There is no question about it: Roman Gofman has taken David Barnea's Mossad by storm since taking over the spy agency on June 2.

In some ways this is more the rule than the exception.

Meir Dagan (2002-2011), Yossi Cohen (2016-2021), and Barnea (2021-June 2 of this year) all either fired top people in the clandestine agency or developed so many new programs that a bunch of top officials left in protest.

And yet all three Mossad chiefs are by and large seen as successes.

So this means that significant change when a new Mossad director enters office is a virtual certainty.

Some of the change is style, with each new chief having their own idiosyncrasies about how they prefer to work and what they personally seek to focus on the most.

Other changes have to do with the speed at which the world changes and needing to account for technological and geopolitical developments which create a need to reorganize agency structures and resources.

So what is different about Gofman breaking some of the former chiefs structures and projects, and promoting some new people?

First of all, Gofman is the first outsider to take over the Mossad since Dagan. Meaning from 2011 until now, the last three chiefs, including Tamir Pardo (2011-1016), were all Mossad insiders and more specifically had served as deputy chiefs.

Not only is he an outsider, but there was an unusual High Court of Justice petition to block his appointment, which was supported by Barnea himself, by Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, and by vetting committee head and former chief justice Asher Grunis.

Gofman beat the petition and has the full powers now of the Mossad director, which are considerable.

But that entire process has presented him to the public as a sort of super outsider, and also one who not only owes nothing to his predecessor Barnea, but likely has plenty of motivation to bulldoze anyone in the Mossad who agreed with Barnea's opposition to Gofman.

This is also how Gofman is presented in a Maariv report on Monday, where it revealed for the first time that he brought in five outsiders to take over and dominate existing internal Mossad officials.

It is possible that Gofman's approach may be more aggressive in bringing in outsiders to help him alter aspects of the agency's trajectory, but The Jerusalem Post understands that each of the above former Mossad chiefs also had their own team of outsiders who they consulted when they took charge.

Possibly, there is a difference in that some past chiefs may have advised with their outsiders outside of the physical office space of the Mossad, and Gofman has brought his advisers in.

Maariv portrays this also as a potential security risk.

But these outside advisors are persons with strong security backgrounds and Gofman would likely say that his approach just shows that he is being transparent about the involvement of his outside advisers.

All of that though has to do with the personalities themselves.

When it comes down to fateful moves, such as how best to topple the regime running the Islamic Republic of Iran, does Gofman see the challenge differently than Barnea did?

Both Gofman and Barnea in their incoming and outgoing speeches over June 1-2 stated that this was their primary goal and that it was achievable.

On June 4, the Post reported that, stunningly, Israel was prepared to provide the Kurds not only with a no fly zone, but with a continuous aerial firepower envelope to help them advance against any Iranian force which would have tried to assemble to block their path forward.

Weapons which the Kurds received both from the US and the Mossad – many of which were "re-tasked" after the IDF captured the weapons from Hamas in Gaza or from Hezbollah in Lebanon, and training they received from Israelis, made them fully ready to go.

There is a debate as to whether US President Donald Trump was convinced to veto the operation more by some of his own top officials or by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Even within Israel there were officials who doubted that it would work, but Mossad officials close to Barnea said that most of the agencies' operations require faith, and the knowledge that the spymasters have pulled off a long range of operations which have boggled the imagination.

Israeli sources have accused American officials within the White House, some of whom have called such allegations false, with leaking the plan to Erdogan to help the Turkish president get to Trump in time to stop the operation before it could be rolled out.

The Mossad also had prepared a social media campaign and had already undertaken many actions in conjunction with the IDF to weaken many aspects of the Islamic regime.

Maariv reported on Monday that Gofman views all of these Mossad efforts as having failed and is prepared to transform parts of the agency to take on some new strategies to accomplish the mission.

The Post understands that the Maariv report's portrayal of Gofman as viewing all of Barnea's prior work as a failure is oversimplified.

Rather, Gofman may bring new strategies to the table, but may also adopt many existing strategies to marry the mix of ideas together for a global approach to toppling the regime which he is still in the earliest stages of formulating.

To date, foreign reports have mentioned former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a possible candidate, but no Israeli sources have wanted to discuss the subject, and it is unclear after years out of power whether Ahmadinejad could have led armed regime forces onto the side of the protesters.

While some may want to simplify Gofman as an anti-Barnea because of their public duel before the High Court, the new Mossad chief has moved on from that dispute and would present himself as solely focused on the mission.

He will neither toss out Barnea's projects where he views them as useful, yet neither will he hold on to any prior project out of any direct sense of loyalty or kinship with Barnea, given that there is none between the two men.

The Maariv report also seeks to categorize some of the other alterations Gofman may be making in the Mossad's mission set.

For example, the report stated that Gofman will place a greater emphasis on combating delegitimization.

However, multiple sources have noted that Cohen and Barnea both invested significant resources in combating delegitimization and that Gofman did not think he was reinventing the wheel here, though he may add his own imprint on the efforts.

Further, reports about Gofman canceling existing operations were viewed as exaggerations or building a mountain out of a molehill of a small number of minor issues.

Instead, Gofman's view is that he is simply carrying out a standard organization-wide review upon entering office, which will eventually include larger changes, and has started with some smaller changes, but not that anything radical has taken place to date.

One sign of this ironically is Gofman's deputy.

True, Gofman pushed out "A" who Barnea had appointed into the deputy chief role only a few months ago.

But he did not bring an outsider into that role, but rather a different "A" who has also been in the Mossad for around a decade and a half.

Some may object that he was promoted over some who have been around for 5-10 years longer than him, but in the past, Dagan did this with Cohen,

After all of the above, Gofman's main current wish is to be left out of the media's crosshairs for a period of months so that he can throw himself into a role which is complex enough on its own, especially as the Trump administration continues to alter the rules of the game.

Still, whether during friendly or less friendly US administrations, the Mossad has always found a way for over 25 years to, whether publicly or covertly, influence key events in Iran, whether it be on the nuclear threat or other issues.