Hours after Israel launched its first wave of attacks against Iran on June 13, killing top military officials and nuclear scientists, Israeli intelligence agents launched a covert campaign to intimidate senior officials with the apparent goal of dividing and destabilizing Tehran's theocratic regime, according to three people familiar with the operation.
Israeli security personnel who speak Persian, Iran's primary language, called senior Iranian officials on their cell phones and warned them that they too would be killed unless they stopped supporting the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, according to the three people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss clandestine operations. One estimated that more than 20 Iranians in positions of power were contacted.
The Washington Post obtained an audio recording and transcript of one such call, which took place on the same day, June 13, that Israel began its bombing of Iran. “I can advise you now: You have 12 hours to escape with your wife and child. Otherwise, you are on our list right now,” an Israeli intelligence agent told a top Iranian general close to the country’s rulers, according to the audio recording. The agent then suggested that Israel could turn weapons on the general and his family at any moment. We are closer to you than your neck vein. Get this through your head. May God protect you,” he said.
The general, a member of Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was told he had 12 hours to record a video disassociating himself from the Iranian government.
“How do I send it to you?” the general replies. “I’ll send you a Telegram ID,” the agent says, referring to the messaging app Telegram. “Send it.”
It's unclear whether the video was recorded or sent. The general is believed to be still alive and in Iran, said one of the people familiar with the operation. But a primary goal of the operation was to deter and confuse Tehran's leaders, according to another source.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office did not respond to a request for comment.
The audio recording and an English transcript were provided by an Israeli who obtained the material and shared it with The Post, along with a description of a second, similar call to another senior Iranian official close to Khamenei. The Post prepared its own English transcript of the nearly four-minute audio recording of the conversation, conducted in Persian.
The person who provided the recording claimed that the audio content was not manipulated in any way, except to mask the Israeli intelligence agent's voice and protect his identity. The Post obtained the Iranian general's name but will not publish it, and has removed his voice from the recording to conceal his identity.
The phone calls to senior Iranian military and security figures were a starting point for what Israeli security officials have described as a broad covert action campaign that complemented the Israeli military’s attack on nuclear facilities, weapons production sites, and missile launchers. The overall operation, dubbed “Lion Rising” by the Israeli government, relied on the activation of clandestine intelligence teams, pre-positioned weapons depots, and other capabilities that had lain dormant inside Iran for weeks or even months, Israeli officials said.
Netanyahu said Israel launched the two-week-old surprise operation to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. The Israeli government said Iran was moving closer in recent months to convert its stockpile of enriched uranium into a nuclear weapon. Israel has offered no new detailed evidence of Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions or efforts to develop them. Current and former U.S. officials said that while they have intelligence indicating Iran is researching techniques that would allow it to quickly build a rudimentary nuclear device if it chooses, there is no indication it has decided to acquire an atomic bomb.
President Donald Trump ordered an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities this weekend, using ground-penetrating munitions launched from B-2 Spirit bombers and submarine-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles. The weapons struck the deeply buried Fordow uranium enrichment facility as well as the Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities. Senior Pentagon officials said all three sites suffered “heavy damage” but added that it was premature to determine whether Iran retained any nuclear capabilities.
The U.S. military strikes came eight days after Israel launched its attack on Iran. In the first hours of the Israeli assault, members of Khamenei's inner circle and key figures in Iran's nuclear think tank were killed; in some cases, apparently victims of explosive-laden drones or other devices that blasted holes in the sides of apartment buildings and other structures in central Tehran, according to Israeli and Western security officials, as well as regime statements about known casualties.
Among those targeted and believed killed are Major General Hossein Salami, commander of the IRGC; Major General Mohammad Bagheri, an IRGC veteran and chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces; and Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, a nuclear physicist and key figure in Iran's nuclear development.
The Israeli agent emphasized these murders in his phone call to the Iranian general. “I’ll explain, listen carefully. I’m calling from a country that two hours ago sent Bagheri, Salami, and Shamkhani, one by one, to hell,” the agent tells the general.
The agent’s death toll included Vice Admiral Ali Shamkhani, former head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. Iranian media reported last week that Shamkhani, though seriously wounded, had survived the Israeli attack and had sent a message to Khamenei promising: “The dawn of victory is near” for Iran.
Israel has already demonstrated its ability to carry out targeted killings in Tehran. In July, it killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh using an explosive device smuggled into the guesthouse where Haniyeh was staying in the Iranian capital. The covert campaign of intimidation against key Iranian figures who survived or were not targeted in the first round of Israeli attacks involved several Israeli military and security agencies and was aimed at instilling fear in second- and third-level figures, according to two people familiar with the operation. The goal was to make it difficult for Khamenei, who controls Iran's national security policy, to fill the positions of those killed by Israel.
“The second-tier leaders who were supposed to inherit the positions and will now take over from those eliminated are terrified,” said one of the people familiar with the operation. “And they are reminded, on a personal level, of what happened to Nasrallah’s successor and the successors of the Hezbollah commanders who were also eliminated.”
The official was referring to Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, whom Israel killed in an airstrike in September. Israel subsequently assassinated Nasrallah's likely successor.
“Khamenei faces serious difficulties in appointing successors to the officials eliminated in Operation,” the official stated. “And even if he succeeds, these are people he didn't choose in the first place. Because the most important ones refuse to take office now.”
Western security officials said they had seen no signs of defections among high-ranking members of the Iranian military or the IRGC.
The Israeli official indicated that some senior Iranian officials received a warning letter under their door, others received a phone call directly, and others were contacted through their spouses."They fully understand that they are transparent and known to us, and that our intelligence penetration is 100%."
Several senior Iranian officials have been contacted on several occasions, leading to dialogue between them and Israeli intelligence, according to one of the people familiar with the operations.
