The creators could not have anticipated the expansive apparatus they were building.

Confronted by Britain's prohibition on immigration to Palestine, the Hagana established the Mossad for Aliya B, dispatching operatives across nations to recruit future arrivals, secure vessels and captains, and transport them covertly to the shores of the ancestral homeland.

That initiative began in April 1939. By September, global conflict abruptly suspended the network's activities.

Nevertheless, those initial efforts established the groundwork for one of the globe's most renowned intelligence services and supplied its enduring designation.

With David Barnea departing and Roman Gofman assuming leadership, the agency's lapses require examination and its objectives require recalibration, even as its achievements receive recognition.

The Mossad reemerged after the war, ultimately transporting over 100,000 Holocaust survivors by sea and another 160,000 Jews from Yemen and Iraq by air.

It persisted in aiding persecuted Jewish communities, yet its core focus soon turned to rigorous intelligence gathering, infiltrating hostile territories, monitoring foreign militaries, and pursuing former Nazis.

Leveraging the new nation's diverse immigrant population fluent in multiple languages, the service penetrated Arab states and Soviet-aligned regions.

The international community first witnessed the Mossad's capabilities in 1956, when it secured a transcript of Nikita Khrushchev's address exposing Joseph Stalin's atrocities.

Four years afterward, the agency astonished observers by apprehending Adolf Eichmann and conveying him undetected across continents.

Mossad Achievements Alongside Periodic Setbacks

Yet the Mossad encountered reversals as well.

It overlooked signs of the impending Yom Kippur War in 1973, though it correctly interpreted an Egyptian agent's alert the day prior.

Earlier, it erroneously targeted an innocent individual during the hunt for Munich Massacre perpetrators, and in 1997 it mishandled an operation against Hamas figure Khaled Mashal.

These accomplishments and missteps shaped the agency's efforts through the prior century, when its duties differed markedly from the Iran-centric challenges that would define its work in the current era.

THE MOSSAD initiated its Iran focus under Ariel Sharon's leadership from 2001 to 2006, particularly after appointing Meir Dagan in 2002.

A former general, commando veteran, and descendant of Holocaust survivors, Dagan infused the agency with renewed vigor, directing agents to disrupt Iran's nuclear efforts while thoroughly charting the regime's political structures, scientific networks, industrial sites, and military positions.

Over Dagan's eleven-year tenure, the Mossad reportedly eliminated scientists, impaired facilities, and embedded operatives throughout Iran.

The campaign advanced under successors Tamir Pardo and Yossi Cohen, highlighted by the extraction of Iran's complete nuclear archive.

This trajectory brought the agency to Barnea's period, during which the covert conflict with Iran escalated into open clashes where the Mossad appeared to excel.

Assessing Mossad Accountability for October 7 Shortcomings

THE INQUIRY commission examining recent events will confront a key question: the Mossad's role in Israel's October 7, 2023, lapses.

Officially, Gaza falls outside the agency's purview. The issue centers on whether Iran and Qatar, both within the Mossad's scope unlike Gaza, possessed prior knowledge of the assault that the agency failed to anticipate.

Concurrently, the Mossad succeeded in its primary operations. In Lebanon, prolonged creative efforts produced the beeper strikes that neutralized thousands of Hezbollah operatives rapidly.

In Iran, the Israel Air Force received exact coordinates for over 70 individual targets plus hundreds of military and industrial sites, supported by local teams that reportedly launched missiles and drones.

Gofman to Confront Challenges Left by Barnea

Even so, Barnea's leadership fell short on two fronts where Roman Gofman will face tests.

THE INITIAL shortfall occurred within Iran. While the military operations proved impressive, they yielded no political outcomes aligned with their intended goals.

Accounts of an original scheme culminating in a Kurdish advance on Tehran offer no comfort and raise concerns. The Kurds represent a limited and distant minority in Iran. They cannot be tasked with regime removal, a reality the Mossad should have acknowledged.

The ayatollahs require displacement by a Persian network equipped with leadership, weaponry, structure, and forces. Facilitating this outcome must rank as Gofman's foremost objective, mirroring how predecessors prioritized Iran's nuclear and missile capabilities.

The secondary arena involves the worldwide assault on Israel's standing.

The protest wave and its sway over Western academia, governance, and society present a fundamental risk to the Jewish state.

Mapping this campaign's funding sources, identifying its architects, pursuing its operatives, and disrupting their schemes must constitute a core mission for Gofman's Mossad.

Extensive discussion has surrounded Gofman's qualifications. This writer adds only that decades ago he advocated leveraging the influx of Russian-speaking immigrants arriving in the 1990s.

These newcomers introduced a global perspective akin to that of the agency's founders but absent among their native-born successors.

One such arrival came from Belarus at age 14; at the time of that earlier writing, he served as a 22-year-old lieutenant. He now leads the Mossad.

His background may enable delivery of results that prior leaders did not achieve and that Israel's endurance requires.