Saturday morning, Pasteur Street, central Tehran. Inside a vast walled compound sits Beit Rahbari – the ‘House of Leadership’ – the armoured and labyrinthine residence of Iran‘s ageing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
Close by are the presidential palace and several key Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) facilities, from which the repressive leadership conducts its operations.
Guards idle at their posts. Posters of the bearded cleric flutter from buildings and lampposts. Traffic moves slowly but aggressively.
A day, it seems, like any other. But, unbeknown to those inside the compound, this fortress of bureaucratic and religious savagery has been breached long ago.
Enemy agents stalk the corridors, handlers read intercepted communications, and Israeli-designed algorithms scour the data transmitted on the regime’s mobile phones and other devices.
At 8.10am local time, the combined Israeli and US strikes begin with devastating effect.
Explosions ring out across the capital. Buildings disappear in fire and dust. Plumes of black smoke billow upwards.
Within five minutes, the Ayatollah lies dead, a victim of the type of extreme violence he meted out to so many innocents throughout his grubby life: poetic justice delivered by payload.
Saturday morning, Pasteur Street, central Tehran. Inside a vast walled compound sits the armoured and labyrinthine residence of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Pictured: A satellite image shows smoke rising and heavy damage at the compound after the US-Israeli strike on Saturday
Within five minutes, the Ayatollah (pictured, in 2023) lies dead, a victim of the type of extreme violence he meted out to so many innocents throughout his grubby life
Alongside him lie the corpses of many of his fellow butchers: the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guard, the regime’s defence minister and the secretary of Iran’s Defence Council (who had survived a previous Israeli strike in 2025 after being pulled from rubble).
A thousand miles away in Jerusalem, Benjamin Netanyahu is shown a picture of Khameini’s body. Mission – or at least the first part of it – accomplished.
‘Intelligence used is on another level’
Here, I piece together the logic, chronology and some of the secrets of the operation to take out the octogenarian mass murderer – and can reveal in detail for the first time just how deeply Israel’s spies have penetrated Iran’s security services and the government itself.
As a former Israeli defence official told me this week: ‘The intelligence used in these operations is on another level.
‘The combination of the latest technology crunching data and visuals – alongside unprecedented levels of “humint” [human intelligence, covertly gathered by agents] – all led to this incredible feat.
‘Multi-agency, multinational, multifaceted: the number of layers is truly remarkable.’
The truth is that the Israelis – with American help – have done something no one seems to fully understand.
They have created the beginnings of a new way of war: a fusion of cyber warfare, surveillance and human espionage so seamless that by the time the bombs fall, the conditions to win the battle have hopefully been set.
The missiles at the weekend were merely the visible end of a far deeper and more complex operation.
Years of hacked cameras, intercepted signals, human sources and machine-driven analysis were able to map the inner workings – down to the level of individual drivers, bodyguards and even their parking spaces – of one of the most paranoid and guarded regimes on earth.
Here’s how they did it.
‘There could be no warning’
The clocks in Washington DC are eight and a half hours behind Tehran time. Trump authorised the strike the day before, at 3.38pm Eastern Time on February 27.
His message to his commanders was terse: ‘Operation Epic Fury is approved. No aborts. Good luck.’
In Israel, the IDF chief of staff and his senior officers spent Friday evening at home for the Jewish Sabbath as if all was normal.
Nothing could be seen to suggest to Iranian spies that an attack was imminent.
At dawn, Israeli F-15s lifted off – and then turned away from Iran.
The truth is that the Israelis – with American help – have done something no one seems to fully understand. Pictured: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shakes hands with US President Donald Trump last year
Years of hacked cameras, intercepted signals, human sources and machine-driven analysis were able to map the inner workings of one of the most paranoid and guarded regimes on earth. Pictured: File photo of CCTV cameras in Tehran
Far beyond the range of Iranian radar, they released air-launched ballistic missiles known as Black Sparrows.
