A week after Israel seriously compromised Iran’s nuclear program by wiping out nearly all of its top scientists, details of the surprise attack — albeit sketchy ones — are beginning to emerge.
According to multiple sources, the operation to take out the scientists — a sub-operation within Operation Rising Lion, the name given to the attacks on Iran that began in the early hours of last Friday — was called Operation Narnia, according to numerous sources.
The Jerusalem Post said that the name — taken from the fantasy world in C.S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia” books — “reflects the operation’s improbable nature.”
Indeed, the operation managed to wipe out nine out of the top 10 scientists in Iran’s nuclear program: Fereydoun Abbasi, Mohammad Mahdi Tehranchi, Akbar Matlali Zadeh, Saeed Beraji, Amir Hassan Faqahi, Abd al-Hamid Minushahr, Mansour Asgari, Ahmad Reza Davalparki Daryani, and Ali Bakhayi Kathehremi.
All nine scientists were sleeping in their beds when they were killed; Israel decided to time the operation at night and simultaneously so there would be no time to tip off the others.
The tenth scientist was killed shortly thereafter in subsequent strikes on Iranian leadership and the country’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
The news was originally reported by Hebrew-language Israeli television station Channel 12, which the Times of Israel said learned the scientists “were killed using a special weapon whose details were barred from publication.”
The 10th nuclear scientist was killed shortly after the other nine, as part of the overnight Thursday-Friday Israeli operation, which included strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile program and the Natanz nuclear site, along with the elimination of top members of the Islamic Republic’s military leadership, the network says.
The nuclear scientists were all killed while they were sleeping in their beds, with Israel deciding to carry out the assassinations simultaneously so that there wouldn’t be time to tip off those being targeted.
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The scientists apparently believed they were safe from such targeting in their homes, a senior Israeli official tells Channel 12, noting that previously assassinated nuclear scientists were killed while heading to their cars after work.
It’s unclear what methods the Israelis used to kill the scientists, but the Jewish state has shown remarkable ingenuity in tracking down its enemies and catching them in situations where they’re unaware of the danger.
Perhaps the best recent example of this was the operation which used explosive pagers to eliminate much of Hezbollah’s leadership structure in a scheme carried out last autumn.
Israeli intelligence went so far as to license and build a pager with the plastic explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate — better known as PETN, one of the components of the bomb that took down Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 — and create an elaborate backstory for the pager model ordered by Hezbollah leadership.
According to Reuters, the Lebanese-based terror organization had switched to pagers after it realized that Israel had infiltrated its cellular networks. That attack killed at least 40 people.
It’s unclear whether that weapon is similar to the weapon used in Operation Narnia or if a different strategy was employed to kill the scientists.
However, Channel 12 reported that the Iranian scientists had been tracked for years by Israeli intelligence; the decision to eliminate them was made last November.
“Israeli intelligence officials felt that the killing of the nuclear scientists was the most important part of Operation Narnia because the military leadership and equipment killed would be more easily replaceable, while the knowledge held by the nuclear scientists would take much longer to ascertain, the network said, citing an unnamed senior Israeli official,” the Times of Israel reported.
Israel has also leveraged the attacks as part of its information warfare against Iran, sending a message from the Israel Defense Forces’ social media account in Persian saying that senior regime officials were privately pleading with them not to turn the country into Gaza or Lebanon after the initial set of attacks.
That tactical edge also helped when Iran struck a building that belongs to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. “Iran claims to have attacked a Mossad building with missile strikes,” the post read. “Fortunately, no one was there … everyone is in Iran.”
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