Mossad agents reportedly infiltrated Tehran’s traffic camera system, using it to monitor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, his security detail, and other high-ranking Iranian officials for an extended period before his assassination.
The Israeli intelligence agency managed to access nearly all of the capital’s surveillance cameras, which Iran employs extensively to oversee both regime dissidents and its citizens. This allowed them to track significant bodyguard movements.
According to reports, images captured by these cameras were sent back to locations in Tel Aviv and southern Israel. This enabled Mossad to gather detailed intelligence on the bodyguards’ residences, work routines, and the officials they were assigned to protect.
A particularly advantageous camera view allowed Mossad to monitor where the bodyguards parked their personal vehicles upon entering the Supreme Leader’s compound on Pasteur Street in central Tehran.
This cyber-infiltration was part of a prolonged intelligence operation, which culminated in Khamenei’s assassination on Saturday. Israeli jets, having flown directly from military bases, launched approximately 30 precision-guided munitions at his residence.
The Supreme Leader was discovered amid the debris after the daytime airstrike, an operation aimed at destabilizing the Iranian 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.
Smoke billowing into the sky above Khamenei’s compound on Pasteur Street in the heart of Tehran
Khamenei, who presided over a brutal regime which slaughtered thousands of his own citizens, repressed women, and funded terror organisations, was killed on Saturday morning
Israel struck and destroyed the Ayatollah’s compound (pictured) in an early morning raid
‘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 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.
Mossad operatives hacked into Tehran’s traffic camera network to spy on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Tehran has been pummelled by US and Israeli air strikes since Saturday, when they killed Ayatollah Khamenei
A man carries an injured woman at the site of US-Israeli airstrikes in Tehran, Iran, on Monday
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 neighboring 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’.
