Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen gave a wide-ranging interview to the French magazine Le Point, discussing secret operations against Hezbollah and Iran, the October 7 failures, espionage, and his views on peace and politics. Cohen led Mossad from 2016 to 2021 and said the agency’s long-term pager operation in Lebanon was part of his tenure, with devices designed to force users to hold them close to their faces or chests before detonating. He said the radios used in the operation had served Hezbollah for years and exposed a major internal security weakness.
Cohen also described his first meeting with Vladimir Putin, when he was accompanying Benjamin Netanyahu as national security adviser. He said Putin already knew his background, and that the two developed a relationship marked by “immediate understanding and professional respect.” Cohen later began seeing Putin as a “colleague” because of their shared intelligence backgrounds. He argued that since Israel’s 2005 disengagement, its intelligence reach in Gaza had declined sharply because of a lack of reliable human sources, and he bluntly said, “I know exactly what intelligence they had on Gaza: nothing.”
The former spy chief defended intelligence work as morally legitimate when used to protect the state, saying operatives must lie, deceive, and build cover stories, and that cover identities can be as ordinary as a plumber or technician. He said intelligence officers must also verify a target through friends, surroundings, and behavior, because the person being recruited may also deceive them. He argued that “the right does not contradict peace,” identifying with the Jabotinsky and Begin tradition, and said he saw the Abraham Accords as one of his most important achievements.
Cohen said he warned for years about Gaza before October 7, and that he had asked to take responsibility for Gaza while heading the National Security Council and later Mossad. He also defended the 2018 theft of Iran’s nuclear archive from Tehran, saying it was one of his most important missions and that the idea was his, not Netanyahu’s. He said the archive revealed unknown nuclear sites, enrichment activity outside known facilities, and uranium-related material, and helped shape Donald Trump’s May 2018 withdrawal from the nuclear deal. Cohen said Mossad also infiltrated Iranian supply chains through shell companies and sabotaged equipment, including a 2021 system at Natanz that he said Mossad had sold to Iran after planting explosives inside it.