Originally designed as target simulators for testing Israel’s famed Arrow missile defence system (one of four known capabilities, along with Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Thaad), the weapons had been repurposed as offensive munitions.
These followed a ballistic arc – climbing high, then plunging down at immense speed.
There could be no warning.
More than 30 missiles instantly obliterated the Pasteur compound. (Just one official survived – because he failed to attend having overslept.)
A second wave then destroyed Iran’s air-defence batteries, clearing a corridor from the west.
Soon after, 200 Israeli aircraft – the largest air raid in the country’s history – swept across Iran and began hammering ballistic-missile depots, silos, mobile launchers and production facilities.
Within a few hours, in one of the most extraordinary military operations in modern history, Iran’s air defences, missile infrastructure and leadership were gone.
It was no fluke. The opening salvo of this latest round of the decades-long war between Iran and the West was the culmination of years of planning – above all, intricate intelligence penetration of Iran’s military and political elite.
Israeli and American agencies had been tracking Iran’s leadership in extended detail since the so-called 12-Day War last June – one I experienced first-hand, reporting for the Daily Mail from Israel as it came under Iranian missile attack.
Even by last summer, Tehran had long forbidden its VIPs from carrying mobile phones because these could be geolocated and tracked.
Incredibly, they hadn’t extended this rule to the bodyguards and drivers who accompanied them everywhere.
So Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, along with the IDF’s Unit 8200 (part of an elite corps responsible for signals intelligence, code decryption and cyber warfare), switched their attention to the bodyguards’ phones.
Several Iranian commanders were assassinated in the resulting strike last June, including the army’s chief of staff and multiple IRGC commanders.
Western agencies tracked down Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei but chose not to strike because the objective then was not regime change.
The Iranians located the mobile-phone vulnerability and shut it down. But that didn’t matter. The Israelis simply moved their focus to broader 24/7 multi-source surveillance.
More than 30 missiles instantly obliterated the Pasteur compound. Pictured: Smoke billowing into the sky above the site in the heart of Tehran
A second wave then destroyed Iran’s air-defence batteries, before 200 Israeli aircraft swept across Iran and began hammering ballistic-missile depots, silos, mobile launchers and production facilities. Pictured: Smoke rises above the capital Tehran after an explosion on February 28
Within a few hours, in one of the most extraordinary military operations in modern history, Iran’s air defences, missile infrastructure and leadership were gone. Pictured: Smoke rises above the Ayatollah’s compound
Their strategy was simple: to track the enemy constantly and wait for the moment when political authorisation and operational opportunity aligned.
They knew it would be tough. As the winter months went by, protests erupted in Iran once again, the people taking to the streets in their hundreds of thousands, and the regime massacring tens of thousands in response.
The mullahs were even more homicidally unhinged than ever.
Khamenei himself literally went to ground, spending days or even weeks at a time in the bunker beneath the Beit Rahbari, a rathole so deep that the elevator took more than five minutes to descend into it.
Satellite imagery also showed that, after the June conflict, the Iranians had built new reinforcing structures throughout the compound to try to keep their leadership safe.
The CIA had a vital agent inside Khamenei’s inner circle. Someone so physically close to the Ayatollah himself that he would be able to confirm if and when the target would be in the building.
Years ago, Mossad had hacked Tehran’s traffic camera network. One camera, positioned near the compound’s entrance on Pasteur Street, proved invaluable.
Its angle revealed in detail where the bodyguards and drivers of senior officials habitually parked their private cars, offering a live feed of the compound’s daily rhythms.
From this and other material, analysts built detailed dossiers on key personnel: their home addresses, shift patterns, travel routes.
Then it was a matter of waiting for what intelligence officers call the ‘golden window’ – that rare operational moment when as many of the regime’s key figures as possible would be gathered in the same, known location at the same, known time.
This, of course, came last Saturday.
