But after he published his book in September – The Sword of Freedom – bringing the world much deeper into his personal world and history, the Post can reveal a somewhat more insider picture of the ex-spy chief than has been conveyed to date, such as an analysis of his political ambitions and trajectory, and what new details he revealed in his book in regard to Mossad operations and his relations with world leaders.
First of all, Cohen’s authentic “voice” comes out louder and clearer in the book than it often does in his media interviews.
Much of his first interview with journalist Ilana Dayan on Channel 12’s Uvda and his second interview overall (first in English) with the Post in 2021 showed aspects of Cohen’s unique meteoric levels of confidence.
His statements in the book – about needing to know everything and that ignorance of anything was unacceptable – are not standard statements for spy chiefs, all of whom certainly have a healthy batch of confidence, but most of whom also have a sizable amount of skepticism and sense of their limitations.
In conversations over the years, there were moments when Cohen left the Post speechless when he boasted, after the success of one operation against Iran, about the almost guaranteed success of future similar operations (though always being careful to avoid specifics that could jeopardize national security).
For Cohen, Israel and the Mossad’s ability to stop the Islamic Republic’s march toward a nuclear bomb was never in question; it was only a matter of how much risk Jerusalem would need to authorize and how many shows the agency would need to take before an investable success.
If not for Cohen’s remarkable track record against Iran’s nuclear program during his term, the standard response to such a level of confidence would be to declare it foolhardy.
But the former Mossad chief essentially backed up his confidence with results when it came to combating Iran’s nuclear progress.
As he revealed exclusively to the Post in July, only weeks after the Iran war, much of the Mossad’s operations against Tehran had their forerunners during his term.
Another aspect of Cohen’s personality the Post saw firsthand is Cohen’s temper.
The former Mossad chief was a phenomenal recruiter.
In an early meeting with the Post, he made several cultural references to show how much he knew about the reporter’s lifestyle, encouraging a remarkable amount of positive motivation for the relationship from the start.
Cohen tries to mesmerize
But there is that inevitable point in any journalist-source relationship, where regardless of whether certain levels of friendship have been reached, reporters – in order to do their job – must ask unwanted questions.Suddenly, Cohen could turn on a dime from being your best friend to your scariest enemy, just as he explains he sometimes had to do as a handler of certain spies he was recruiting if they did not produce what he wanted or failed to follow the rules of spycraft in a way that could endanger all involved.This anger was not reserved for the Post but also came out loud and clear against political officials, eventually including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
When Cohen first spoke to the Post about Netanyahu, he would barely call him by name, insisting on referring to him as “roham,” a Hebrew acronym for “the prime minister.”
Cohen eventually also turned on Netanyahu after the prime minister didn’t give him the Iran portfolio when he stepped down as Mossad chief, was then ousted from office, returned to power with no apparent readiness to step aside for Cohen to inherit his legacy, ignored his and other defense officials’ warning regarding the judicial overhaul, allowed the Oct. 7 invasion to happen, and invited Cohen to assist with Qatar hostage negotiations, only to banish him from them days later in favor of current Mossad director David Barnea.
His criticisms of Netanyahu in his book and in public interviews pale compared to the expressive way he launches into the prime minister in private.
There is no question that some of the former spy chief’s criticism of Netanyahu is substantive.
Cohen would never entertain passing a bill that would endorse as many haredi (ultra-Orthodox) exemptions from IDF service as Netanyahu has done, with the former Mossad chief being a fierce supporter of IDF service.
In addition, Cohen would not have provoked Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul, which shook the Israeli defense establishment, though regarding policy the Mossad chief is a strong right-winger and has plenty of criticism for excessive judicial activism.
Finally, Cohen believes he could have gotten the hostages back earlier in the war and without the need for it to drag on for so long in a way that exhausted many sectors of Israeli society.
After all of that is said, some of Cohen’s beef with Netanyahu is personal.
A future prime minister?
Netanyahu, in a famous interview years ago, named Cohen and Ron Dermer as his natural successors and said he would not continue to run for office repeatedly, which would have allowed Cohen to potentially take over the Likud in recent years.Instead, Cohen believes Netanyahu has dragged the Likud down with him regarding various failed policies, some of which are noted above.
This has also doused some of the original enthusiasm on the Right for the former spy chief, which might have given him a shortcut to the prime minister’s chair.
But following that political misfortune, Cohen has made a series of political miscalculations, or if he is really only willing to go into politics on very specific terms, has harmed his leverage over those terms.
There was a point where a new party started by Cohen was polling over 10 seats, and there was a point where a joint list led by former prime minister Naftali Bennett, with Cohen as his number two, was even higher than the usual 22 seats, which Bennett is now polling at on his own.
Had Cohen seized one of those moments, he might have crowded out Gadi Eisenkot, Yoaz Hendel, and others from entering the field and grabbing their own batch of seats.
But if Cohen started his own party and entered the political arena now, it is not clear that he would even cross the electoral threshold.
Also, closing in on five years from his retirement, he is not as new and ever-present in the Israeli national mind as he was shortly after retiring, when he was known as the man who held back Iran’s nuclear program and helped stimulate the Abraham Accords.
