An Israeli documentary, Deep Inside Iran, adds an additional layer of substance and understanding to Israel’s 12-day war with Iran last June. Now available on Izzy, a streaming platform specializing in Israeli films, this 56-minute movie is constructed around an interview with an Iranian Mossad agent who secretly worked inside Iran during that conflict.

The operative, identified as Arash, is interviewed by presenter Ilana Dayan. He sits with his back to the camera, answering her questions in broken English.

Before the Israeli Air Force struck Iran in the early hours of June 13, Arash and his team drove to a prearranged site from which they fired drones at a nearby Iranian missile launcher aimed at Israel. Iranian Mossad operatives based in other locales performed the same function, helping clear the way for incoming Israeli jets and sabotaging Iran’s initial retaliatory strikes.

This is not the only story Deep Inside Iran tells.

Much of it unfolds prior to the Israel-Iran war and focuses on Israel’s plan to damage or destroy the deeply-buried and virtually impregnable Fordow uranium enrichment site. More than 1,000 Mossad operatives worked on this project for three years.

In fleshing out this facet of Israel’s campaign against Iran, Dayan interviews two former directors of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen and Tamir Pardo, one of its former deputy directors, Udi Lavi, and an ex-agent named Assaf Kochan. They have nothing new to say, underscoring the perception that Deep Inside Iran promises more than it delivers.

Arash is slightly more interesting. Although he seems constrained by a code of secrecy, he is relatively informative.

Now 40, he joined the Mossad in 2015 after offering his services as a spy to Israel. An army veteran, he soured on the Iranian regime after his sister was arrested for failing to wear a hijab in public and after her interrogators demanded regular cash payments from her family after she had been released.

As far as Arash was concerned, the Iranian regime was “rotten to the core.” Fed up with its tactics of repression and its endemic corruption, he and his family left Iran. Their destination is not revealed.

Having been fully trained in the arcane arts of espionage, he returned to Iran to fulfill his duties as an undercover Mossad operative. His Mossad handler, he says, treated him like a friend and brother. Every mission he undertook filled him with a sense of pride. He does not delve into the operational details.

Prior to the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, signed also by the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, the Israeli government tried to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program by means of targeting a uranium enrichment plant in Natanz and assassinating nuclear scientists.

Cohen claims that the attacks were instrumental in degrading Iran’s march toward membership in the exclusive nuclear club, to which Israel belongs.

Due to U.S. objections, Israel cancelled a plan to strike the Fordow facility. “We froze that operation,” says Cohen.

Cohen’s successor, David Barnea, presented Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an updated version. However, the chief of staff of the Israeli armed forces, General Herzi Halevi, feared that such an attack would unleash a regional war and force Israel to fight on several fronts.

The Fordow operation was shelved after Hamas’ invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023. It was revived by the United States less than two years later, when President Donald Trump ordered the bombardment of Iranian enrichment facilities. Fordow was among the targeted site. Trump later claimed that Fordow had been “obliterated,” but critics think he was exaggerating.

Fordow may be struck again should the current talks between the U.S. and Iran fail and Trump decides to bomb Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile facilities.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)