Mossad in DER SPIEGEL: “The Mossad hacks, sabotages, abducts and kills.” A former agent says the service does things “that even the CIA cannot do”. This is joined by the accusation that Israel has had more people “liquidated” than any other Western country, the pager operation against Hezbollah and alleged pressure on the International Criminal Court. The current DER SPIEGEL cover story about Israel’s foreign intelligence service paints a sweeping panorama of power, covert operations and loss of control. Much of it is real, some of it serious, and some of it deserves harsh criticism. But a second story emerges from the selection of these facts: The Mossad no longer appears merely as an instrument of Israeli security policy, but almost as an independent actor that sought to destabilize Iran and ultimately helped cause an international crisis.

Particularly in the portrayal of the Mossad in DER SPIEGEL there would have been ample material to write about successes, misjudgments, legal limits and political responsibility . The DER SPIEGEL story therefore becomes interesting less in the question of whether individual allegations may be true than in the question of what overall picture is assembled from them.

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Mossad in DER SPIEGEL: When wording is already interpretation

One of the strongest formulations reads: “The Mossad hacks, sabotages, abducts and kills.” Viewed factually, this sentence describes the methods of a foreign intelligence service. Linguistically, however, it functions differently. Four verbs stand next to one another, each negatively charged, without mission, adversary or security situation playing a role at this point.

The effect becomes even clearer in the claim that Israel has, since the Second World War, had more people “liquidated” than any other country in the Western world. In DER SPIEGEL’s portrayal, the word comes from a quote by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman. Even a correctly reproduced quote remains an editorial selection. By placing such statements side by side, one does not merely tell readers what an intelligence service does. One has already determined through which lens the reader is meant to view this service.

This does not mean that the Mossad would have to be described as particularly friendly. An intelligence service operates covertly, deceives adversaries, gathers information and, under certain conditions, also participates in lethal operations. The journalistic question begins where method and context are separated from one another.

Why the Mossad is more than an intelligence service for Israel

The Mossad can hardly be understood if it is compared with the security situation of an ordinary European state. Israel did not at some point have to theoretically prepare for a possible threat. For decades, the country has lived with a combination of state adversaries, terrorist organizations, missile arsenals and covert networks.

Iran is at the center of this. Tehran supports armed organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas, has an extensive missile program and has pursued for years a nuclear program that Israel regards as a strategic threat. Hezbollah is located directly on Israel’s northern border. Hamas carried out the most serious terrorist attack in the history of the State of Israel on October 7, 2023.

For Israel, intelligence is therefore not merely material for situation reports. It can determine whether a missile position is detected in time, a terrorist structure infiltrated, a weapons program sabotaged or an impending attack recognized. That is precisely why the Mossad, military intelligence and other security services carry a weight that can easily seem disproportionate from a European distance.

This does not create a lawless space. But it explains why covert operations for Israel are not merely an aggressive addition to conventional foreign policy, but part of a security strategy intended to counter threats as far as possible before they reach Israeli territory.

The Iran plan: a misjudgment becomes the overall explanation

The most interesting criticism of the Mossad therefore concerns not its existence or its methods, but its strategic assumptions about Iran. DER SPIEGEL describes a Mossad plan aimed at bringing down the Iranian regime through military pressure and internal upheaval. The fact that such considerations existed and that this goal was not achieved is a serious misjudgment that must be taken seriously.

The Islamic Republic did not collapse as expected. The political power apparatus survived the decisive military escalation, and Iran’s nuclear problem did not disappear either. If Mossad planners expected a rapid regime collapse, precisely this assumption must be critically examined.

Yet at this point, the portrayal of the Mossad in DER SPIEGEL makes a remarkable leap. A failed strategic approach becomes almost the explanation for the entire war. Regime change, however, was not identical with all Israeli and American war aims. Iran’s nuclear program, missile arsenal, military infrastructure and Tehran’s regional network existed independently of whether regime change was realistic.

ℹ️ The crucial difference

An intelligence service can be wrong in its assessment of a political system and still be successful in gathering intelligence on military targets, infiltrating adversary structures or obtaining information. Strategic misjudgment and operational capability are not the same thing.

That is precisely why the truly interesting question would be: Did the Mossad confuse its ability to infiltrate Iranian structures with the ability to predict the political reaction of an entire society? Being deeply embedded in an adversary’s security apparatus does not mean reliably knowing the point at which an authoritarian regime will collapse.