A lot has happened since then, and Eisenkot, Hendl, and others have seized the country’s imagination and momentum – especially regarding disenchanted swing voters.
Now Bennett is courting these figures much more than Cohen.
Cohen will say publicly that he has never committed to going into politics.
He has even suggested that he could unite the divided camps to oust Netanyahu.
Unfortunately for him, until now his tremendous talents as an intelligence agent and his natural charisma have not translated into forming anywhere near the concrete political power and leverage he would need to make such demands on established forces like Bennett and Yisrael Beytenu party leader Avigdor Liberman.
So Cohen may sit out the next election, unwilling to be a number two to anyone after experiencing recent years in the limelight as his own man. There is no question that he would prefer not to serve under anyone at this point in his career, being too much of a rugged individualist.
Whether he will shift gears at some later date or will be recruited post-election as a cabinet minister (he might not want to run for the Knesset, as standard day-to-day parliamentary work would bore him) or forgo politics altogether will depend a lot on how the political field plays out.
But regarding what he writes in his book, that he may wait for the right moment, he may discover that the moment, barring some new charismatic act to reestablish his currency, has already passed him by.
New operational revelations
Yonah Bob’s 2023 book Target Tehran – published less than two weeks before Oct. 7 – has dozens of details about the Mossad’s 2018 operation of seizing Iran’s nuclear archives, including some that Cohen did not cite.But the intel chief did have some fascinating new disclosures.
The three most important ones were the process of detecting where Iran was keeping its nuclear secrets hidden; that the operation was accelerated when the Mossad found out that Tehran was planning to move the materials to a different location (a third location, since the materials had already been moved once); and that the operation was delayed for 24 hours by the commander on the ground, essentially overruling Cohen, who wanted to move ahead.
Regarding detecting where the materials were, Cohen identified sources involved in the movement of the materials to help identify, film, and follow shipping containers with the nuclear archives, surveillance of the trucks that were used to move the materials, intercepting communications, and spying on the sites from the sky and from street level.
In the media, we often like to dwell on one “golden nugget” of intelligence that turns the tide. But Cohen’s description is much more real – there was no one piece of intelligence but a sophisticated puzzle of many different ones.
Likewise, Yonah Bob had reported for the first time that the operation had to be replanned from scratch after the nuclear archives were moved once but had no idea that the archives were out to be moved again, nor that the operation was delayed for 24 hours for tactical reasons.
There are some other fascinating, although less significant, details in the book, such as that the Mossad had to deal with guard dogs and that their surveillance covered many nearby buildings to avoid any external force surprising them besides the facility’s immediate guards.
There is also a variety of new details relating to the assassination in November 2020 of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s nuclear program founder.
How did Cohen evolve from being an academic student in London into a spymaster with a list of stunning accomplishments to his name?
Becoming a spy
In his account, Cohen details how, as a young man fresh out of the army, the Mossad initially made contact with him. He admits that he didn’t know at first what the agency saw in him, aside from his clear commitment to Israel – and that, as a potential recruit, it is impossible to determine with precision what traits you are being assessed for.Still, the tests prospective cadets are put through, as confusing and incomprehensible as they may seem, are “designed to tease out a way of operational thinking.”
Cohen describes tasks he was given, from breaking into apartments to planting microphones in hotels, where things are supposed to go wrong. Under these conditions, where it is unclear what is or isn’t part of the assessment, you have to be clever, calm, self-sufficient, subtle, and quick enough on your feet to withstand the pressure designed to break your cover in order to succeed.
After being accepted as a Mossad cadet, those traits are stressed and tested even further during training. By the time you’re approved to work in the field, Cohen notes, you’ve proven that you can handle danger, interrogation, and physical stress.
Being able to perform under intense pressure was indispensable for him to work as a case officer in the field.
“Everything is a risk from the moment you take off from Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv to the instant you plant your feet back on home soil,” Cohen writes.
During that time, to accomplish the mission, Mossad operatives have to adopt alternative roles that must be airtight. For an extended period of time, they cannot be themselves.
“Playing a different person is what you do for a living. You swap roles like an actor.” And just like in improv, where acting is reacting, the former Mossad chief notes that it is imperative for agents to not just be in control of their own emotions but to have a grasp on those of their targets as well.
As a case officer, one of Cohen’s primary areas of focus was human intelligence, or HUMINT, a field where a lot of the work is related to turning targets into assets.
Target courtship process
In order to accomplish this, a case officer must understand his target on a profound level; everything from his interests, likes and dislikes, to what motivates him in life. What follows is a sort of courtship process. The agent forms a relationship with the target that grows closer and closer, involving them bit by bit in the mission at hand. Ultimately, the target will understand that he is working with the Mossad.It’s an inherently risky endeavor, and it’s not always successful. At the moment of truth, when the Mossad agent reveals who he is, the target may pull back.
Being a Mossad agent attempting to penetrate the ranks of groups like the IRGC, Hezbollah, or a Palestinian terror organization, the risks associated with failure are severe. It is a job rife with danger, but one on which Israel’s national security relies.
