David Barnea: some executed as spies had no link to Mossad

David Barnea, former head of Israel's foreign intelligence agency (Mossad), says some of the people the Islamic Republic executed on charges of collaborating with Mossad had no connection to the agency, and his colleagues did not even know some of them. He made the remarks on Thursday, 22 October 2026, at a conference in Israel, and the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth published a report on them.

According to Barnea, the Islamic Republic's security apparatus arrested about 21,000 people on the second day of the June 2025 war and later released them all. He says that among such a crowd, even if one or two real agents had been arrested, identifying them would have been almost impossible. The figure was given by Barnea himself and has not been independently confirmed; the Islamic Republic's police had earlier also reported 21,000 arrests during the war.

Making agents' presence public to confuse the security apparatus

The former Mossad chief said a video the agency released on the morning that Operation "Rising Lion" began in June 2025 was part of a plan to protect its agents in Iran: the aim was to confront the Islamic Republic's security bodies with a mass of suspects so that the real agents would stay hidden. He claimed the identities of almost all Mossad agents were never revealed and that some of them still live in Tehran. According to him, dozens of agents were sent in several weeks before the attack on Iran.

Barnea also said of the operation to blow up Hezbollah's pagers in September 2024 that Mossad carried out hundreds of tests and that he repeatedly asked for the explosives to be made smaller so that people nearby, including the families of Hezbollah members, would suffer less harm.

Mass arrests and executions on spying charges

Barnea's remarks underline a concern that human rights organisations have raised many times: after every security failure, the Islamic Republic has turned the charge of espionage into a tool for mass arrests, forced confessions and the execution of citizens. Revolutionary courts have handled these cases in closed sessions, without lawyers of the defendants' choosing, and at speed. DIAR earlier reported on the IRGC Intelligence Organisation fabricating cases against protesters.

According to the former Mossad chief, the Islamic Republic executed people on spying charges who had no link to the agency.