CNN
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The spy was already on the ground in enemy territory before Israel launched an unprecedented wave of strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities and top military leaders this week.
According to Israeli security officials, Mossad, the Israeli intelligence reporting agency, smuggled weapons into Iran prior to the strike and used weapons to target Iran’s defense.
Officials said Israel has established a base for launching explosive drones in Iran, and the drones were later used to target missile launchers near Tehran. Precision weapons were also smuggled and used to target ground-air-inter-air missile systems, clearing the way that the Israeli Air Force would carry out more than 100 strikes on more than 200 aircraft in the early hours of local time.
The plan to negate Iran’s defenses appears to have been effective. Israel said all aircraft are safely returning from the waves of the first strike, appearing to show Israel’s air superiority in some countries hundreds of miles away.
Information gathered by Iranian Mossad gave the Israeli Air Force the ability to target senior Iranian commanders and scientists.
In an incredibly unusual move, Mossad releases video from several operations, indicating that he is attacking a drone that looks like an unsuspecting missile launcher.
It is the latest operation to show how deeply Israeli intelligence agency, including the Mossad, has penetrated some of Iran’s closest secrets. This operation makes the Mossad seem almost unstoppable in Iran, allowing them to hit some of the highest ranked officials and most sensitive sites.
“Mossad has been treating Iran like a playground for years,” said Holly Dougles, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute and curator of the Iranistic newsletter.
“From assassinating top nuclear scientists to obstructing Iran’s nuclear facilities, Israel has proven many times since its first The-Tat strike in April 2024, it has always been dominant in this now open and unfolding shadow war.”
Israeli security sources say the latest operations require commando forces operating deep within Tehran and across the country, avoiding detection from Iranian security and intelligence agency. Sources said the Mossad team targeted air defense missiles, ballistic missiles and missile launchers when the attacks began from the Israeli Air Force.
According to a second Israeli security source, Operation Mossad has been around for several years, and it involved both efforts to gather intelligence reports and deployment of the Mossad Command, deep within the enemy’s boundaries.
Security sources say that some of the Mossad Command forces operated in the Iranian capital itself.
In addition to drone bases established by Mossad long before Wednesday’s attack, the Mossad Command deployed a “precision guided weapons system” near Iran’s missile air defense system. In the second operation, weapons mounted on sophisticated vehicles were deployed to target other Iranian defense systems.
Operation Mossad also included the assassination of top Iranian officials.
Israel demonstrates the ability of Mossad to operate almost indemnified in Iran in the past.
Since the early 2010s, Iran has accused Israel of running an assassination campaign against the country’s nuclear scientists. When Israel said in 2015 that it could not be held responsible for “the life expectancy of Iranian nuclear scientists,” former defense minister Moshe Yaaron tacitly admitted the targeted killing.
Between 2007 and 2012, Israel is said to have carried out five secret assassinations, almost all in Tehran, through remotely controlled bombings or remotely controlled machine guns. Only one of Iran’s leading nuclear scientists survived the assassination attempt, Ferreidon Abbasi.
Last month, Abbasi told Iranian state media that attacks on production sites had little impact on the timeline of the bomb development.
Abbasi was one of the scientists killed in an early Israeli attack in Tehran.
Mossad’s actions were soon much more public.
In early 2018, Israel stole Iran’s nuclear archives from Tehran and displayed the Intelligence Election coup on live broadcasts from Jerusalem. Speaking in English, Netanyahu showed off his archives. What he said was a display of 55,000 pages of Iran’s nuclear information and a disc he said was 55,000 files.
Iran tried to dismiss Netanyahu’s comments as “childish” and “laughter,” but the plunder of the archives showed confidence in Israel’s ability to function in Tehran. The operation required a massive plan and knowledge of archive location and security, which led the first Trump administration to withdraw from the original nuclear agreement with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Israel has not yet been done.
The assassination of Fakhrizadeh, one of the nation’s top nuclear scientists, does not provide evidence of that. Israel has not denied or claimed liability. “class=”image__dam-img image__dam-img-loading “onload = ‘this.classlist.remove(‘ image__dam-img– loading ‘)’ onerror=”imageLoaderror(this) “height=”2000″width=”3000
In November 2020, Israel assassinated Mohsen Faklizadeh, the leading nuclear scientist in Iran. He was in a bulletproof vehicle traveling with his wife. Fakhrizadeh’s car had moved to the convoy along with three security vehicles when he fired. Iranian state media said a remotely controlled machine gun fired on a long-time target in Israel.
Operations that Israel has not publicly recognized were carried out with incredible accuracy and demonstrated a deep knowledge of Faklizadeh’s patterns of life.
Still, Iran has proven unable to improve despite the fact that he has not been able to stop the Mossad.
Ram Ben Barak, former deputy director of the Mossad, said the organization’s continued success was “due to a highly hated regime and is hated by most people, allowing for intelligent penetration on the one hand, while on the other hand, it has the sophisticated professionalism of Israeli intelligence officials.”
After the start of the war in Gaza, Israel assassinated Hamas political leader Ismail Hanie, in the heart of Tehran. Sources familiar with the matter said Israel planted an explosive device in the guesthouse where Honeye is known to be staying. The bomb was hidden in the room for two months before the targeted killing, and exploded remotely as Honey was in the room.