‘Lay down your weapons’
The operational assumption was that anyone who wasn’t killed in the first minutes would cut all communications and go to ground – aware that they were now being hunted by the most lethal forces on Earth.
The war therefore had to begin with a multi-decapitation: eliminating as many senior figures as possible in a single co-ordinated blow.
Alongside the hacking of Tehran’s street cameras was a further astonishing technological feat.
As Israel began to pummel the regime, it simultaneously began contacting millions of ordinary Iranians.
BadeSaba is a hugely popular prayer-time calendar app with millions of downloads.
It was no fluke. The opening salvo of this latest round of the decades-long war between Iran and the West was the culmination of years of planning. Pictured: Smoke rises in the capital Tehran on Monday
The Israeli strategy was simple: to track the enemy constantly and wait for the moment when political authorisation and operational opportunity aligned. Pictured: Smoke rises after a strike on Tehran, Iran, on Wednesday
They knew it would be tough. As the winter months went by, protests (pictured, a rally in Tehran in January) erupted in Iran once again, the people taking to the streets in their hundreds of thousands, and the regime massacring tens of thousands in response
Khamenei (pictured, in 2019) himself literally went to ground, spending days or even weeks at a time in the bunker beneath his compound. But the CIA had a vital agent inside his inner circle
Years ago, Mossad had hacked Tehran’s traffic camera network, including one camera near the compound’s entrance. From this and other material, analysts built detailed dossiers on key personnel and their movements. Then it was a matter of waiting for the right moment to strike. Pictured: Long-range precision strike missiles used in the operation
It appears that Khamenei’s son Mojtaba (pictured in 2019) has now been chosen to succeed his father. ‘We wonder how long he’ll last,’ a well-placed Israeli source told me this week
At 9:52am Tehran time, just minutes after the first explosions, the app suddenly pushed a message to users across the country: ‘Help is on the way.’
Over the next half hour, a series of alerts followed. One encouraged civilians to rise up against the clerics, promising them that ‘repressive forces will pay for their cruel and merciless actions’.
A third message urged security forces to ‘lay down your weapons and join the forces of liberation’.
This week, Israeli sources revealed to me that the app had been infiltrated long before the operation began, with the messages planted in advance and triggered to coincide precisely with the kinetic strikes.
Yossi Cohen is the former head of Mossad who oversaw the 2018 Iranian nuclear archive heist, when an Israeli team broke into a Tehran warehouse and, using industrial thermal cutters, sliced open 32 safes and extracted half a ton of documents and CDs, amounting to around 50,000 pages and 55,000 files.
The archive, later displayed on Israeli TV, exposed Iran’s nuclear ambitions to the world.
When I met Cohen in Tel Aviv last year, he told me that Mossad was set up to protect the Jewish state and to take the fight to its enemies, wherever they were.
Since October 7, which they shockingly failed to foresee, the agency has been in overdrive.
The secret to intelligence work, Cohen told me, was to be both decisive and first. Along with that, he emphasised the importance of technology.
‘You need to be inside your enemy’s systems,’ he said, ‘or he will be in yours.’ Mossad clearly internalised his lessons.
Since Khamanei’s assassination, Israel and America have struck yet more targets – with the same surgical accuracy.
On Tuesday night, they eliminated yet another top-secret meeting, this time of Iran’s Supreme Council, whose officials had gathered to choose a new Supreme Leader.
It appears that Khamenei’s son Mojtaba has now been chosen to succeed his father.
‘We wonder how long he’ll last,’ another well-placed Israeli source told me this week.
They added delicately: ‘It wouldn’t be a surprise if we were tracking him, too. We are much further inside Iran than people understand.
‘He’ll be lucky to make it to Friday prayers.’
But he was keen to talk about more than just individual hits.
‘Why don’t people realise this was never just about taking out the Ayatollah? What we have done here is to create a new way of war.’
He’s not wrong. This is war for a new age, and Mossad are its masters.