To kill Khamenei, Israeli intelligence hacked Tehran traffic cameras and disabled mobile phone towers
Mossad had been monitoring high-ranking Iranian officials for several years, hacking almost all CCTV cameras in Tehran. Financial Times reports on the details of the operation that led to the death of Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
Ali Khamenei. Photo: AP Photo / Vahid Salemi, File
As Financial Times reminds us, Iran became a priority target for Israel back in 2001, by order of the then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Since then, the countries have been engaged in an incessant covert war. Israel conducted operations against Iran's nuclear program, assassinated scientists and military personnel, and acted against Iranian allies in the region. In response, Iran hacked cameras in Jerusalem, phones of relatives of Israeli security forces, and even bribed Israeli citizens to collect data.
However, after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Israel changed its strategy. While assassinating heads of state was previously considered taboo, Israeli leadership has now moved to more aggressive actions.
As former Mossad officer Sima Shine noted, after the successful pager operations against Hezbollah and the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Israeli intelligence agencies' appetite grew, which ultimately led to the strike against Ayatollah Khamenei himself.
Technology in the service of intelligence
According to FT, Israelis had been observing for years how bodyguards and drivers of Iranian officials arrived in the Pasteur Street area of Tehran. It was in this complex that the 86-year-old Ali Khamenei was killed on Saturday, February 28.
Two sources familiar with the operation told the publication that almost all traffic cameras in Tehran had been hacked for several years, and encrypted images from them were transmitted to servers in Tel Aviv and southern Israel.
However, one of the cameras had a particularly good angle: it allowed identifying where security personnel liked to park their personal cars, and opened up the possibility of observing the daily life of this closed, heavily guarded facility.
Sophisticated information processing algorithms complemented dossiers on security personnel with details such as residential addresses, duty schedules, commute routes, and most importantly, who exactly they usually accompanied and transported. This way, what intelligence officers call a «lifestyle pattern» was built.
Ali Khamenei (third from left) with President Masoud Pezeshkian (first from left), Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and Judiciary Chief Mohsen Ejei reading the Quran during Friday prayers. Photo: Iranian Leader's Press Office — Handout / Getty Images
These capabilities were part of a multi-year intelligence campaign that paved the way for the assassination of the Ayatollah. Real-time operational data — one of hundreds of different streams of intelligence information — was not the only way Israel and the CIA were able to pinpoint the exact time Khamenei would be in his office on Saturday morning and who would be with him.
As the publication notes, Israel also managed to disrupt the operation of individual components of about a dozen mobile phone towers near Pasteur Street. As a result, phones appeared busy when calls were attempted, preventing Khamenei's guards from receiving possible warnings.
«We knew Tehran as well as we knew Jerusalem. And when you know a place as well as the street you grew up on, you notice every little thing that is out of place,» FT quotes an active Israeli intelligence officer.
The detailed intelligence picture of the Iranian capital was the result of painstaking data collection. It involved Israel's electronic intelligence unit «Unit 8200,» Mossad's agent network, and military intelligence, which processed massive amounts of information daily.
Israel used a mathematical method of social network analysis to process billions of units of information. This allowed for the identification of unexpected decision-making centers and the designation of new targets for surveillance and elimination. All of this fed a kind of conveyor belt, producing a single product: targets.
«When a political leader decides someone needs to be eliminated, the culture in Israel is: 'We'll provide the target intelligence',» FT quotes Brigadier General (Res.) Itai Shapira, with 25 years of intelligence experience.
Fatal Saturday on Pasteur Street
According to FT, the decision to eliminate Khamenei was political. A source briefed on the situation reported that the attack on Iran had been planned for months, but officials adjusted the operation after American and Israeli intelligence confirmed that Khamenei and his senior associates would meet at the residence in Tehran on Saturday morning.
The opportunity to kill him along with a large part of the Iranian leadership was considered particularly advantageous. After the start of a full-scale war, this would have been much more difficult: the Iranians would quickly have retreated into underground bunkers, inaccessible to Israeli bombs.
As FT notes, Khamenei, unlike his ally, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, did not live underground. He even publicly mused about the possibility of his death, stating that his life was irrelevant to the fate of the Islamic Republic. Nevertheless, he had two bunkers, and if he had been in one of them, Israel would not have been able to reach him.
Even in June 2025, in the midst of a full-scale war, Israel made no attempts to bomb Khamenei. Instead, targets primarily included the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, missile launchers and depots, as well as Iran's nuclear facilities and scientists.
Tracking targets previously required visual confirmation and filtering out false data, but in recent years, the widespread use of algorithms in data collection in Israel has automated this task. However, for such an important target as Khamenei, failure was unacceptable. Israeli military doctrine requires that two different high-ranking officers, working independently, confirm with a high degree of certainty the location of the target for the strike and the composition of its escort.
To guarantee success, the Israelis used a combination of data. Firstly, Israeli intelligence had electronic interception data, such as access to traffic cameras and deep penetration into mobile communication networks. One source noted that this confirmed the meeting with Khamenei was on schedule, and high-ranking officials were heading to the destination.
The second important point, according to FT sources, was information from an agent obtained by the CIA.
Saturday's attacks occurred in daylight. Photo: AP
The order to attack was given by Donald Trump on Friday at 3:38 PM Washington time, while on board Air Force One. American forces provided cyber support, completely blinding Iranian communication and surveillance systems. General Dan Cane, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed that the cyberattack disrupted Iran's ability to see and react.
Israeli fighter jets launched about 30 high-precision missiles at the complex. Trump later reported that Iranian leaders were killed during breakfast. The choice of daytime for the attack allowed for maximum tactical surprise.
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