An absurd rumor circulated online on Wednesday suggesting that U.S. officials had provided Iran with the names of agents from Israel‘s Mossad foreign intelligence service. Specifically, the identity of agents who were involved in the July 31 killing of Ismail Haniyeh.
A top Hamas leader, Haniyeh, was killed when Mossad agents detonated a bomb that had been hidden in his Tehran guest house. The rumor was first circulated by Kuwait’s al-Jarida newspaper more than a week ago. It was amplified by a Fox News guest writer on Monday and then by the Jerusalem Post on Wednesday. The rumor should never have made it beyond al-Jarida. As I noted on X, there are a few very basic reasons why this rumor was always prima facie absurd.
First, the CIA and NSA, the two U.S. intelligence agencies that might feasibly know the identity of any Mossad agents in Iran, would never allow a U.S. official to leak these names without extreme riposte. Senior intelligence officials, certainly the CIA chief of station in Israel, would resign in protest at such an action. They would almost certainly leak the reason for their resignation in order to ensure congressional oversight and countermeasures. Human intelligence reporting between allies is regarded as the holy grail of protected information.
Second, only a very small number of the highest-ranking U.S. officials would have access to these names in the first place. Access to human intelligence reporting is exceptionally controlled for a simple reason: If associated information leaks, people rather than programs end up dying. Those people might be tortured brutally for a long period before being executed, forced into giving up others to the same fate. This concern underlines why even analysts with very high classification-access authorities are highly unlikely to know the identity of human agents upon whose reporting their analysis is sometimes rooted.
Third, the risks of such a leak would so outweigh any near non-existent benefits as to render the entire proposition absurd. After all, any leak of this most highly guarded information would lead to a suspension of human intelligence sharing with the U.S., not just from Israel, but from every other close intelligence ally, including the United Kingdom, Australia, France, the Netherlands, and others. These nations could not tolerate the risk that the U.S. would similarly jeopardize their own agents. And considering the counterterrorism and counter-proliferation cooperation between the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities, a leak of this kind would be the intelligence community equivalent of shooting oneself in the head.
Fourth, there would be no significant benefits to this action in terms of Iranian reciprocity. Mossad cooperates with the Russian intelligence services for reasons of mutual benefit in terms of issues related to Syria and other concerns (sometimes much to the dissatisfaction of the CIA). Still, this relationship works because both sides get something valuable from it. The U.S. would get nothing valuable from Iran by providing it with the names of Mossad agents.
All of this begs a question: Why did the story get such traction online?
One reason is ignorance. Too many idiots on social media state things without knowing what they are talking about. But the central problem is that others who know better jumped on the bandwagon, offering caveats of very thin credibility that the reports were unverified.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) commented, “I pray this is not true. If Joe Biden & Kamala Harris actually gave the Ayatollah the names of undercover Mossad agents in Iran…it would be a level of betrayal of Israel (and America) difficult to fathom.” Cruz is no idiot and knows how intelligence handling of human intelligence is handled. He appears to have seen this report as an easy, if disingenuous way, to attack the Democratic presidential nominee.
Other prominent commentators also added to the fray. The Israeli marketing influencer Hillel Fuld asked whether the report “constitutes a betrayal of historic proportions?” The hard-right Israeli political commentator Caroline Glick lent credence to the report, observing that “A trusted colleague in the U.S. sent it to me. Another trusted colleague there told me later that it’s Iranian regime disinformation… if this is true, it’s an epic betrayal.”
Commentary editor John Podhoretz decried Glick’s sentiment, noting that “There is literally no way this is true and you should know that. I know you loathe America now but the idea we would give names to Iran to have people killed is noxious and you should be ashamed of yourself for spreading such vile disinformation.” Podhoretz’s harsh words are deserved. To accuse the U.S. of a betrayal of this kind without any credible evidence is not something any ally should do.
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Cruz and company should know better than to suggest, on the sole basis of an unreliable Kuwaiti newspaper, that American intelligence officers or senior government officials would sacrifice Mossad agents simply because of their annoyance with Israeli government policy or desire to appease Iran.
The Biden administration‘s appeasement of Iran is a real and legitimate concern. But supporting this silly fiction, those who did so have only made themselves useful idiots for what might well be an Iranian disinformation campaign.