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I mean just yesterday former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed that the head of Iranian counterintelligence was found in 2021 to be a Mossad double agent (alongside about 20 others in the unit). The head of counterintelligence! Pardon my swearing, but the one guy whose job it was to find spies was a fucking spy himself! Assuming it's true, and I don't see why it wouldn't be as it's massively shameful for Iranians to admit it, it's an absurd level of superiority and dominance Israel is showing. Israeli intelligence is so ahead of them that Iranians were unable to meaningfully vet that ONE guy at the top of the pyramid.
US had something similar happen two decades ago: Ana Montes, the senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) responsible for Cuba (nicknamed "Queen of Cuba") turned out to spy for Cuba throughout her entire career at the DIA.
This situation isn't as ironic as it sounds. Cuba recruited Montes back when she was a college student, and persuaded her to go into the career that would be of most benefit. I am sure there were others, but this one happened to be the one that succeeded.
I'd bet the success rate is higher than you think, because the Cubans can feed her accurate or seemingly accurate Scoops about Cuba.
An intelligence analyst isn't that different from a beat reporter. They're examining a pile of information from different sources and trying to write a report guessing at the truth.
So much like a Yankees blogger secretly handpicked by Brian Cashman could quickly rise to the top by "correctly" predicting roster moves, a Cuban intelligence analyst working for Cuba can repeatedly guess meaningless facts correctly, showing brilliance in intuitions from limited data because she already knows the answers.
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Didn't the same thing happen with the head of British counterintelligence being a Soviet double agent? And look how that turned out.
Yes, and Soviet human intelligence was the best there was. The west kept up by dominating in turn on signal intelligence.
Israel is dominating its opponents on both.
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An aside, and I don't mean to pick on you, but I'd like to kill the trend of relying on a a single historical anecdote when making an argument.
The two biggest fallacies I see are this:
Chamberlain appeased Hitler in 1938 therefore all appeasement is bad.
Prohibition in the United States led to more crime therefore all drugs must be legalized
There are huge differences between Israel today and the Soviet Union then. Yes, the Soviet Union's secret service was elite, just like Israel's. So why did the West win despite an inferior secret service? It's simple, Russians willingly defected to the West and then just gave us all their secrets.
To make the parallel work, we'd have to see Israelis defecting to Iran or other Muslim countries. Since this isn't happening, I just don't think the analogy works.
My point is just that I don't think intelligence and counterintelligence are all they're cracked up to be. The Soviets won the intelligence war, but their little victory was swept away by the uncaring maelstrom of socioeconomic forces, along with their country and their ideology. They should have spent less on guns and more on butter.
Israel is far and away the wealthiest country in the region that earned it(Dubai did not). It's unclear what socioeconomic forces are going to get them got.
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Yeah, I heard that too. The Mossad is scary good. I'll bet that they have something to do with the recent helicopter crashes as well. If not, Iran could be forgiven for thinking so. I doubt Khameini will be hopping into any choppers for the next while.
Further speculation: Iran's nuclear program is riddled with Israeli spies and key elements of its supply chain are tainted. I wouldn't be surprised if there is an "accidental" nuclear explosion in Iran some time in the next 10 years, assuming they can even get that far.
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