Eliezer Tsafrir, a senior Mossad and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) official whose career spanned Israel’s formative decades and who served as the last Mossad station chief in Tehran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, died on Sunday at the age of 92. Known as “Geizi,” Tsafrir’s intelligence career began during the War of Independence (1948-49) and extended through the Cold War-era Middle East, placing him at the center of some of Israel’s most consequential clandestine operations, particularly in Iraqi Kurdistan, and Lebanon.
Nowhere was that more evident than where Tsafrir served during the collapse of the Shah’s regime and the rise of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini – witnessing firsthand the moment one of Israel’s most important regional relationships imploded. Born in Tiberias in 1932 to a Kurdish Jewish family that had emigrated overland from northern Iraq via Syria during the Ottoman period, Tsafrir became involved in security activity at a young age.
