Security sources cited by the network said the two officials and Gofman had clashed from the outset, but stressed their departures were being carried out by mutual agreement as part of a broader reorganization of the Mossad and that both were expected to remain at the agency in other roles.<\/p>\n
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\t\t\t\tBy signing up, you agree to the terms<\/a><\/p>\n The Mossad plan reportedly envisioned<\/a> Israeli strikes on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps positions along Iran\u2019s border with Iraq, in Iranian Kurdistan. The strikes were designed to open the door for Kurdish fighters to cross into Iran, according to The New York Times report, and push into Kurdish cities in the country\u2019s northwest.<\/p>\n \t The Mossad expected thousands of young Kurds to join the fighters, turning into a mass movement that could reach Tehran itself. It was further thought that this would help embolden a mass protest movement with millions of demonstrators to bring down the regime, according to multiple reports.<\/p>\n The Kurdish offensive was one of the key elements of the plan, which also reportedly envisaged installing former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the Iranian leader.<\/p>\n The New York Times also reported last month that Israel engaged in a multi-year effort to recruit Ahmadinejad, in a campaign that included a meeting with then-Mossad chief David Barnea on the sidelines of an academic conference in Hungary. Ahmadinejad\u2019s office denied the story<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the beginning of the war in February, Israel and the US did carry out heavy strikes against Iranian security forces \u2014 including regime officials, army bases, missile systems, police stations and Basij sites \u2014 in the country\u2019s northwest in an effort to ease the Kurds\u2019 path, but leaks to the media, lobbying by Turkey, and wariness among the Kurds themselves led Washington to pull the plug on the idea.<\/p>\n In addition to creating the conditions for regime change, Israel and the US sought to degrade the Iranian regime\u2019s military capabilities and distance threats posed by Iran \u2014 including its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.<\/p>\n While Trump\u2019s CIA chief and secretary of state would later characterize Netanyahu\u2019s regime change prediction as \u201cfarcical\u201d and \u201cbullshit,\u201d the president and many of his advisers were sold on the idea that Iran\u2019s leadership could be taken out and that its military arsenal could be destroyed, according to a New York Times<\/a> report in April.<\/p>\n
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\n\t\tA female Kurdish fighter from the Iranian Kurdish armed faction Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) passes a poster of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the Kurdistan Workers\u2019 Party (PKK), at a site near the Iraqi border with Iran in Iraq\u2019s autonomous Kurdistan region, on March 8, 2026. (Photo by AFP)<\/p>\n
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