The operation that led to the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, on Saturday was years in the making. It began with something as ordinary as a hacked traffic camera. This was not a sudden strike but the result of a long-term intelligence campaign, carefully planned by Israeli and American intelligence agencies.
For years, nearly all of Tehran’s traffic cameras had been secretly accessed. This allowed Israeli intelligence to watch senior Iranian officials as they traveled to work near Pasteur Street, where Khamenei’s compound was located. He was ultimately killed there in a joint US-Israeli airstrike. One particular camera was especially useful, giving intelligence agencies a clear view into the daily routines of this heavily guarded area.
According to the Financial Times, complex computer programs were then used to build detailed files on the security guards. These files included their home addresses, work schedules, regular routes, and which officials they were assigned to protect. This process helped create what intelligence officers call a “pattern of life”; essentially, a map of the daily movements of key individuals.
Israel’s intelligence operation was a masterclass in surveillance, communication disruption, and precision targeting
This data, combined with other intelligence, helped Israel and the CIA confirm exactly when Khamenei would be at his offices on Saturday morning. Beyond the cameras, Israeli intelligence also disrupted specific parts of about a dozen mobile phone towers near Pasteur Street.
This made incoming calls seem busy, stopping Khamenei’s protection team from receiving any warnings. This cut off communication at the most critical moment of the operation. The full intelligence picture of Iran’s capital was built through years of careful data collection. Israel’s signals intelligence unit, Unit 8200, played a major role, along with human sources recruited by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.
All this information was processed by military intelligence into daily reports, using a method called social network analysis to work through billions of data points. A similar approach was used in a 12-day war last June, where more than a dozen Iranian nuclear scientists and senior military officials were killed within minutes.
When US and Israeli intelligence confirmed Khamenei’s Saturday morning meeting, they saw it as a chance to eliminate not just him, but much of Iran’s senior leadership. They reasoned it would be far harder to find them once a full war had started, as Iranian officials would quickly move into bomb-proof bunkers.
The Americans had a key advantage: a human source who confirmed Khamenei and his senior officials would be at the compound that morning, which provided the final window for the strike. While the operation has been seen as a major success, analysts note that Trump’s messaging leaves room for diplomatic escape despite the military victory.
President Trump launched the attack shortly after midnight in Washington, daytime in Iran, just two days after inconclusive nuclear negotiations in Geneva. General Dan Caine, chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US military prepared the way for Israeli fighter jets by launching cyberattacks that “disrupted, degraded and blinded Iran’s ability to see, communicate and respond.”
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed that around 200 fighter jets completed “the largest ever military flyover in the history of the Israeli Air Force,” targeting around 500 objectives. President Trump later posted on social media: “He [Khamenei] was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do.”
Iranian state television confirmed Khamenei’s death in the early hours of Sunday, broadcasting archive images with a black banner. The political reaction has been sharply divided, with Republican senators declaring a generational victory while Democrats warn that Khamenei’s successor could be far more dangerous.
Published: Mar 3, 2026 05:45 am