Israel has reportedly spent years monitoring the movements of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei through Tehran’s traffic camera network, as part of the intelligence effort preceding the strike that killed him, the Financial Times reported.
The attack was part of a large-scale US and Israeli military operation launched in late February, triggering retaliatory missile and drone strikes from Tehran against Israel, US military bases across the Gulf, and other parts of the Middle East, escalating a conflict that Washington said could last for weeks.
According to the Financial Times, citing sources familiar with the operation, many of the Iranian capital’s traffic cameras had been compromised, allowing Israeli intelligence analysts to access the feeds remotely and track the daily routines of senior Iranian officials and their security details.
The effort relied heavily on Israel’s signals intelligence Unit 8200, as well as human sources recruited by the Mossad.
The gathered information was then processed using tools capable of analyzing billions of data points, including social network analysis techniques to identify relationships and decision-making networks.
The resulting intelligence picture helped determine when Khamenei would be at his offices on Pasteur Street in Tehran and who would attend a meeting with him on the morning of the strike.
Reporting by the Financial Times indicates that Israeli intelligence analysts used footage from traffic cameras to compile detailed profiles of members of the protection detail, including their home addresses, duty schedules, commuting routes, and the officials they were assigned to protect.
By correlating these data points, analysts reconstructed what intelligence services refer to as a “pattern of life,” allowing them to track movements and determine which officials were present in specific vehicles and locations around the Iranian capital.
One traffic camera overlooking the government compound on Pasteur Street was cited as providing a clear view of an area where members of the security detail regularly parked their personal vehicles.
Israeli intelligence also reportedly interfered with components of multiple mobile phone towers near Pasteur Street, causing nearby phones to appear busy when called and potentially preventing warning messages from reaching Khamenei’s security team before his assassination.