That would be a criticism that truly hits the Mossad myth. Not because the service would suddenly be incapable, but because even extraordinary operational capabilities do not produce political omniscience.

How individual operations create an overall picture

The pager attack, the International Criminal Court and the Mossad’s proximity to the prime minister appear in DER SPIEGEL as further building blocks of the same narrative. Each of these points deserves its own assessment. Taken together, however, they primarily reinforce a particular image: an intelligence service with enormous power, little oversight and methods beyond what Western democracies would normally accept.

In the pager operation against Hezbollah, rigged communications devices were detonated in September 2024. Numerous people were killed and injured in the process. This is indispensable to any assessment of the operation. It is equally relevant that the affected devices were part of Hezbollah’s communications system , which had attacked Israel from Lebanon almost daily since October 8, 2023.

At the International Criminal Court, the issue concerns serious investigative allegations, according to which former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen allegedly attempted to pressure the then chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda . Such allegations must be investigated and must not be played down. They nevertheless remain allegations and should not, in linguistic terms, merge with facts established by a court.

The same applies to political oversight. DER SPIEGEL emphasizes that the Mossad is “in principle answerable to only one person”, the Israeli prime minister. Yet the fact that a foreign intelligence service is ultimately subordinate to political leadership is not, in itself, a scandal. What would be decisive is proof that Benjamin Netanyahu abused the service for personal or party-political interests or crossed institutional boundaries.

This is precisely where the fundamental problem in the portrayal of the Mossad in DER SPIEGEL becomes apparent. Not every individual building block is necessarily wrong. But their selection and sequence produce a Mossad that increasingly looks less like a state security instrument and increasingly more like a state within the state.

What is lost from view

The Mossad did not become a central instrument of Israeli policy because Israel has a particular fascination with covert operations. Its importance arose from a security doctrine that depends on detecting threats as early as possible and disrupting them as far as possible from its own population.

Iran’s nuclear program is the clearest example of this. For years, Israel did not wait to respond until Iran possessed an operational nuclear weapon. Instead, it relied on intelligence gathering, sabotage, technical operations and international political influence. The spectacular theft of Iran’s nuclear archive in 2018 was an expression of precisely this strategy.

The same principle applies to Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed structures. Israel’s security problem does not begin only at the moment when a missile is fired or a terrorist crosses the border. It begins with procurement, financing, communications, training and planning. Intelligence services attempt to intervene precisely there.

That does not automatically make their methods legitimate. But without this context, their significance also cannot be assessed seriously.

The Mossad myth works in both directions

Perhaps that is precisely the most interesting insight. The Mossad suffers not only from its opponents, but also from its own myth. Decades of spectacular operations have created the image of an intelligence service that apparently can infiltrate anywhere, find any adversary and foresee every development.

This image works perfectly as long as operations succeed. But when a major strategic assumption fails, admiration quickly turns into the opposite narrative: Then it is no longer the myth that is exaggerated, but the entire service that is supposedly overrated.

The Mossad can be exceptionally good at infiltrating an organization, obtaining secret documents or preparing a covert operation and still misjudge how politically stable a regime is. That is not a mysterious paradox. Intelligence services consist of people, and people occasionally overestimate their ability to predict other people. Even when their business card says Mossad.

An intelligence service can be wrong. States wage wars.

The criticism of the failed Iran calculus is justified. If Mossad planners expected a rapid collapse of the regime, this must be discussed. Possible overstepping toward the International Criminal Court or civilian casualties from Israeli covert operations must not disappear under the label of “security”.

But these points do not automatically lead to the larger narrative that the Mossad led the world into the Iran crisis. Between intelligence planning and war lie political decisions in Jerusalem and Washington, Iranian decisions, years of military buildup, the nuclear program, and a regional network of armed organizations.

Ultimately, this also reveals the core problem with Mossad in DER SPIEGEL: A legitimate discussion about successes, methods, and misjudgments becomes, through selection and exaggeration, a significantly larger narrative.

And this is precisely where a sensationalized cover story becomes a questionable oversimplification.

An intelligence service can advise, plan, infiltrate, and make mistakes. States wage wars.

Mossad is neither the infallible super-intelligence service imagined by its admirers nor the all-powerful criminal shadow power portrayed by its opponents. Its successes are real, and so are its misjudgments. A serious analysis must consider both while also explaining why intelligence work carries different strategic weight for Israel than it does for many European states.