Israeli spies hacked nearly every traffic camera in Tehran for years in order to monitor the movements of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an unprecedented intelligence-gathering campaign, according to a report.
Officials surveilled highly trained and loyal security guards, bodyguards and drivers of senior Iranian officials to pick up on their “pattern of life”, the Financial Times reported.
This real-time data, including from cameras focused on Khamenei’s personal compound, was encrypted and transmitted back to servers in Tel Aviv and southern Israel.
They were able to determine where the guards would park their cars via an infiltrated security camera facing the Ayatollah’s home.
“We knew Tehran like we know Jerusalem,” one current Israeli intelligence official told the newspaper.
“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 plan to kill the Ayatollah had been in place for months and was adjusted when it emerged that the supreme leader would be attending a meeting in-person at home, officials said.
On the day of the assassination, the hacked traffic cameras came into use, as Israeli intelligence officials confirmed that Khamenei’s meeting was running on time.
The Israeli military said that the strikes were carried out during the day to give the element of shock and “allowed Israel to achieve tactical surprise for the second time, despite heavy Iranian preparedness”.
Mobile phone service and communications networks were disrupted in an effort to leave Iran “dazed and confused”, according to General Dan Caine, the chief of joint staffs.
“Coordinated space and cyber operations effectively disrupted communications and sensor networks across the area of responsibility, leaving the adversary without the ability to see, coordinate, or respond effectively,” he said.
President Donald Trump said that the Iranian leader “was eliminated along with his inner circle as they gathered for breakfast”, in an interview with Fox News in the aftermath of the attack.
US officials told Pentagon staff on Sunday that there were no signs that Iran would attack first.
But secretary of state Marco Rubio admitted on Monday that the US had launched strikes “preemptively” after they were informed that Israel planned to launch attacks first.
“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” he told reporters. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
