(TBA News)
By Dr. Fatima Ibrahim al Menoufy
Iran’s foremost enemy now lies within its own borders, with threads extending into its intelligence circles. The scale and precision of Israel’s recent operations have raised several questions about the strength of its infiltration into the Iranian territory and institutions.
Repeated incidents took place over the past years in Iran, without taking the necessary measures. Despite Iran’s powerful rhetoric and its regional proxies, the country remains internally infiltrated by the Mossad. The assassination of Ali Shadmani, Iran’s newly appointed Chief of Staff, by Israel just hours after his appointment, is yet another serious breach, confirming that Iran has not addressed its security and intelligence vulnerabilities. It also highlights the ongoing activity of internal elements loyal to Mossad.
Iran’s permeability to intelligence and security attacks
Since the beginning of the aggression against Tehran, Israel has effortlessly bombed nuclear facilities in the depth of the Iranian territory, such as the Natanz site, one of the country’s main uranium enrichment centers. Israel has also managed to assassinate prominent scientists and military officials through purely intelligence-based operations, not due to technological superiority. This is also evident in the air strikes targeting specific apartments in populated buildings where the assassinated Iranian officials resided, proving deep Israeli infiltration inside Iran.
Israel admitted using spies and smuggling drones in Iran
Israeli intelligence and military officials have stated that the attack on Iran was “the culmination of years of work,” offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse. Shlomi Bender, head of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, praised intelligence officers for their efforts in gathering information, affirming that their intelligence was instrumental in breaching Iran and will similarly impact other regions in the near future. Iranian news agency Fars also reported that Israel uses advanced technology to track mobile phones even when powered off.
An article published by The Times of Israel, on June 17, 2025, titled “How Israel Used Spies, Smuggled Drones, and AI to Stun and Cripple Iran”, revealed that the Israeli attacks were “Guided by spies and artificial intelligence, the Israeli military unleashed a nighttime fusillade of warplanes and armed drones smuggled into Iran to quickly incapacitate many of its air defenses and missile systems. With greater freedom to fly over Iran, Israel bombarded key nuclear sites and killed top generals and scientists. By the time Iran mustered a response hours later, its ability to retaliate — already weakened by past Israeli strikes — was greatly diminished.”
“This attack is the culmination of years of work by the Mossad to target Iran’s nuclear program,” said Sima Shine, the former Mossad research director who is now an analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies.”
“The intelligence officer involved in identifying the possible targets said options were first put into various groups, such as leadership, military, civilian and infrastructure. Targets were chosen if they were determined to be a threat to Israel, such as being deeply associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a paramilitary force that controls Iran’s ballistic missiles.”
“An investigation by The Associated Press earlier this year asserted that the Israeli military uses US-made AI models in war to sift through intelligence and intercept communications to learn the movements of its enemies, both in the wars with Hamas in Gaza and with Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
The report also noted that the officer compiled a list of Iranian generals with detailed profiles of their workplaces and leisure habits. Among those killed since the Friday attack were Major General Hossein Salami, Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and General Mohammad Bagheri, Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff. In addition to AI, Mossad relied on spies to identify top nuclear scientists and IRGC members.
The same report stated that in 2018, Israel stole a nuclear research archive from Iran containing tens of thousands of pages, as confirmed by Yossi Kuperwasser, a retired general and former intelligence official now heading the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.
There is no doubt that Israel’s deep infiltration into Iran stems from fundamental causes—namely, the fragility of Iran’s security and intelligence systems, internal challenges, political and ethnic divisions, and to some extent repression of freedoms. All of these have contributed to Iran’s failure to thwart or even anticipate such attacks.
Fear of Direct Confrontation
Iran’s reluctance to engage in direct confrontation with Israel may also be a factor. In October 2024, it launched only 180 ballistic missiles in a limited retaliatory strike, causing minimal damage to Israeli military bases. This restrained response may have emboldened Israel to escalate its current operations.
Following the 2020 assassination of Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s top general and commander of the Quds Force, Iran failed to take the necessary steps to root out internal collaborators or Mossad agents embedded in its system.
Then came the assassination of Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh last year. And again, Iran failed to protect him on its own soil—an incident that clearly pointed to internal infiltration of foreign intelligence. Strangely, Iran was unable to identify the collaborators who facilitated the assassination, and even more alarmingly, no investigation results were ever revealed. These facts underscore that Iranian territory is no longer secure, even for Iranians themselves.
Fragility of Iran’s Intelligence Infrastructure
Logically, prominent scientists and senior military leaders should have been housed in secure locations and avoided using traceable communication tools—especially when facing a technically advanced and intelligence-driven adversary like Israel, which is backed by the United States. The successive assassinations highlight the frailty of Tehran’s security and intelligence apparatus.
Israel is sending a clear message to Iran, to the countries in the region, and to the world that it has deeply infiltrated Iranian intelligence and security systems. It also aims to psychologically target Iran’s top leadership—signaling that no one is safe, regardless of rank or role.
The level of infiltration has reached a point that threatens Iran with internal collapse, and the enemies will go their next steps. The country must now purge its institutions and form alliances with Islamic and Arab countries, especially Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, in addition to North Korea, to thwart the enemy’s plans, which are not aimed at Iran alone, but at other regional and Islamic countries. Also Iran should consider to close the strait of Hormuz which is the world’s most important oil transit chokepoint.
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