The Israelis have proven in recent weeks that they’re not folks you want to mess with. They took out dozens of Hezbollah terrorists with an audacious exploding pager plot, they systematically hunt down Hamas terrorists and send their leaders to early graves, and they just wiped out an entire generation of Hezbollah leaders with a massive airstrike in Beirut.

If you’re an anti-Israel terrorist these days, it must be hard getting to sleep. There’s a good chance you won’t wake up.

Now, the Islamic Republic’s former president is admitting that the Israelis even managed to penetrate Iranian security services that were… wait for it… tasked with targeting the Jewish state’s intelligence service, Mossad. I’m sorry, but it’s hard not to laugh.

The head of an Iranian secret service unit set up to target Mossad agents working in the Islamic Republic turned out to be an Israeli agent himself, according to former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Speaking to CNN Turk, Ahmadinejad claimed Monday that a further 20 agents in the Iranian intelligence team tasked with monitoring Israeli spying activities also turned against Tehran.

The alleged double agents provided Israel with sensitive information on the Iranian nuclear program, according to his comments in the interview, which were widely picked up by international media.

It would seem to be even too much for a paperback thriller, because no one would believe it.

You would think it is a joke, but it isn’t

Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in an interview with @cnnturk said that Iran’s secret services had created a special unit to combat Mossad operating in Iran. However, turns out the head of this unit was himself a Mossad… pic.twitter.com/35fKhqEeTt

— Michael Elgort (@just_whatever) September 30, 2024

The tweet continues:

However, turns out the head of this unit was himself a Mossad agent, along with 20 other agents, who were responsible for multiple intelligence operations in Iran including stealing nuclear docs and assassinating several Iranian nuclear scientists before allegedly fleeing to Israel 

I can’t stop laughing, that’s too bad*** even for you. [Laughing emojis]

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The former Iranian president revealed that the intelligence breach led to some significant victories for Israel:

Ahmadinejad said the agents were behind some key Mossad successes in Iran, including the 2018 theft of nuclear program documents that were taken from Tehran to Israel and revealed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The trove is thought to have been a factor in convincing then-US president Donald Trump to pull out of the nuclear agreement between world powers and Iran.

The head of the counterintelligence unit was revealed as a double agent in 2021 but he and all of the other alleged Mossad moles were able to flee the country and are now living in Israel, claimed Ahmadinejad, a firebrand populist known for his hardline anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric and for the violent crackdown that followed his disputed 2009 reelection. He was prevented from running again for president earlier this year.

If this was a plot twist on a TV show people would be like, "Come on, writers, way too far-fetched"

— Cathy Young 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@CathyYoung63) September 30, 2024

The reality of Iran’s aggression is no laughing matter, of course. On Tuesday, they launched a missile barrage at Israel, dramatically upping tensions in the already-fraught region. Meanwhile, Speaker of the Knesset Amir Ohana responded to Ayatollah Khamenei’s inflammatory rhetoric on X Tuesday: "Say hello to the end." 

Interpret that as you will, but if I were the Ayatollah, I'd be hiding in the basement for the next dozen or so years.