The launch of the joint US-Israel attack against Iran in which Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed was triggered by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sources pinpointing his location, it has emerged.
The Supreme Leader died in an Israeli air strike on a compound in Tehran on Saturday morning.
His body was found in the rubble, riddled with shrapnel. A photo image of the corpse has been seen by President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The death of the 86-year-old Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic in the initial stages of Israel’s Operation Roaring Lion – known to American forces as Operation Epic Fury – is a significant blow in the pursuit of regime change.
Scores of other senior Iranian officials have also been killed in the opening salvoes.
Now it has emerged that the final timing of the launch of the campaign came after intelligence identified Khameini’s top-secret location and a decision was made to seize the limited window of opportunity for a successful strike.
His security had been subject to extraordinary precautions particularly since the 12-day war last June highlighted Iran’s vulnerability to targeted attacks by Israel.
According to sources speaking to the New York Times, the CIA had been closely tracking Khamenei’s whereabouts for a number of months.
The accumulating intelligence gradually revealed a pattern to his movements.
The critical breakthrough came through with a CIA source reporting that a meeting of leading Islamic Republic officials was due to take place on Saturday morning, and that the Supreme Leader would be present nearby.
The US immediately shared the CIA intelligence report with Israel, saying the information was of “high fidelity” quality, according to the New York Times.
The two countries together decide to seize upon the window of the opportunity and adjust their plans.
Israel had been working on the targeted killing of Iran’s leaders for months.
Now that plan was adjusted so that an attack which had originally been conceived to take place at night was instead launched in daytime.
Israeli fighter jets took off early on Saturday morning, carrying long-range missiles loaded with high explosives which hit their targets in Tehran shortly before 10am, reducing to rubble buildings where the regime’s highest-ranking figures were located.
Among those killed in these first strikes along with Khameini were Mohammad Pakpour, who commanded the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and head of the military council, Admiral Ali Shamkhani.
The intelligence network which had provided information on Khameini’s location was already up and running last year, according to the source. This was the basis for Trump saying in June that America knew the location of the Supreme Leader at the time and had the capability to eliminate him.
Monitoring the movements and communications of the regime’s senior figures during the 12-day war had honed the CIA intelligence operation for the coming months, leading up to the extraordinary success of Saturday’s targeted attacks.
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