by Yonah Jeremy Bob
Tehran can crack down all it wants, but the Mossad simply has too many physical, technological holes to exploit and too many angry Iranian minorities to recruit
 |
The Mossad was at the forefront of Israel’s assassination of nine out of 13 top Iranian military officials and around a dozen Iranian nuclear scientists in June.
It was also deeply involved in aspects of targeting Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile installations, even if, as a rule, those dropping the bombs or pulling the trigger were Israel Air Force (IAF) pilots?
With the Mossad having exposed so many of its tricks and having used hundreds of agents in June, what will it have left to keep Tehran’s nuclear program and other threats down going forward?
Of course, The Jerusalem Post has limits on what can be revealed, but a number of developments have already taken place in recent weeks, and additional details have come out about the Mossad’s June operations, which could serve as an ongoing menu for future missions.
First of all, following a New York Times report, there has been a wave of media attention to Iranian claims that many of the recent mysterious explosions and fires that have broken out across the Islamic Republic in the last two weeks were acts of sabotage by the Mossad.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Iranian government officials believe these acts of sabotage were orchestrated by the intelligence agency but, according to the report, are not allowed to discuss this in public, with officials claiming the events are coincidences or due to old infrastructure.
Appearing almost to taunt Tehran, Barnea told his Mossad agents, “We will [continue to] be there, like we have been there.”
The simple meaning of Barnea’s words was that, despite Iranian efforts to catch Mossad agents after the June 13-24 war and the increased risk of being caught during this period of purges in Tehran, Israel’s spy agency still has and will continue to have agents operating in the Islamic Republic.
Put differently, whether or not one specific explosion or another in Iran over the past two weeks was, in fact, caused by the Mossad, it absolutely could have been.
Leaked details of the attacks
While Iranian officials did not provide The New York Times and others with evidence of Mossad involvement in the latest explosions, it is a matter of public record that the same string of gas leaks and old infrastructure explosions also took place in summer 2020.Although the Mossad never publicly took credit for those explosions, and the Post has been told that at least some of those explosions were actually old infrastructure failing on its own, Iran did eventually accuse the Mossad of involvement in those events after certain nuclear facilities were also hit.
Currently, Iranian authorities may hesitate to openly accuse the agency, as they have a deep fear of being cornered into having to retaliate, which could bring down on them yet another overt and massive public attack by the IAF.
The New York Times also cited an anonymous European official who manages Iranian issues, who also believed that the attacks were sabotage by the Mossad.
In addition, recently the anti-regime opposition-linked outlet Iran International has revealed details describing what it called “one of the most unusual security and military defeats of the modern era.”
The report comes after Iran’s Information and Communication Technology Minister Seyed Sattar Hashemi announced earlier this week that the country had been the target of more than 20,000 foreign cyberattacks during the war.
In other words, the Mossad might not just be eliminating top Iranians and blowing them up with the use of bombs, it could also be using advanced cyber and other cutting-edge technological means.
According to Iran International, the Mossad deliberately leaked the date of an Israeli attack through an agent close to IRGC Chief Hossein Salami, in order to lure him to a specific spot to be assassinated.
In addition, the report disclosed that IRGC Aerospace Force Chief Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who top Israeli intelligence officials have called “the smartest and most dangerous man in Iran (since the killing of IRGC Quds Force Chief Qasem Soleimani in 2020)” was tricked by the Mossad into attending a meeting with his deputies, during which they were assassinated.
The phone call inviting them to the designated location was later determined to be from a fake source, but it was reportedly so well managed that Hajizadeh and his cohort were fooled into voluntarily walking into the trap.
Next, the report said that malware was implanted into Tehran’s city security cameras, which located Ali Shadmani, the new commander (after his predecessor had just been killed by Israel) of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters in the Zaferania neighborhood, where he was killed by a drone strike.
According to Iran International, the Mossad had initially tracked Shadmani by obtaining a DNA sample via digital means and then utilized artificial intelligence-based facial recognition and genetic profiling to identify him.
The Mossad also admitted that during the 12-day war, it used a mix of human spies on the ground, remote-controlled weapons placed on standard motor vehicles, and remote-controlled drones.
With tens of millions of non-Shiite Iranians who hate the regime, even if Israel may have lost some agents, there is a nearly endless list of other Iranians for the Mossad to recruit from.
This means that even if Tehran manages a successful crackdown and studies how Israel penetrated it so completely last month, it may be nearly impossible for the regime to truly plug all of the physical and technological holes the Mossad could seize on to accomplish its missions.
Yonah Jeremy Bob
Source: https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-862142
No comments:
Post a Comment