Israeli intelligence agencies hacked almost all traffic cameras in Tehran and used them for years to prepare the assassination of Iranʼs Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
This is reported by the Financial Times, citing sources among current and former Israeli intelligence officers.
One of the cameras allowed them to identify where the guards of high-ranking Iranian officials liked to park their personal cars. The footage also helped them compile a dossier on these guards: their addresses, their hours of duty, the routes they took to get to work, and, most importantly, who they typically protected and transported.
Israel was also able to disable individual components of about a dozen mobile phone towers near Khameneiʼs residence, preventing his security guards from receiving warning on the day of the strike.
Financial Times
A current Israeli intelligence officer told reporters that long before the bombs fell, "we knew Tehran like Jerusalem".
The detailed intelligence picture of the Iranian capital was the result of painstaking data collection by specialists from Unit 8200, which deals with electronic intelligence, and agents recruited by the Mossad.
When the CIA and Israel learned that Khamenei would be meeting in his Pasteur office on the morning of February 28, the opportunity to eliminate him and much of Iranʼs top leadership seemed particularly convenient. It was believed that once the war was fully underway, it would be much harder to track them down, as the Iranians would be hiding in underground bunkers, out of reach of Israeli bombs.
If Israel learned about this meeting through its electronic intelligence, the US had something more specific — a human source, the FTʼs interlocutors told us.
War in the Middle East
On the morning of Saturday, February 28, the United States and Israel began attacking Iran. The Israelis called the operation “Lion’s Roar”, the United States called it “Epic Fury”. In the evening, it became known about the death of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and about 40 other senior Iranian officials. They died in Khamenei’s residence in the first minutes of the war.
Iran responded by attacking American bases in the Persian Gulf countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE. Iran also attacked Israel with ballistic missiles. Some Iranian drones and missiles targeted infrastructure and residential areas in Arab countries. For example, an Iranian drone hit the largest oil refinery in Saudi Arabia. A fire broke out there, and the plant suspended operations.
Israel also attacked the Lebanese pro-Iranian Hezbollah, which retaliated and launched a ground operation.
Ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key route through which about 20% of the worldʼs oil and gas exports pass, has almost ground to a halt. Markets reacted instantly, with oil, gas and precious metals rising in price.
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