Shortly before the United States and Israel were poised to launch an attack on Iran, the C.I.A. zeroed in on the location of perhaps the most important target: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader.
The C.I.A. had been tracking Ayatollah Khamenei for months, gaining more confidence about his locations and his patterns, according to people familiar with the operation. Then the agency learned that a meeting of top Iranian officials would take place on Saturday morning at a leadership compound in the heart of Tehran. Most critically, the C.I.A. learned that the supreme leader would be at the site.
The United States and Israel decided to adjust the timing of their attack, in part to take advantage of the new intelligence, according to officials with knowledge of the decisions.
The information provided a window of opportunity for the two countries to achieve a critical and early victory: the elimination of top Iranian officials and the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei.
The remarkably swift removal of Iran’s supreme leader reflected the close coordination and intelligence sharing between the United States and Israel in the run-up to the attack, and the deep intelligence the countries had developed on Iranian leadership, especially in the wake of last year’s 12-day war. The operation also showed the failure of Iran’s leaders to take adequate precautions to avoid exposing themselves at a time where both Israel and the United States sent clear signals that they were preparing for war.
The C.I.A. passed its intelligence, which offered “high fidelity” on Ayatollah Khamenei’s position, to Israel, according to people briefed on the intelligence.
They and others who shared details about the operation spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence and military planning.
Israel, using U.S. intelligence and its own, would execute an operation it had been planning for months: the targeted killing of Iran’s senior leaders.
The United States and Israeli governments, which had originally planned to launch a strike at night under the cover of darkness, made the decision to adjust the timing to take advantage of the information about the gathering at the government compound in Tehran on Saturday morning.
The leaders were set to meet where the offices of the Iranian presidency, the supreme leader and Iran’s National Security Council are located.
Israel had determined that the gathering would include top Iranian defense officials, including Mohammad Pakpour, the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps; Aziz Nasirzadeh, the minister of defense; Adm. Ali Shamkhani, the head of the Military Council; Seyyed Majid Mousavi, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force; Mohammad Shirazi, the deputy intelligence minister; and others.
The operation began around 6 a.m. in Israel, as fighter jets took off from their bases. The strike required relatively few aircraft, but they were armed with long-range and highly accurate munitions.
Two hours and five minutes after the jets took off, at around 9:40 a.m. in Tehran, the long-range missiles struck the compound. At the time of the strike, senior Iranian national security officials were in one building at the compound. Ayatollah Khamenei was in another nearby building.
“This morning’s strike was carried out simultaneously at several locations in Tehran, in one of which senior figures of Iran’s political-security echelon had gathered,” an Israeli defense official wrote in a message reviewed by The New York Times.
The official said that despite Iranian preparations for war, Israel managed to achieve “tactical surprise” with its attack on the compound.
The White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment.
On Sunday, Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, confirmed the deaths of two high-level military leaders whom Israel said it had killed on Saturday: Admiral Shamkhani and General Pakpour.
Israel did not strike; The US and Israel did. Together. We must always remind readers that the US is pair-bonded with Israel in a regime bent on genocide and destruction in the name of profit.
20:1 Israel is the next country to catch a nuke. I’m an optimist though
Israel struck using its American lackeys. American people couldnt care less what Iran does and didnt want war. Theres zero will for war with Iran.
Also when people throw that “we need to support our country and support Israel” in your face, (as if opposing authoritarian governments means you also oppose all Israelis and Americans, including those opposed to their own authoritarian governments), consider reminding them of the reality behind the U.S. government’s support of Israel:
U.S. staunch support of Israel can indeed be traced back to the late 1940s following WWII. However, not because the U.S. government were made up of the all American heros who wanted the world to know they stood in solidarity with Jewish people following the Holocaust (to be clear this is what I was always taught and believed was true until a few months ago).
It was because they needed an established ally in the middle east to help them control oil reserves, and to oppose socialism in Palestine they worried would lead to alignment between Israel, Palestine, and the Soviets as well as the Soviets gaining strength via control of those oil reserves.
Not to mention, the decision to “support” Israel following WWII, occured while members of the U.S. government were also secretly carrying out Operation Paperclip, and helping Nazi war criminals escape justice! Because once again, the truth has always been that the main concern of those in control of U.S. foreign policy following WWII, was to ensure the Soviets did not gain an advantage over the U.S. as a superpower. In the case of Operation Paperclip, the U.S. was concerned the Soviets would use information held by Nazi war criminals to advance the science and technology of their own governments.
