Mossad
Israel's foreign intelligence and covert-action service; Iran executed an alleged Mossad asset on 22 April.
Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service, is the accusation behind Iran's most repeated wartime execution: Tehran hanged two more men on 3 August 2026 at Urmia, the fifth pair of alleged Mossad agents put to death since April.
Last refreshed: 17 August 2026 · Appears in 2 active topics
Did Mossad have a source inside Iran's atomic energy agency, and how was the spy caught?
Timeline for Mossad
Mentioned in: Iran accuses France of a spy scheme
Iran Conflict 2026named in the espionage charges
Iran Conflict 2026: Mentioned in: Two hanged at Urmia as wartime spiesMentioned in: Denmark rates Iran terror threat 4 of 5
Iran Conflict 2026Mentioned in: Mashhad hangs Rasouli and Miri on 4 May
Iran Conflict 2026Mentioned in: Hengaw counts 30 sentenced, 13 hanged
Iran Conflict 2026Background
Mossad is Israel's primary foreign intelligence service, founded in 1949 and reporting directly to the Israeli Prime Minister rather than through a defence ministry chain. Its REMIT covers human intelligence, covert action and counter-proliferation work, and it heads Israel's side of a shadow conflict with Iran over Tehran's nuclear programme that has run for more than two decades, including operations Iran attributes to it such as scientist assassinations and the Stuxnet sabotage campaign.
Israel's standing practice is to neither confirm nor deny individual operations or the people it is alleged to have run, a posture it maintained through the 2026 Iran war even as Tehran named the service repeatedly in wartime espionage prosecutions. Western intelligence analysts note that Iran's own use of the Mossad label is not a reliable indicator of genuine espionage: Tehran has a documented pattern of applying the same charge to political prosecutions of activists and dual nationals as it does to cases with an intelligence basis.
Iran keeps naming it in hangings
Iran executed a former Atomic Energy Organisation employee on 22 April 2026 on charges of spying for Mossad, releasing no name; the hanging fell the same afternoon IRGC boarding parties seized two tankers in the Gulf . Tehran's counter-intelligence has alleged former atomic-agency staff supplied coordinates that let Israel destroy Natanz, Esfahan and Fordow in February, a claim Mossad has never addressed publicly.
The pattern recurred through the war: Iran hanged two more men at Urmia on 3 August on the same charge, a case sourced only to the Kurdish rights monitor Hengaw pending any statement from Tehran's own judiciary . Mossad maintains the same standing silence on this case as on every other Iranian espionage prosecution naming it this war.
Did Mossad have a spy inside Iran's nuclear programme?
Why did Iran execute someone on 22 April 2026?
How does Mossad operate against Iran's nuclear programme?
What does Mossad do?
Has Iran executed anyone accused of spying for Mossad since the war began?
Is Iran's evidence for its Mossad-spying executions made public?
