The head of Iran’s unit tasked with monitoring and impeding Israeli intelligence activities in the country was himself a Mossad agent, along with 20 other members of the unit, former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has admitted.

The embarrassing revelation came during an interview with the hardline Iranian politician and CNN Türk.

According to Ahmadinejad, Tehran had assembled a secret service unit some years ago which was meant to thwart the covert operations of Israel’s Mossad and target its agents operating in Iran.

In 2021, however, it became clear that the unit’s most senior member was himself a double agent, by which time he and other undercover operatives had already stolen sensitive Iranian nuclear documents to share with Israel.

Ahmadinejad said: “Israel organised complex operations inside Iran. They could easily obtain information. In Iran they are still silent about this. The man who was in charge of the unit in Iran against Israel was an Israeli agent,”

The double agent and 20 other members of the unit were said to be responsible for the theft of Iranian nuclear documents in 2018 and the elimination of Iranian nuclear scientists, according to Ahmadinejad.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in September arrested 12 people across six provinces for collaboration with Israel and planning acts against Iran’s security.

Tehran =frequently declares it has foiled Mossad operations in the country, but the truth of such claims cannot be verified. Ali Younesi, Iran’s former intelligence minister, admitted in 2021 that Mossad has succeeded with “enticements of influence and money” in penetrating Iranian security bodies and the “upper echelons of the national intelligence apparatus,”

As the sixth president of Iran from 2005 to 2013, Ahmadinejad was known as a fierce critic of the United States, Israel, and the West.