Israel's attacks against Iran so far have been characterized by three factors: speed, coordinated actions at various levels and high precision. At the heart of this strategy, which dealt a humiliating blow to the mullahs' regime, is the large-scale activity of the foreign intelligence service Mossad. It has a wide network of secret collaborators, which has been operating against the regime in Iran for years and consists almost entirely of Iranian citizens, writes the German public media ARD.
Secret drone bases
The Israeli newspaper "Haaretz" and other international media outlets reported that a secret base for drones, previously smuggled into the country, was set up in Iran itself in the run-up to the ongoing operation. The precision-guided weapons were allegedly positioned near Iranian surface-to-air missile systems and used against them at the start of Friday's offensive.
In this way, Iran's air defenses were significantly weakened before they were even activated. In addition, precision weapons were deployed near Iran's missile silos and air defense positions using mobile installations, ARD also reported.
Targeted elimination of key figures
In addition, on the eve and shortly after the start of the first wave of attacks on Friday, key figures from the Revolutionary Guard and Iran's nuclear program were targeted, including Chief of General Staff Mohammad Bagheri, commander of the powerful Revolutionary Guard Hossein Salami, as well as Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and one of the most important advisors to spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also announced the assassination of the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' intelligence service, Mohammad Qassemi. There is also talk in Iran that the head of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, has also been killed.
Did Trump stop an assassination attempt on Ali Khamenei?
According to US government sources, US President Donald Trump opposed the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which also appears to have been prepared by the Mossad. "We have learned that the Israelis were planning to attack the Supreme Leader of Iran", a government official told Agence France-Presse on Sunday, requesting anonymity.
Several US media outlets, citing their own government sources, also reported the existence of such a plan, and that it was rejected by the US. Since Saturday, information has been circulating on Iranian social media that Khamenei and his family may have already left the Islamic Republic. Russia, Venezuela and Pakistan are the alleged final destinations. The veracity of these claims cannot be verified at this stage, ARD specifies.
Other attacks on Iranian leaders
In recent years, the Mossad has repeatedly targeted people in Iran for assassination. The most impressive was the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in July last year. The then head of the terrorist organization Hamas was in Tehran for the funeral of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi when he was killed in a targeted explosion. Months later, Defense Minister Israel Katz said that his country was behind this assassination, as well as the assassination of some scientists linked to Iran's nuclear program. The most famous of these was the physicist who led the program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was shot by a remote-controlled machine gun in 2020.
Israel has never publicly commented on the accusation that it was responsible for the attacks on nuclear scientists in Iran, but the then head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, made it clear that Fakhrizadeh had long been in the sights of the secret services, the German publication recalls.
Infiltrated secret services
A comment by former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last fall shows how deeply the Mossad has penetrated official Iranian state structures in recent years: he told CNN-Türk at the time that even the head of a department in the Iranian secret services that was created to pursue Mossad agents in Iran also turned out to be an Israeli agent. In addition, the department had about twenty "moles" who provided Israel with information about Tehran's nuclear program.
According to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, in 2018 Israel received tens of thousands of pages of data proving that Iran had concealed parts of its nuclear program even before the signing of the 2015 agreement. A former Mossad chief confirmed at the time that the information was stored in secret vaults in Tehran, from where it was delivered with the help of more than a dozen Iranian agents. It is alleged that it was this information that led US President Donald Trump to unilaterally withdraw from the nuclear agreement, ARD writes.
Author: Ulrich Pick ARD