How did Israeli and American machinations lead to the assassination of Ali Khamenei? US and Israel launch war against Iran

The assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was the culmination of decades of painstaking intelligence gathering by the Israeli secret service, with the CIA and other U.S. intelligence services providing critical technical resources and manpower over the past six months, culminating in a concentrated burst of deadly violence that decapitated the Iranian regime, Israeli and U.S. experts, veteran spies and officials said. Khamenei was killed along with seven “members of Iran’s top security”. Israeli military officials said “his leadership gathered at multiple locations in Tehran” and more than a dozen of his family members and close entourage launched the attack almost simultaneously within 60 seconds. Forty other senior Iranian leaders were also killed in the attack. The killing of 86-year-old Khamenei kicked off an air offensive launched this weekend by Israel and the United States aimed at overthrowing Tehran’s radical clerical regime and plunging the Middle East into new chaos and violence. However, some experts and intelligence veterans describe possible strategic errors that could alienate potential supporters or open the way for more radical opponents in the future. “This is not a solution. We have killed all the leaders of Hamas. The leaders of Hezbollah are always replaced,” said Yossi Melman, an Israeli intelligence expert and respected analyst. The attack in the dark replicated the surprise attack in June that kicked off the 12-day war. The timing of the assassination was determined based on information gathered by the CIA about a meeting of senior Iranian officials scheduled for Saturday morning at a leadership compound in central Tehran. Crucially, the New York Times reported that the CIA was able to tell its Israeli counterparts that Khamenei would be there and when the meeting would take place. Israeli spies have been following Khamenei for years, building a detailed dossier on his daily life, his family, colleagues, allies and those charged with keeping him safe. A woman mourns the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at a rally in Beirut. Photograph: Hassan Ammar/AP “It’s like a giant jigsaw puzzle. You put all these pieces of information together. Where you don’t have [reliable data] You study those further. It’s going to be everything: how they get their food, what happens to their trash… We all get up, we all sleep, we all eat and drink,” said a former CIA veteran with decades of experience tracking high-profile terrorist targets. “We live in a world with so many layers of information and data that there’s no one who doesn’t leave some kind of trace. Everything you do leaves a mark. Ruel Gerricht, a former CIA targeting officer who worked on Iran and an analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the United States would have been able to bring significant technological assets to bear, although it was Israel that had established a network of operatives on the ground capable of providing human intelligence and conducting covert operations inside Iran. Israeli media reported that photos of Khamenei’s body were shown to Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Gerricht said. Netanyahu’s words make sense. “The technical capabilities of the United States are very impressive, and technology does matter, but I don’t think so,” Gerricht said. [CIA] There is a lot to discuss in terms of [human intelligence] “If you combine technical capabilities with a ground network, it certainly enhances its effectiveness,” he said. Mossad, the Hebrew abbreviation for the Institute of Intelligence and Special Operations, has focused on Iran for decades and built a deep network of informants, agents and logistics there. This enabled a series of operations, including the assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist with a remote-controlled automatic machine gun as he drove at high speed on a remote road, the infection of computers running key parts of Iran’s nuclear program with malware, and the theft of an archive of nuclear documents. In 2024, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated after a bomb was placed in his favorite room in a government hotel in Tehran. During the 12-day war in June, Israeli agents managed to identify the homes of Iranian nuclear scientists, intelligence officers and military commanders, information that led to dozens of deaths in the first wave of surprise attacks. Mossad made a major strategic shift about 20 years ago when it decided to recruit local operatives inside Iran, equipped with state-of-the-art equipment and a high level of training. David Barnea, who has led Mossad since 2021, established a special unit for “Foreign Legion” agents deployed on sensitive missions across the Middle East. Melman said that in Iran, where there are many people opposed to the ruling regime, these agents are easier to recruit than elsewhere. Israel prepared to assassinate Khamenei last year, but Trump was unwilling to risk an escalation in the region and allies worried about the head of state’s killing, a reservation that seemed to evaporate in the months after last year’s brief conflict. The conflict ended shortly after U.S. bombers struck Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israeli military officials said that since then, Israel and the United States have “really strengthened cooperation” on the Iranian issue. Information flows from Mossad’s ground network in Iran were supposed to be consolidated last week. Intelligence gathering through communications intercepted by the United States. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they target various means to track [Khamenei]”, Gerekht said, “The Iranians are quite sloppy. They love their phones. So maybe the top leader has a bunch of burner phones, but it’s about who he calls regularly. “Finally, the information will be transmitted to U.S. and Israeli forces so that precise targeting information can be compiled and orders issued within a brief but deadly and devastating minute of sixty seconds.” “That’s everything this operation requires, but it’s years in the making,” said Oded Alam, the former head of Mossad’s counterterrorism unit and a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. “The modern battlefield is no longer defined just by tanks and planes. It’s defined by data, access, trust and time.” One minute can change an area. The CIA veteran said they believed the assassination was a mistake: “I think it was the wrong thing to do.” Not from a moral perspective – I have no problem with killing people, in fact a lot of people do – but from a long term strategic perspective. “I know that when you remove someone’s leader, you don’t solve the problem. You just create a new problem.”