The British newspaper Financial Times has revealed detailed findings in an extensive report about what it says were the events that preceded the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the capital, Tehran. According to the report, the operation was not a sudden military strike but the result of a long term intelligence and technological penetration that lasted for years.
According to the report, intelligence services in both Israel and the United States succeeded in building what it described as a comprehensive picture of the lifestyle patterns and movements of Iran’s leadership long before the attack was carried out.
One of the most serious aspects of the breach, the report stated, was that Israeli intelligence managed to gain control over the majority of Tehran’s traffic surveillance cameras. Their video feeds were encrypted and transmitted directly to servers inside Tel Aviv, enabling detailed monitoring of the movements of officials and their security escorts.
Unit 8200 Algorithms
The report explained that these surveillance cameras allowed those carrying out the operation to track security guards and drivers close to Iranian officials as they arrived at the heavily secured Pasteur Street complex.
One of the cameras also provided a particularly sensitive viewing angle that helped identify the locations where security personnel routinely parked their vehicles.
The newspaper reported that Unit 8200, part of Israel’s military intelligence apparatus, used advanced algorithms to analyse the data. This reportedly added detailed information to the personal files of the security guards, including their residential addresses, work schedules and the routes they travelled each day.
According to the report, this allowed intelligence services to determine with high precision the time when Khamenei would be present in his office on Saturday morning.
The report added that the operation did not rely solely on technological tools. United States intelligence reportedly confirmed the presence of what it described as a “human source” who helped monitor the movements of the Iranian leader and verify the timing of his presence in the office, as well as who accompanied him that day.
The newspaper also reported that what it described as a “digital isolation” operation was carried out shortly before the attack. Components within nearby cellular coverage towers around the target location were reportedly disabled.
This caused the phones of the protection team to appear constantly busy when attempts were made to call them, preventing any warnings from being transmitted or emergency measures from being taken before the missiles struck.
The report said this step was carried out in coordination between Israeli intelligence and the United States Central Intelligence Agency in order to ensure complete surprise.
Precision Missiles and Political Decision
During the attack, which was carried out in broad daylight in order to achieve what the newspaper described as “tactical surprise”, Israeli aircraft reportedly used precision missiles known as Sparrow.
These missiles are capable of striking small targets from distances exceeding one thousand kilometres, allowing the aircraft to remain outside the range of Iranian air defence systems.
The newspaper quoted informed sources as saying that the decision to carry out the assassination was “primarily political”. According to the report, both Washington and Tel Aviv believed that targeting the Iranian leader early in the course of the war represented the most realistic option.
Sources cited in the report suggested that delaying such an operation could have allowed him to relocate to fortified underground shelters that existing munitions would struggle to penetrate.
According to the report’s account, the operation therefore combined cyber infiltration, human intelligence gathering and long range military planning in what it described as one of the most sensitive operations in the history of the confrontation between Iran and its adversaries.
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