JERUSALEM (VINnews) — David (Dedi) Barnea has now completed a five-year term as head of the Mossad. Under his leadership, the agency carried out operations that made headlines around the world, from sabotage of Iran’s nuclear program, through the pager operation, to the elimination of Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary-General of Hezbollah.

In one of its most recent operations, the Mossad promoted a plan to overthrow the regime in Iran by activating millions of Kurdish fighters, but U.S. President Donald Trump vetoed the move. Security sources in Israel accuse Vice President J. D. Vance of leaking the plan to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in order to thwart it. The accusation was strongly denied by officials close to Vance.

Barnea estimates that if Trump maintains the economic and military pressure, the ayatollahs’ regime, currently controlled by Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the leader who was eliminated in February, could collapse within a year. On the other hand, he warns that lifting the sanctions would channel new funds into Iran and make the task of toppling the regime much more complicated, especially in light of the fortified underground nuclear facility known as “Har HaMekush” (“The Arch Mountain”), which was not attacked from the air.

It has now been revealed that the operation to eliminate Hezbollah leader Nasrallah in 2024 relied on local Lebanese Mossad agents, who risked their lives and moved under intense fire in order to plant precise tracking devices inside the underground headquarters in the Dahiyeh district. Barnea and senior Israeli Air Force officials managed a complex command center operation aimed at ensuring that Israeli Air Force bombs would not strike the agents, who provided real-time information about Nasrallah’s exact location in the bunker.

Regarding the Lebanese arena, senior Israeli officials are expressing disappointment that Trump stopped an Israeli strike in Beirut at the last moment, a step which, according to them, restored Hezbollah’s sense of victory. Barnea himself is opposed to the idea of holding southern Lebanon over the long term and believes the territory should be used only as a temporary bargaining chip for the disarmament of Hezbollah.