ thought it could generate major unrest on the streets of Tehran and pit key Iranians against one another, particularly if it could influence the Bazaar, a key economic sector. Prime Minister Netanyahu and others had watched an Islamist faction topple a shaky regime in Syria and believed without foundation that something similar was possible in Tehran. Dissident Kurds in Iraq, some 16,000-strong, seemed to agree to serve as the vanguard of an invasion of Iran — until they didn’t. Disgruntled ex-President Ahmedinejad seemingly agreed to be installed in power by the Mossad. Neighboring Azerbaijan and additional Iranian minorities were primed to intervene; then they weren’t.
The trigger would be the assassination of Supreme Leader Khamenei. Then it wasn’t.
Q. Hold on. Let’s take this step by step. What is wrong with focusing on the Bazaar?
A. The economic sector in Tehran was overrated as the key to power back in the late 1970s, when I was dealing with the original Islamist revolution in Iran. Then as now, the key is the Islamist establishment, where Israel’s potential influence is nil.
As for ‘influence operations,’ having once, for a year in the dark ages back around 1970, been in charge of ‘psyops’ in the Mossad, I have ever since remained skeptical about our ability to lie our way to genuine influence. Obviously, the advent of mass social media has radically altered the picture. But still…
Q. And the Syria precedent as an incentive for Bibi?
A. The Assad regime in Syria represented a dissident minority sect, the Alawites, who ruled over a mainly Sunni Arab country and were intensely resented. The Sunni Islamists led by al-Jolani, now known as President a-Sharaa, who deposed the Alawites nearly two years ago, represented the majority of Syrians. There is nothing similar in Iran.
Q. Ahmadinejad as coup leader?
A. The former two-term president of Iran undoubtedly has followers in Iran. But was his cooperation with Israel sincere or opportunistic? Did the man known as a vicious anti-Semite and Holocaust denier really have a ‘come-to-Jesus’ transformation? We may never know. The fact that he was recently seen in public in Tehran appears to say a lot about his status: not a traitor.
Q. The Kurds and the other minorities who were supposed to be the foot soldiers of the Mossad’s coup?
A. The Kurds are dispersed among four countries: Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Will they risk retribution and massacre in one or more of these countries by leading a revolt in another? Back in October 1973, the Iraqi Kurds had pledged to muster and deploy their Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq so as to impede and delay the arrival of Iraqi army units to fight Israel on the Golan front. Not to enter combat with the Iraqis, merely to deter them. After all, the Iraqi Kurds owed Israel for years of military and material aid in their fight against Arab domination.
Needless to say, the Kurds let Israel down at this critical moment. Back then, the Shah and Henry Kissinger reportedly pressured the Kurds to sit tight. This time around, Trump and Turkey’s Erdogan were blamed.
There is only so much the Kurds can deliver, and this does not include an invasion of Iran.
Q. Surely there is more to this story than bad Israeli judgment and assessments…
A. Two factors militate in favor of an Israeli attempt to change the regime in Tehran. First, there can be no doubt regarding Israel’s fundamental right to fight back against the Islamist regime in Tehran, which has since its inception in 1979 sought and advocated Israel’s destruction. Today, alone throughout the Middle East and the Islamist world, Tehran and its proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen maintain this absolutist position.
Second, the opportunity is ripe, in the sense that there are apparently power struggles in post-Khamenei Iran that seemingly weaken the country’s ruling institutions.
Q. Leaving aside all the mistakes, then, why not?
A. Again, two factors. First, Israel’s mistakes explain better than anything that we do not really know the region, and particularly Iran, as intimately as required to engineer regime change. We may have established unusual intelligence penetration of Iran that has supported extraordinary tactical achievements like assassinations and the mapping of nuclear installations. But can we know what alternative regime and ruler — a general? An ayatollah? A bitter former president? — can be ‘installed’ and would benefit us? That is far-fetched.
Particularly at a time of unrest in the country. Don’t mess with a revolution. That is the second factor.
Q. Can you recall when Israel confronted the prospect of intervention in Iran in the past?
A. In January 1979, I was chief Iran analyst in the Mossad and, in fact, in Israel. Unlike today, back then Israel had a heavy overt investment in personnel and assets in Iran and needed to protect them. Also unlike today, we did not attempt to collect intelligence on Iran, a friendly country.
Mossad Head Yitzhak Hofi summoned me to an emergency meeting and explained that the Mossad representative in Tehran had been asked by caretaker Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar to relay a request that we assassinate Ayatollah Khomeini, then in exile in France. Hofi asked me and a former Mossad representative in Tehran, a crusty veteran, for our opinion.
“No need,” the veteran blurted out confidently. “The Savak (the Shah’s secret service) will take care of Khomeini the moment he sets foot in Tehran.”
I knew that was nonsense. It reflected the view of someone who thought, erroneously, that he knew Iran. Hofi was now looking at me.
Risk an assassination on French soil with all the risks that entails? Mess with the Iranian revolution? “We don’t know enough about Khomeini and the situation for me to venture an informed opinion,” I said.
Hofi did not hesitate. We’ll tell Bakhtiar “no.” The rest is history.
Within months, when it was too late, I would have second thoughts. But at the time, was there any way to know whether assassinating Khomeini was possible without major repercussions? What would happen to the Islamist revolution without Khomeini? No. It was the right decision.
Q. Bottom line?
A. Strategic analyst Michael Milstein got it right in Yediot Aharonot, describing Israel’s problem in Iran as evidence of “extreme lack of understanding of the nature of the ‘other’; a fundamental problem that emerged on October 7 [2023] has not been addressed, and may even have become more extreme.”
Luckily, this time around, beyond embarrassment, the damage was minimal.
Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer.