And to further emphasize why it’s always been such a bullshit bad faith argument to claim opposition to the anti-democratic fascist authoritarians who hide their crimes behind government power and claims of nationalism/patriotism, automatically means you also oppose the countries they use as shields to carry out this bullshit, guess what government agency just so happened to carry out Operation Paperclip?
The forerunner to the CIA, because of course they fucking did:
1948: when the struggle over Palestine was at its height. In the immediate postwar years, the United States defined its policy in the Near and Middle East in terms of assuring unimpeded access and control by U.S. oil companies of its great material prize, petroleum. Congressional hearings on the role of petroleum and the national defense envisioned petroleum as a weapon of war. It followed that ensuring the presence and stability of compatible regimes was an essential dimension of policy, as was containing and crushing those whose nationalist and reformist orientation rendered them suspect.
Honestly let all of that that sink in. Truman, the POTUS in 1948, the man who held the highest (elected) office in the country, didn’t even know the extent of what the OSS/CIA was doing when Operation Paperclip began. Since the very beginning, unelected individuals within U.S. intelligence agencies, have been completely unaccountable and answered to nobody.
They did it in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and they’re doing it again now in Iran (while also once again being buddy buddy with Saudi Arabia on the DL … I fucking wonder why 🤔)
They do whatever the fuck they want, all in the name of “spreading democracy and protecting national security.” And if you have a problem with it, then somehow you’re being unpatriotic and unAmerican. “You’re either with us or against us” is the most anti-democratic bullshit propaganda, and it’s exactly what has enabled these people to hold an inverted totalitarian grip on power since WWII. Now they’re nakedly helping the Trump administration destroy any remaining scraps of democracy at home, while continuing to cling to their interventionist bullshit lies in their never ending quest to protect corporate interests, gain profits, and control the majority of resources and territory around globe.
It was because they needed an established ally in the middle east to help them control oil reserves, and to oppose socialist governments in Palestine they worried would align with the Soviets.
You say that as if it’s a bad thing - the Soviet Union was a hostile power and the USA needs oil.
Why not just be upfront about it then? Why did they try to hide the details for decades?
Nazis Were Given ‘Safe Haven’ in U.S., Report Says
A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.
The 600-page report, which the Justice Department has tried to keep secret for four years, provides new evidence about more than two dozen of the most notorious Nazi cases of the last three decades.
It describes the government’s posthumous pursuit of Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death at Auschwitz, part of whose scalp was kept in a Justice Department official’s drawer; the vigilante killing of a former Waffen SS soldier in New Jersey; and the government’s mistaken identification of the Treblinka concentration camp guard known as Ivan the Terrible.
Perhaps the report’s most damning disclosures come in assessing the ""Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement with Nazi émigrés. Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the C.I.A.’s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations.**
The Justice Department report, describing what it calls “the government’s collaboration with persecutors,” says that O.S.I investigators learned that some of the Nazis “were indeed knowingly granted entry” to the United States, even though government officials were aware of their pasts. “America, which prided itself on being a safe haven for the persecuted, became — in some small measure — a safe haven for persecutors as well,” it said.
They kept it hidden because they knew even then that controlling public opinion depends on controlling the narrative and the information the public receives (or doesn’t receive, hence reality based communities)
the same soviet union who beat back and down berlin?
Utter BS. the US has plenty of useful allies in the middle east and Israel has never been a functional one. We are allies through bribery, not shared interests.
The leaders were set to meet where the offices of the Iranian presidency, the supreme leader and Iran’s National Security Council are located.
Where the Iranians not even trying to avoid all getting killed at once? They must have thought that this was a bluff.
Omg the CIA was behind this 😱
So totally shocking and in no way expected /s
The United States and Israeli governments, which had originally planned to launch a strike at night under the cover of darkness, made the decision to adjust the timing to take advantage of the information about the gathering at the government compound in Tehran on Saturday morning.
So, what you’re saying, is that if these blood thirsty assholes hadn’t been so fucking intent on overthrowing a regime and installing their own regime, (for the sake of “democracy” of course, and with the people of Iran’s safety and well-being first and foremost in their minds), they would have stuck with the original plan of just striking at night.
Which also means they probably wouldn’t have also killed all those girls who were in the school they also bombed.
Because nothing screams “We’re the good guys who ❤️ democracy!” Like murdering young girls attempting to get an education even while living under a regime that is allegedly so unbelievably evil and repressive, it left you with absolutely no other fucking choice but to strike ASAP in the middle of ongoing “peace” talks 🇺🇸🕊️✌️…
I guess more accurately:
🇺🇸🦅💣🖕 World War III, brought to you by Carl’s JR.