The military operation 'Rising Lion' launched by Israeli forces on 13th was the largest-scale attack against Iran since the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, but surprisingly ended quickly.
The decisive victory achieved in just 12 days amid concerns of full-scale war is largely attributed to the intelligence agency Mossad's years of preparation for this espionage strategy.
Before this war, Mossad secretly established a drone base inside Iranian territory. At the same time, it smuggled in precision weapons and utilized artificial intelligence (AI) to perfectly track the movements of key individuals. This strategy, which quickly paralyzed the eyes, ears, and brains of Iran through meticulous pre-operations, has been evaluated as highly effective.
The operation that shocked the public the most took place on the first day of the war.
In the past, espionage was dominated by human intelligence (HUMINT) and special equipment seen in 007 movies.
To eliminate dozens of Iranian military officials and nuclear development leaders at the same time, a plan completely different from previous ones was needed. Mossad added AI, hacking, psychological warfare, and precision strike technology.
AI has learned from vast big data, including communication interceptions, satellite images, and reports from internal collaborators, accumulated based on human intelligence over several years in Iran.
Based on this data, it accurately predicted the 'golden time' when movements of about 20 military leaders, including Iran's Revolutionary Guard commander Hossein Salami and armed forces chief of staff Mohammad Bagheri, as well as over ten nuclear scientists including physicist Fereydoun Abbasi, overlapped at key locations at specific times.
According to the Times of Israel, the Israeli military unleashed targeted cyber attacks on Iran's military command and control (C2) systems and air defense networks at the predicted time.
Mossad took control of Iran's capital Tehran's air defense network while remotely operating the neutralized Iranian key infrastructure.
Dozens of small suicide drones launched by Israel swarmed into the skies of Tehran, where the defense system had collapsed. Mossad agents had smuggled in and assembled pieces of suicide drones and precision-guided weapons over several years.
These drones penetrated through building windows and accurately eliminated dormant targets. The Iranian command system quickly fell into a paralysis state due to attacks more precise than surgery.
Psychological warfare was carried out more obsessively than physical strikes. According to the New York Times (NYT), Mossad exerted intense psychological pressure on high-ranking officials of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and their families who survived the drone attack.
Photos of the officials' fathers and murder warning messages suddenly appeared on smart TV screens watched by their children at home. Mossad even hacked these families' shared AI speakers to play chilling voice messages like 'You’re next, Dad.'
To specific high-ranking officials, Mossad sent via secure email information about their accumulated illegal slush fund and foreign concealed account records, urging defections with messages like, 'We will spare your life if you abandon the regime.'
Officials of the Revolutionary Guard suffered from a digital fear that Mossad was scrutinizing their deepest secrets, which the Iranian intelligence could not even identify. This strategy fostered extreme distrust and rifts within the Iranian leadership.
Throughout this war, Israel released videos showing it striking designated targets with precision through Iran's air defense network. This was one of the examples demonstrating overwhelming superiority in espionage over Iran.
Mossad Director General David Barnea said on the 25th, 'Israel will continue to stay involved with Iran,' mocking the Iranian leadership.
Amid extensive and detailed Mossad infiltrations, Iran experienced severe internal strife due to the fear of 'internal enemies' throughout the war. Iran arrested more than 700 people on suspicion of having ties to Israel during the 12 days of war, averaging over 60 arrests per day.
The Iranian news agency Fars reported on the 24th that three men were executed for allegedly bringing in assassination equipment as agents of the Zionist regime (Israel).
Although Iran has embarked on a large-scale internal purge, the Mossad phobia that has engulfed the Iranian leadership remains.
This is due to fears that the wireless pager explosion incident that occurred last year involving thousands of Hezbollah members in Beirut, Lebanon, may recur.
Axios, a U.S. political news outlet, reported, 'Hundreds of Mossad agents from within Iran were involved in this war, and there were special forces organized from Iranian agents working for Mossad,' adding that 'After the Israeli airstrikes, the theory of regime incompetence is spreading within Iran.'