As an agent, Cohen emphasizes, you must know everything and trust no one. Writing about the international intelligence community, he puts the need for distrust succinctly: “If you are inside the Mossad, you are my colleague. If you are outside the organization, you are regarded as my enemy.”
On the other hand, while the agent must be the phantom in plain sight – the passenger on the Metro, the shopper in the mall, the stranger you see but don’t register or know anything about – it is also vital that the operative know everything, Cohen reiterates.
“We have a saying in intelligence circles that you don’t know what you don’t know, so you have to know everything, or know that you don’t know everything,” he writes, noting that when he was Mossad director, he lived by the tenet that ignorance was something inexcusable.
Cohen writes about a perception that those who want to harm Israel should have: “We are the Mossad. We know you. We know where you live. We know your apartment number. We know your car. We know your movements. We know what you are working on – so be aware.”
Cohen and his interactions with world leaders
Cohen details how, in his roles as Mossad director and national security adviser, as well as afterward, his position and expertise brought him in contact with a number of international leaders and security establishment officials.Among those are former US presidents, as well as the current one. Cohen reveals that for President Donald Trump, whom he lauds throughout the book, he undertook a mission at his “personal request.” He doesn’t go into details about what the operation entailed, but he notes that it was approved by Netanyahu and that it was successful.
Cohen offers consistent praise for Trump, celebrating the American leader as an “unorthodox peacemaker” for his success in various peace deals, such as the signing of the Abraham Accords. He also applauds Trump’s decision to back out of the 2015 Iran deal.
In mentioning the other two American presidents he worked with, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Cohen refrains from criticism, but his praise is certainly less forthcoming.
With Obama, he describes a somewhat colder relationship than the one he had with the Trump administration.
He writes that in a 2015 conversation he had with Obama, Cohen warned the then-American president against the Iran Deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In response to his warning, Cohen recalls, Obama told him, “Yossi, you are so wrong.”
In a nearly identical conversation with Trump the following year, he recalls that Trump told him, “You’re so right – it’s the worst deal ever.”
Cohen describes his relationship with president Biden as somewhere in between. He notes that he “unequivocally” views the former president as a friend of Israel, and adds that Biden frequently quoted David Ben-Gurion.
Additionally, the Biden administration, Cohen emphasizes, did support Israel, pointing to the THAAD antimissile battery the Americans sent following Iran’s 2024 missile attacks. Nevertheless, there were areas of discordance.
“So, we are best friends, but we may have disagreements,” Cohen recalls Biden telling him.
The former Mossad chief describes good relationships with other world leaders beyond Israel’s closest ally.
One of those is the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), whose wisdom Cohen says he values. Notably, in a November interview with Fox News, Cohen predicted that the Saudis would “be in line” for negotiations for peace.
In the book, he writes, “I have great faith in MBS as a pivotal figure in the region. I have found him to be tough, but fair, perceptive, and pragmatic.”
Writing of an interaction with the Saudi leader, Cohen recounts, “I once asked him, at a pre-dawn meal, to expand on his solution to the Palestinian problem. ‘What is yours?’ he replied, with a knowing smile.”
The same practicality is a trait he says is mirrored in Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Cohen says that when he first met the Russian president at the Kremlin, he joked that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t need to introduce him to Putin because the Russian president already knew everything about Cohen – a reference to their shared intelligence background.
Putin laughed in response, Cohen writes, setting the tone for their professional relationship. Given their shared background, the former Mossad head notes, the Russian president referred to him as his kollega, his colleague.Having met with Putin a number of times, including in a couple of private meetings, Cohen likens him to a chess grandmaster, always thinking a number of moves ahead.
The former Mossad director presents a dual vision of Putin. On the one hand, Cohen assesses him as “a great listener” and skilled negotiator, thinker, and leader who is “far stronger and infinitely smarter” than his Ukrainian foe and counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.
On the other hand, he slams Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, calling it a “ruinous, nationalistic war.”
Overall, Cohen’s attitude toward Putin seems to be captured in recollections he shared from his days working with the Obama administration.
During one visit to the Obama White House after a meeting with Putin, he writes, then-national security adviser Susan Rice sourly asked him, “How are your Russian friends, Yossi?”
Cohen responded, “They are not my friends. I work with them to improve Israel’s defense.”
Like a tightrope walker
The former Mossad head acted like a tightrope walker, balancing his apparent professional admiration for his Russian “kollega” – and desire to not burn bridges with one of the most powerful world leaders – with a recognition that he is a leader who continually chooses to assault his neighbors – in part because he knows the world will not militarily force him to stop.Between righteous condemnation and good-faith negotiation, Cohen writes, he chose the latter because ultimately, Russia is a critical player in the Middle East, particularly in Syria. Therefore, he emphasizes, Israel must be able to work with Moscow in order to secure its regional interests and meet its security requirements.
The former Mossad chief’s book is an adventure into the shadows of the clandestine services, a journey that shaped him and framed much of his future.
What new chapters he may write going forward are yet to be seen.