DAVID PATRIKARAKOS: Israel’s former Mossad chief lifts the lid on the country’s astonishing assassinations

About a week ago, Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian announced that his country is currently at war with the United States, Europe and Israel.

He spat his venom in an interview with state-controlled media. ‘We are in an all-out war with the USA, Israel and Europe,’ he shouted angrily.

We will need to be ready; especially at a time when the regime is becoming more desperate under the pressure of protests in the streets. When the mullahs feel cornered, they attack. And we will need strong, reliable allies who can smash the terror machines.

There is no better organization for this task than the Israeli Mossad, and no better person to discuss this issue with than its former head, Yossi Cohen.

Cohen led the service from 2016 to 2021. They call him ‘model’ because of his sharp lines and stylish suits.

He smiles across from me in a plain office in central Tel Aviv. This man is a man who went on undercover missions in the Arab world many times as a Mossad agent, risking torture and death each time.

According to Cohen, Mossad works with a single principle; He returns to this principle both in our interview and in his book, The Sword of Freedom: Israel, the Mossad, and the Secret War, which sits on the polished table between us.

‘We can’t be second in anything,’ he tells me. ‘Be first and be decisive; That’s the rule.’

The truth of his words is clearly seen in how the Mossad ruthlessly hunted down Israel’s enemies after the October 7 atrocity.

Cohen tells David Patrikarakos (left) how Britain and Israel can ally together in the global war against Jihadist terrorism

And, of course, it was Israeli agents operating inside Iran who helped Jerusalem gain dominance over Iranian skies in a matter of hours during the 12-day conflict in June 2025.

During Cohen’s tenure, the message was simple: Those who sought death for the Jewish state or its allies would meet death themselves, wherever they were.

He was as good as his word. His years of service witnessed some of the most daring operations in the agency’s history.

Just before dawn prayers in Kuala Lumpur on April 21, 2018, two men on a motorcycle approached Hamas engineer and commander Fadi al-Batsh. Fourteen shots were fired from close range.

The assassins got involved in the morning traffic. Malaysia described it as a ‘professional foreign hit’. Everyone knew who did this.

That same year, an explosion in the Syrian mountain town of Masyaf destroyed the car of Aziz Asbar, head of the Syrian missile program, and threw what was left of him into the air.

Asbar was rebuilding Syria’s missile production after repeated Israeli attacks. His studies ended there. And he continued.

On August 7, 2020, in Tehran’s Pasdaran district, a motorcycle stopped screaming next to a white sedan. Gunshots were heard twice.

Abu Muhammad al-Masri, al-Qaeda’s number two and the architect of the 1998 US embassy bombings, collapsed behind the wheel.

His daughter Miriam, the widow of Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza, was also killed. The attack was carried out at the request of Washington, to coincide with the 22nd anniversary of the attacks.

This wasn’t just an assassination. It was a message: Attack Israel or its friends and nowhere in the world is safe.

Cohen (right) is seen here with David Patrikarakos. Cohen led the Mossad from 2016 to 2021. They call him ‘model’ because of his sharp lines and stylish suits.

The equation of the Jewish state is extremely simple: It fights, therefore it exists.

But fighting isn’t always about killing. Mossad is ruthless and highly sophisticated. Cohen tells me that the doctrine is a corruption.

‘Knowing is important, but breaking is more important.’ Timing is everything: Let your enemy’s project collapse when they believe it will succeed.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Mossad’s campaign against Iran’s nuclear program. On January 31, 2018, Iran’s nuclear archive disappeared in Tehran; This was a rip-off worthy of Ocean’s Eleven.

Just after midnight, a small Mossad team entered a warehouse outside the city.

Using industrial thermal cutters, they cracked huge safes, sparks flying as they cherry-picked the most incriminating files.

They had about seven hours. They had vanished at 6:30 a.m. along with half a ton of secrets: 50,000 paper documents and 55,000 digital files.

The archive was later broadcast on Israeli television. Iran’s nuclear ambitions exposed. Jerusalem used this material to push Washington into tougher action against the mullahs.

Spies don’t believe in neat categories. Law becomes a line drawn with a pencil. To keep a city safe, you bend it. You break it to prevent the greater lawlessness of bombs and corpses.

Cohen says: ‘If you’re second in cybersecurity, the enemy is already inside your systems. This is unacceptable.’

During ISIS’s plots across Europe, the Mossad turned west and shared intelligence that helped disrupt attacks in Türkiye, Germany, France and, most importantly, Britain.

Al Qaeda’s second commander, Abu Mohammed al Masri, was killed in Tehran on August 7, 2020

In The Sword of Freedom, Cohen describes his close collaboration with British intelligence and notes that MI6 may be the Mossad’s closest counterpart in operational philosophy: global in reach, human-led and unafraid of intrusion.

This partnership saved lives. Just before his retirement in 2020, the former head of MI5, Sir Andrew Parker, spoke openly about Britain’s debt to the Mossad.

“We don’t give Oscars for intelligence,” he told Cohen. ‘But if we did this, you would deserve it.’

In the wake of the Manchester synagogue massacre and the brutality at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, this debt is only now becoming concrete.

Modern espionage is a hybrid warfare waged by other means, such as theft, sabotage, assassination, cyberattack, and coercion. Mossad is his master.

As Iran and a wider ecosystem of domestic and foreign jihadist killers declare war on the West, MI6 will be at the center of this fight.

But at his side will be Israel’s intelligence services, his allies who are once again on the front lines against Islamist barbarism.