According to The New York Times, Washington entered the war with Teheran expecting a Mossad-backed scenario of internal unrest in Iran, but that plan failed.
The newspaper reported that Israeli intelligence chief David Barnea had presented Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump’s administration with a strategy built around the idea that the Iranian opposition would spark mass unrest leading to the collapse of the Iranian regime. Netanyahu backed the proposal despite serious doubts voiced by both American and Israeli analysts.
But in the first weeks of the war, that scenario did not materialize. Intelligence officials said fear of the security apparatus prevented citizens from rising up, while the Iranian authorities, despite the strikes, retained control. The report also noted that Trump had initially urged Iranians in public statements to take power into their own hands, but Washington later stopped talking about regime change.
Citing former officials, the paper added that the Mossad plan also included support for Iranian Kurdish armed groups based in Iraq. Israeli aircraft struck northwestern Iran in an apparent effort to ease the advance of Kurdish forces. That scenario, however, was soon abandoned by the United States as well.