The appointment of Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman, the prime minister’s military secretary, as the next Mossad chief, signals a final nail in the coffin of the prior intelligence establishment.
When Gofman takes office on June 2, both the Mossad and Shin Bet will be run by outsiders who will start on day one being at loggerheads with their predecessors and with much of the establishment of their agencies.
This is exactly what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted, but it is far from clear what results this paradigm shift will reap.
After the October 7, 2023, failure, Netanyahu wanted to replace all of the defense and intelligence chiefs.
IDF intelligence chief Aharon Haliva resigned in the summer of 2024, IDF chief Herzi Halevi resigned in March 2025, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar resigned in June 2025, and only outgoing Mossad chief David Barnea will manage to serve his full five-year term, ending in June.
Part of the decision was political. If Netanyahu forced other top defense officials out, he could more easily lay the blame on them.
New players in top spots
In addition, Netanyahu has wanted new players in top spots who felt less institutional loyalty to their agencies, so that they would be more loyal to him, both on policy and when policy and politics would overlap.
Some of it was principled: if the entire Israeli defense and intelligence establishment missed Hamas’s invasion, heads needed to roll to make sure that new blood and ideas would refresh the pool of ideas.
Barnea partially made it to the end of his term because the Mossad does not have responsibility for Gaza. Still, Netanyahu may find it convenient to try to saddle him with responsibility for regime change not occurring in Iran during the current war, if regime change does not occur.
His predecessors openly opposed Shin Bet Director David Zini, so he owes them nothing and has very little of a relationship with them.
His Mossad predecessors did not oppose Gofman as loudly, but from the start, former chief Yossi Cohen bashed him, and everyone knew that Barnea had backed senior Mossad official “A” for the job.
Barnea did not initially loudly oppose Gofman, but when the ethics vetting committee of former chief justice Asher Grunis called on Barnea to testify, he called Gofman’s ethics into question in a way that will likely cancel any real relationship the two might have had.
Some critics of Netanyahu are holding out hope that Barnea’s criticism, along with criticism by Grunis (he had issues with Gofman, even though his committee endorsed Gofman), and anticipated criticism by Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, may lead the High Court of Justice to disqualify him.
There is almost zero chance of this happening.
Even with Zini, despite major legal issues involving Netanyahu and Qatargate, the High Court conditioned Zini’s approval on a technical legal formula, but the justices ultimately greenlit him.
With Gofman, the main issue is that he likely mishandled a 17-year-old minor in a gray-area IDF intelligence operation, and then probably was not entirely forthcoming about his role in the affair.
The IDF censured him for his actions at the time.
But subsequently, current IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir has fully supported Gofman for the job.
That pretty much seals Gofman’s getting a stamp of approval, since Zamir is the ultimate IDF interpreter of whether the censuring incident should disqualify Gofman or not for the top spymaster role.
There are plenty of other concerns, such as his lack of English fluency and lack of an intelligence operations background.
But he is a member of the IDF high command, has been exposed to a world of intelligence as Netanyahu’s top military advisor, speaks fluent Russian, and there have been other former Mossad chiefs who came in as outsiders and succeeded, though the last one, Meir Dagan, was 15 years ago.
All of this paints a picture of a revolution in the lineup of those running the Mossad and the Shin Bet, and in Netanyahu's plans.
Yet, maybe more significant is not Netanyahu, but that Gofman himself is a rugged individualist, is willing to rock the boat, and the attacks on him from his predecessors, as with Zini, have freed him from almost any need to care about what other Mossad colleagues think of his new policies.
As a middle-management colonel years ago, Gofman publicly challenged then-IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot, saying the military was not being aggressive enough about future threats and was kicking the can down the road too often.
Every new Mossad chief changes things, closes old departments, opens new ones, and promotes some mid-level commanders to replace portions of the Mossad high command.
But Gofman may go further in these aspects than his predecessors.
Whether these changes will undermine the Mossad’s effectiveness and its separation from political concerns (as critics fear) or take the agency to new heights of boldness and performance (as fans hope) will play out in the months and years to come.