Secrets and spies: How Israel lulled Iran as Mossad plotted
In the middle of the night near an Iranian missile site, two Mossad agents start the finishing touches of a plot that has been years in the making. Hours later Iran’s military and nuclear power will be devastated.
It’s the middle of the night near a missile site in Iran when two Mossad agents make the finishing touches to a plot that has been years in the making.
The agents, wearing balaclavas and head torches, are positioning guided weapons systems for the first stages of a strike that will, in the coming hours, decapitate Tehran’s military leadership and seriously damage its key nuclear sites.
In an unprecedented public display of their agents at work, Mossad has released footage – deliberately grainy – showing them deploying “attack systems” in Iran.
Mossad Agents Deploy Attack Systems in Iranian Territory pic.twitter.com/zf0wv5Ued3
— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) June 13, 2025
Minutes later, drones launched by the agents have destroyed Iran’s surface to air missile launchers, and will go on to devastate military and nuclear sites across the country.
RARE MOSSAD FOOTAGE
— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) June 13, 2025
published by the Mossad in an unusual manner. Including footage of the Mossad's operational force during the deployment of precision strike systems intended to destroy Iranian air defense systems. pic.twitter.com/qPO80x04ps
Israel’s notorious spy agency had spent years preparing for the so called “Rising Lion” operation against Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs, according to The Times of Israel, including building a drone base inside Tehran and smuggling precision weapons systems and commandos into the country.
A security official told the newspaper the drones were activated late at night, striking surface-to-surface missile launchers, while weapons systems smuggled into Iran and launched from trucks took out air defences and gave Israeli warplanes freedom of action over the country.
Hundreds of Mossad agents both inside Iran and back in headquarters were involved, including a special unit of Iranian operatives working for the agency, the Axios news website reports.
In the days leading up to the attack, however, Iran was lulled into a false sense of security – so much so that Tehran had confirmed its negotiators were preparing to head to Oman for a sixth round of talks with Washington on its nuclear program on Sunday.
Even as the US warned that Israel was preparing a strike on the country, with Donald Trump warning it could come at any time, Israeli media reported that Benjamin Netanyahu was going on holiday with his family to Galilee.
(People with reasonably long memories will recall that the Israeli Prime Minister was in Washington when Israel first attacked Iran last year, again leading many to believe that despite warnings of an attack, the IDF wouldn’t act while he was out of the country).
The London Times also reports that stories of a rift between Mr Netanyahu and Donald Trump were planted deliberately to mislead the Iranians.
“Clearly they didn’t see it coming,” Kasra Aarabi, a director of research at United Against Nuclear Iran, a non-profit body based in the US, told The Times. “They were completely caught off guard.”
Shortly before the first strikes, the Israeli Prime Minister was photographed posting a prayer on Jerusalem’s Western Wall, that said “A people that rises up as a lioness, and as a lion lifts himself up.” The significance of the prayer’s cryptic words only became clear hours later when the IDF confirmed the name of its operation was “Rising Lion.”
The first strikes came at around 3.30am local time (12.30pm AEST). After Mossad’s commandos destroyed the air defences, the way was clear for around 200 Israeli aircraft, including F-16s and F-35s, to swoop in.
One of Israel’s first targets was a bunker where the commanders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) air force were meeting. After Israel warned earlier that day that an attack could come as early as this weekend, the head of the IRGC air force, Amamir Ali Hajizadeh, and his deputies grouped in the bunker to co-ordinate a response.
However agents had alerted the military to the location of the bunker and it was destroyed with a massive bunker buster bomb in the opening salvo of Friday’s strikes.
An Israeli official told Fox News the commanders had been tricked into grouping in the bunker.
“We did specific activities to help us understand things about them and then used that information to make them act in a specific way,” the official said. “We knew this would make them meet, but more importantly we knew how to keep them there.”
At around the same time, a missile destroyed the Tehran apartment where Hossein Salami, commander of the Revolutionary Guards and one of the most powerful men in Iran’s military, was sleeping.
Only hours earlier, as warnings of an Israeli attack grew stronger, Salami had threatened that any strike would be met with a “more forceful and destructive” response than last year’s attacks.
It wasn’t just Salami who was killed at home. Even as the US evacuated non-essential staff from embassies and military sites in the region, Iran’s most senior political and military commanders weren’t moved to secure facilities, according to Hamidreza Azizi, visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
“Most of them were targeted in their homes. It shows a level of overconfidence that is not comprehensible, really, in a situation like this,” Professor Aziz told the Wall St Journal.
Those early salvos killed at least two dozen senior Iranian commanders including the commander in chief of Iran’s armed forces, Mohammad Bagheri; and the deputy commander of the Iranian armed forces, Gholam Ali Rashid. A senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Ali Shamkhani, was also reportedly among the dead.
The deaths appeared to paralyse the armed forces for hours. “The fact that there was nobody to give the order neutralised an immediate Iranian response,” an Israeli official told Axios.
Just as significant were the deaths of at least six senior nuclear scientists, including Fereydoun Abbasi, the mastermind behind much of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program.
According to The Times, he was busy sending messages of advice to the government on the need for “public diplomacy” on X before an Israeli missile struck his apartment and killed him.
When Iran did respond, some hours later, it was with only 100 missiles – most of which were intercepted or destroyed by Israel and by the US military, which has confirmed it helped Israel defend itself.
On Saturday (AEST), each side continued to strike the other.
In a series of strikes, Israel has seriously damaged the Natanz nuclear facility in central Iran – the largest of Tehran’s key uranium enrichment sites.
The facilitiy is believed to consist of three underground buildings, two of which are designed to hold 50,000 centrifuges, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a non-profit security organisation.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed the strikes had damaged Natanz, while US officials told CNN they went far beyond superficial damage to exterior structures. The officials said the two top levels had been destroyed and in a “full spectrum blitz” of attacks, initial electricity had been knocked on the lower levels where the centrifuges used to enrich uranium were stored.
Kermanshah
— Mossad Commentary (@MOSSADil) June 13, 2025
Defense and Missile Sites pic.twitter.com/JmyAMZfmqb
Military air bases including the Tabriz base were also destroyed while Tehran residents reported that Iranian defence systems were firing continuously in the neighbourhood where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian live.
In a barrage of retaliatory strikes on Israel, Iran reportedly targeted the Israeli Defence Forces headquarters.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said Israel’s initial attack was due partly to intelligence that Tehran was planning an assault on the country, in coordination with Hezbollah and Hamas.
Saying Israel’s pre-emptive strikes were a matter of “national preservation,” he told the UN Security Council: “It was one we undertook alone, not because we wanted to, but because we were left no other option.”
He claimed Israel had uncovered intelligence revealing Iran’s assault plan which he said would be “far more sophisticated than October 7.”
Israel has confirmed the strikes will continue for two weeks – or until Iran has been weakened too much to pose a threat any more.
On Saturday, Mr Trump held phone calls with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman and Qatar’s Emir al Thani to discuss how to de-escalate the situation. He also spoke with the Israeli Prime Minister but the White House has not provided a readout of the call.
Early on Saturday, the President warned that things “will only get worse,” with “even more brutal” attacks planned. But, in his post on Truth Social, he suggested there was still time for Iran to make a deal over its nuclear program.
“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to “just do it,” but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done,” he said. “I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come – And they know how to use it. Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!”
He added: “There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. God Bless You All!
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