Eyes in the Dark

The execution of an alleged Mossad operative by Iran underscores the power and peril of Israel’s long tradition of pre-emptive intelligence. 

The Iranian state media recently announced the execution of Mohsen Langarneshin, accused of being a senior Mossad asset. He was hanged, reportedly for helping orchestrate the 2022 assassination of Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Tehran’s verdict was swift, but the underlying message cuts both ways: Israel’s intelligence arm can reach deep into the heart of its most implacable enemy and Iran knows it.

Langarneshin’s story reads like a chapter from Mossad’s storied playbook. According to Iranian authorities, he was recruited in 2020, met handlers in Georgia and Nepal and provided ‘technical support’ for Khodaei’s killing. He allegedly rented safe houses for other agents across Iran including in Isfahan, near sensitive military and nuclear sites, and was involved in logistical planning for a drone strike on a weapons facility in 2023.

Israel, for its part, neither confirmed nor denied the operation. It rarely does. The results speak for themselves: a steady stream of disrupted plots, neutralized commanders and mysterious explosions. Mossad’s reach into Iran is no recent development, merely the continuation of a shadow war that Israel has mastered over decades.

One of the earliest and most audacious examples was Wolfgang Lotz, a German-born Jew who posed as a former Nazi officer sympathetic to Arab nationalism. Lotz penetrated Egyptian high society in the 1950s, reporting on German scientists working on Cairo’s missile program. His intelligence helped blunt Egyptian advances in rocketry, showing how Israel could undermine its adversaries from within, often without firing a shot.

Then came Eli Cohen, the legendary Mossad agent who infiltrated the highest ranks of the Syrian regime in the 1960s. Under the alias Kamel Amin Thaabet, Cohen dined with generals, toured military installations, and transmitted intelligence that proved critical during the Six-Day War in 1967. His eventual capture and execution by Syria in 1965 turned him into a national hero in Israel and a cautionary tale for the Arab world.

More recently, Mossad has evolved into a high-tech juggernaut. In 2018, agents slipped into a warehouse in Tehran and walked out with a trove of nuclear documents, half a ton of secrets that laid bare Iran’s duplicity over its nuclear program. In 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the father of Iran’s nuclear project, was assassinated near Tehran, reportedly by a satellite-controlled machine gun.

The assassination of Colonel Khodaei in 2022 had followed a similar pattern: sudden, clinical, and humiliating for Iran’s security services. The colonel had reportedly overseen plots to target Israeli civilians and diplomats abroad. Iranian officials had initially described him vaguely as a “defender of the shrine,” referring to his role in the Quds Force, the foreign operations wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). But Khodaei was no ordinary officer. He had reportedly been involved in overseas operations targeting Israeli and Western interests, including attempted attacks on diplomats. Eliminating him in broad daylight at his doorstep was not only a blow to Iran’s capabilities but also a message that Iran’s reach has consequences.

Langarneshin's presence points to a deeper Israeli network operating within Iran. That he was caught only confirms the Mossad’s presence.

For Israel, such operations are not reckless adventurism but part of a doctrine of proactive defence, born of necessity since the creation of the Jewish state in 1948. A nuclear-armed Iran remains the greatest strategic threat to the Jewish state. Intelligence, not diplomacy or deterrence alone, has proven to be the most consistent tool for delaying Iran’s ambitions.

Langarneshin’s execution will no doubt be trumpeted by Tehran as a victory over foreign subversion. But beneath the bluster lies a nervous regime, haunted by what it cannot see and who it cannot trust. Mossad’s long tradition of reaching behind enemy lines - from Damascus to Cairo to Tehran - has not just reshaped the region’s security calculus but forced regimes like Iran’s to turn inward, breeding paranoia and purges.