Mossad operatives hacked into Tehran’s traffic camera network to spy on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his bodyguards and other top Iranian officials for years before his assassination, according to a report.
Israel gained access to almost all the city’s cameras, which are used extensively by Iran to spy on regime opponents and its own population, and tracked the movements of key bodyguards.
Images were said to be transmitted back to Tel Aviv and southern Israel, allowing Mossad to develop intimate knowledge on the guards’ addresses, work schedules and who they were assigned to protect.
One camera angle proved especially helpful and allowed agents to track where bodyguards parked their personal cars when arriving at the Supreme Leader’s compound on Pasteur Street in the heart of Tehran.
The hacks were part of a years-long intelligence campaign which eventually led to the killing of Khamenei on Saturday after jets, which had travelled directly from Israeli military bases for hours, fired up to 30 precision munitions on his complex.
The Supreme Leader’s body was found in rubble after the daylight bombing raid aimed at toppling the regime.
Khamenei presided over a brutal regime for 36 years which slaughtered thousands of his own citizens, repressed women and funded terrorist proxies Hamas and Hezbollah which seek to eliminate Israel.
When Israel located Khamenei on Saturday morning, they disrupted around a dozen mobile phone towers near Pasteur Street, making phones appear busy when called and preventing his security from receiving possible warnings.
‘We knew Tehran like we know Jerusalem,’ an Israeli intelligence official told the Financial Times.
‘And when you know [a place] as well as you know the street you grew up on, you notice a single thing that’s out of place.’
The CIA also had a human source who provided vital intelligence, according to the newspaper.
Combined with Israeli AI tools and algorithms which sifted through a vast mountain of data on Iran’s leadership and their movements, the source allowed them to trace Khamenei to the meeting where he was hit.
Once Israel and the US became aware of where Khamenei was holding his meeting, they decided they had to act.
During a war the Ayatollah would be shifted underground into bomb resistant bunkers and acting early gave them the element of surprise.
Mossad officials planned the attack for months but decided to act immediately once they confirmed his location.
They used traffic cameras which showed Khamenei’s meeting was on schedule, hacked phone networks, and the CIA source on the ground.
During the strike, senior Iranian national security officials were in another part of the building.
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Two high-level military leaders – Rear Adm. Ali Shamkhani, and commander of the IRGC Maj. Gen. Mohammad Pakpour – and Khamenei’s daughter, grandchild, daughter-in-law and son-in-law were also obliterated in the Tehran strikes.
The wife of Iran’s Supreme Leader, 79-year-old Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, was also killed. As was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Iran has since retaliated, furiously carrying out strikes across its neighbouring Gulf states, with explosions in Qatar, Israel, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
The war spread further on Monday, with Israel exchanging fire with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, US jets being downed in Kuwait and Qatar taking out Iranian fighter planes.
But on Monday night Donald Trump warned Iran that the ‘big one’ was coming as he said he was not afraid to put boots on the ground if needed.
Mr Trump estimated the conflict would last ‘four weeks or so’, but boasted that US and Israeli forces were ‘way ahead of schedule’.
The US President added that soldiers would be sent ‘if they were necessary’.
