File photo: Mossad chief David Barnia
A recent report claims that Mossad chief David Barnia reportedly told Israel’s cabinet before war with Iran that regime change in Tehran is possible, but it is likely to take about a year, not just days or weeks.According to The Jerusalem Post, Barnia presented several scenarios to Israeli leaders on the eve of war, some of which suggested a few months, but a one-year time frame was considered the most likely estimate.This more cautious assessment has been obscured by recent anonymous attacks, the report said, accusing them of exaggerating the prospects for a rapid collapse of the Iranian regime.
Qualified Assessment, No Guaranteed Prediction
The main point emerging from the report is that Barnea’s position was more meritorious than some later portrayals. According to The Jerusalem Post, he did not present regime change as inevitable, but rather as a possibility dependent on a number of conditions and likely to take a significant amount of time. The report said Barnia was known to attach caveats to major intelligence assessments and that any pitches he made to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or US officials would have been strictly controlled and framed as part of a broader government strategy.However, this contradicts earlier reports which claimed that the Mossad expected a rapid coup.According to the New York Times report, Barnia told Netanyahu and senior Trump administration officials in mid-January that within days of the war starting, the Mossad could potentially help unify the Iranian opposition, leading to riots and acts of insurrection that could even lead to the fall of the government. However, the report also noted that no such rebellion had occurred three weeks into the war, and American-Israeli intelligence assessments concluded that the Iranian regime had been weakened but still intact.The Times of Israel, citing Channel 12, similarly reported that Barnia had assessed that overthrowing the Iranian regime would be possible if key military objectives were achieved first, including beheading the leadership, damaging regime institutions and weakening its ability to suppress civilians. But stressed that he also offered “disclaimers and qualifications”, noting that the situation was unstable and it could take a long time to achieve such results.Publicly, both Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump initially indicated that military action could create the conditions for regime change, but both also said that the Iranian people themselves would have to take action. Since then, the message has become more restrained. US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said on Thursday that the US intelligence community assesses that the Iranian regime remains intact but largely degraded.Netanyahu has also stopped short of predicting imminent collapse. He said Israel was working to “create the conditions” for the regime’s collapse, but added, “It may survive, maybe not. If it survives, it will be very weak.”