10/10/2024–|Last updated: 10/10/202401:03 PM (Mecca time)
Le Figaro newspaper said that the Israeli intelligence services have strengthened their surveillance and attack capabilities over the past 20 years to confront the Iranian nuclear program, and no evidence of this is their ability two weeks after the explosion of Hezbollah’s pagers and the assassination of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, 72 hours after that.
The newspaper referred – in a report written by Cyril Lewis – to what former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confirmed on the Turkish CNN channel regarding his country’s weakness before Israeli intelligence agencies, as he revealed that Tel Aviv had recruited several years ago the head of a unit specially created to expel Mossad spies. .
After the resounding failure that occurred on October 7, 2023, the Israeli intelligence services directed strong strikes at Iran and its agents before dismembering Hezbollah in Lebanon and then beheading it.
Perhaps striking the anti-aircraft defense radars that are supposed to protect the enrichment station in Natanz, the heart of the Iranian nuclear program, was a strong response to Iran’s launching of 300 drones and missiles towards Tel Aviv, according to the newspaper.
Israeli journalist Yossi Melman – who wrote with his colleague Dan Raviv a book entitled “Spies Against Armageddon Inside Israel’s Secret Wars,” which contains very abundant information about the Israeli intelligence services – says, “Recent events confirm that the level of penetration of Iran and its agents by our services is still impressive.” .
Long term work
This “revenge” – according to the newspaper – is the result of long-term work that began in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century under the leadership of then Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who was convinced that Iranian leaders were working to build an atomic bomb, and was determined to prevent them from doing so.
This is what prompted the various Israeli agencies to take comprehensive measures, and they worked in the shadows – according to the newspaper – to thwart the supply of spare parts to Iran, discourage foreign scientists from providing their assistance, and sabotage the electrical supplies of some facilities, as well as raise the level of awareness among Westerners about this threat, but soon What Tel Aviv realized was that although these efforts were capable of slowing down Tehran’s nuclear projects, they would not be enough to convince its leaders to abandon these projects forever, according to the author.
Therefore, it was necessary to rely on interception means, electronic warfare methods, and the technical expertise of the Israeli Atomic Energy Authority, and then rely on agents inside Israel, as the Mossad has had a primitive infrastructure for this purpose since the era of the Shah, and has expanded it by recruiting among minorities such as Kurds, Azeris, Arabs, and Baluchis.
According to Melman, the network of bunkers and storage places for explosives, weapons and vehicles had to be reconfigured, and agents had to be introduced to carry out some tasks that were too sensitive to be subcontracted to minority recruits. To do this, they relied in particular on the large community of Iranian Jews who had immigrated to Israel after the revolution.
Agents for the benefit of Israel
The writer listed a number of incidents that occurred in Iran between 2007 and 2011 after the Mossad’s infrastructure was established, including the killing of 5 Iranian scientists working in the nuclear industry, the spread of the “Stuxnet” computer virus that neutralized a thousand centrifuges at the Natanz site, and then a large explosion occurred that led to Dozens were killed and 55,000 pages of documents and 183 CDs were stolen, etc.
Although this list is not comprehensive and it is possible that some of these attacks are incorrectly attributed to Israeli agencies – as the newspaper says – those agencies have every interest in pointing out that their infiltration capabilities are limitless.
“This is part of psychological warfare,” Melman says, adding, “Similarly, the Revolutionary Guard regularly confirms that it has arrested, convicted, or even executed agents in exchange for Israel.”
Despite this often dense fog, everything indicates that the Israeli services do not hesitate to do anything, no matter how little, when it comes to striking Iran, and indeed, according to a former military official, they provided basic intelligence information to their American counterparts when they assassinated a senior commander of the Guard. The revolutionary – General Qassem Soleimani – in January 2020, as well as on other occasions.