Iran Kills Three Mossad Agents in Kurdistan Attack Iran retaliates for Israeli assassinations of Revolutionary Guard Commanders in Lebanon and Syria

חשיפה: הIRG מזהה שלושה סוכני מודיעין של המוסד אשר נהרגו בהתקפה אירנית בארביל

It is one of the worst kept secrets in Kurdistan that the Mossad maintains a facility in the capital, Erbil.  There it recruits Kurds to spy on Iranian assets, including pro-Iraqi militias closely allied with Iran. The former have launched over 100 separate drone and missile attacks against US bases in Syria and Iraq. Israel has a long history of close relations with Iraqi Kurdish nationalists going back to the 1960s. It provided weapons and military training, seeing them as a bulwark against hostile neighboring Arab states like Iraq and Turkey. It maintains an even more extensive presence in Azerbaijan, another country neighboring Iran.

Iran as well maintains a considerable intelligence presence in the city.  It too recruits Kurds to spy on local Israeli assets and infiltrate Kurdish separatist groups seeking to carve out a state for Iranian Kurds. Iran attacked the same Israeli target several years ago.  But this time, Iran fired a massive barrage of 12 ballistic missiles which obliterated the building, as you can see from the video footage. Four people were killed in the attack.

One caveat about the headlines of the second video below. The US consulate is close to the Mossad facility.  But the target was not the US building, as the headline claims, but the Israeli structure.  I’ve embedded it here because it gives a closer view of the attack and ensuing damage.

The Iranian news website, Tasnim, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards (IRG) published photos of the passports of three purported Mossad agents who died in the attack. They were Avi Hen (Israeli ID 0-5499610-3, born: 12/28/57), Barak Adika (ID 0-3840065-1 born: 12/19/83 ), and Israel Shraiber (ID 0-3999665-7, born 3/15/76). The fourth victim was Elan Nissim.  PressTV claims that he was a Mossad officer and the three Israeli victims worked under him. It also mentions a fourth Israeli victim named Malka (no first name).

Nissim apparently recruited local Kurds to spy against Iran for the Mossad. An Iranian media source says he owned a security company which trained the Peshmerga. His company’s Facebook page also shows its presence in Syria.  There are major Kurdish military forces in Syria fighting ISIS and the Assad regime, which is an Iranian ally.  This may be an added reason it sought to eliminate him.  Based on his name, he was likely a Kurdish Jew.  He had close relations with Hossein Yazdanpanah, the head of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, an Iraqi Kurdish separatist group.

A separate attack hit the home of a wealthy Iraqi Kurdish businessman, whom the IRG accused of being a “traitor.”

Peshraw Dizayee was born in Erbil, but had close commercial relations with Iran. In calling him a “traitor,” the Iranians probably used the term in the context of him working with Israelis against the interests of Muslims. The Mossad would of course be quite interested in recruiting him. It’s even possible he served as an asset for both sides:

…The Erbil attack struck the house of Kurdish businessman Peshraw Dizayee, owner of the autonomous region’s Falcon Group, responsible for major projects such as the Empire World, essentially Erbil’s central business district known for its gleaming high-rise apartment complexes.

Falcon had numerous subsidiaries in fields of agriculture, construction and security.

Lost in most of the media reporting on the latest escalation in hostilies between Israel and the US vs. Iran and its allies, is that this is the first time since 10/7 (and well before that) that Iran has directly attacked Israeli interests. This is a flashing red light the world must understand. It is Iran saying: “if you want to permit Israel to drag us all into a shooting war by taking out our military commanders, all right then. Two can play at this game.  Now tell me if you want some more of the same?” Will Biden get the message? Unfortunately, the answer seems clear.

Two caveats: first, the Mossad often employs false identities to protect their agents. So it isn’t clear whether these are their real identities.

Second, I have not been able to independently verify the claims of Tasnim.  There are no obvious indications in the information displayed on the passport page that it may fraudulent. On the other hand, I am skeptical that Iranian agents on the scene would have been able to sift through rubble in the aftermath of the attack to find these passports.  Further, it would easy to generate an AI image that could be inserted into a passport.  Nevertheless, there are other ways in which they may have obtained (or stolen) genuine passports or copies of them before the attack.