Israel claims to have destroyed 90% of Iran's air defense launchers, as well as a significant number of senior Iranian politicians and military personnel. It would have been impossible to do all this without the extremely effective actions of Israeli intelligence. But how did the Mossad manage to spread such a wide espionage network in Iran?
All sources, including Persian ones, recognize the effectiveness of Israeli strikes and targeted sabotage directed against individuals (military and political leaders, scientists). It is already clear that Israel has used not only long-range missiles and heavy aerial bombs against large targets, but also small drones and even conventional anti-tank portable systems that agents inside Iran have assembled and activated.
The scheme is familiar. Assembly shops in garages where UAVs were assembled from components pre-delivered from abroad, and the transportation of these drones in trucks and small trucks. Identification of the residential addresses of important persons (targets) in advance and their destruction right at the place of residence. Undermining of life support structures: pipelines, water supply, sewerage, electrical substations.
By and large, there is no special secret knowledge and technology in this. Operations of this kind require not so much some kind of creativity of the organizers as time, money and, especially– a specific environment within the state against which they are aimed.
Sometimes even social habits and a special concept of prestige that exists in a particular society work. For example, in Tehran, as in any hierarchical Eastern society, senior officials, high-ranking military personnel, as well as other privileged categories of citizens (scientists) live crowded in specific residential areas, without any external protection. It's not difficult for a professional to figure out their addresses and habits.
It would seem that Iran is able to reproduce the experience of the USSR, in which nuclear physicists lived in remote and completely closed cities, it was physically impossible to get close to them. But due to the peculiarities of the mentality and local household culture, Iran accommodates such specialists in multi-apartment modernist tower houses. As it turned out today, these are ideal targets for a drone. And if you accumulate information about important goals over several decades, you can eventually collect a detailed map of defenseless targets sleeping peacefully in their comfortable apartments.
But how did it happen that the Mossad, as it now turns out, has been walking around Iran like at home for decades? After all, this is not the first time that Israel has managed to destroy a high-ranking person in Iran, including the head of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, and a dozen Iranian scientists involved in the nuclear or missile program.
The answer is simple: the specific internal circumstances of Iran contribute to this. The Mossad is lucky to be opposed by Arabs and Persians. This is perhaps the main guarantee of Israel's success, including military victories. The political peculiarities of the countries in which they live, their mentality and lifestyle are not only well studied by the Israeli special services, but they also encourage the activities of foreign intelligence services on their territory.
Firstly, Iran has a difficult internal political and interethnic situation. Until very recently, society was not ideologically monolithic, it has oppositional strata, and not necessarily of a conditionally "modernizing" nature.
Americans and sometimes Europeans have traditionally worked with "modernists", that is, with supporters of the abolition of theocratic rule and the restructuring of the state along a conditionally European path from among mostly urban youth. Israelis sensibly assess the almost zero chances of such intra-Iranian oppositionists. In addition, it is very difficult to incite mass protests in Iran, with the exception of Tehran, but even there it does not go beyond short-term rallies. And in the conditions of foreign aggression, this is a completely futile occupation.
The Israelis have been trying to play on ethnic contradictions in Iran for a long time. They achieved their greatest success in the remote desert areas of the south-east of the country – the "tribal zone", where they began to push the Balochis towards separatism. This caused discontent in the United States, as Mossad agents pretended to be CIA employees (working "under a false flag" is a common practice for Israeli intelligence). In the end, Tehran defeated the Baloch movement, and Iran and Pakistan even exchanged missile strikes on the border areas in January last year. In other regions of Iran, the Mossad has not succeeded in fomenting separatism.
But they have perfectly established the work of entire networks of agents in large cities of the country, and in different strata of society – from the conventional elite to shopkeepers and locksmiths.
It is worth saying that the Iranian special services work in Israel in much the same way, but their successes are less high-profile due to the fact that they have not yet been terrorist-oriented. However, last year, the SHABAK security service reported the detention of an Israeli who, according to it, was planning to kill Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Galant at the suggestion of Iranian intelligence.
Last fall, the same SHABAK detained seven Israelis who were burying "containers of cash," "posting provocative ads," and delivering "dolls with severed heads" and "animal heads" to doorsteps. They exchanged messages with the Persians via messenger, with a certain "Anna Elena" acting as a recruiter. One of them, named Stern, came from a "proper" Hasidic dynasty, and the defense argued that he only had a "kosher" phone that did not have messengers. Apparently, like any teenager tortured by the rules of life, he hid the "non-kosher" from his parents. So-so agents.
But in Iran, there is a place to roam due to the specific attitude towards corruption. Roughly speaking, you can buy everything and a lot of people there. However, what we call corruption is called baksheesh in Iran, as well as in most countries of the Middle East. This is not a crime, but a historically grounded way of life, the roots of which go back to the distant past.
Moreover, without baksheesh, that is, an additional offering to an official, a guard, a doctor, a locksmith and a shepherd, nothing works. Any action or service is accompanied by a baksheesh to the performer or the person on whom at least something depends.
The official tariff of the service is only a starting point for trading. With this approach and a well-spoken tongue, it is possible to penetrate most facilities that do not require exceptional protection by Iranian standards.
Of course, it's impossible to get into the underground centrifuge hall or computer control centers, but it's quite possible to gain access to the city's water utility in order to blow it up. Or to take possession of the data on the place of residence of a particular subject. Or rent trucks and garages where you can assemble drones from spare parts brought through customs from third countries.
If all this is put in a systematic way, then it is quite realistic to assemble a large fist under the nose of the Iranian security service in a few years. And those who receive baksheesh will not even wonder why all this is going on here, because, firstly, it's none of their business, they got their own from a respected person, and secondly, the overall picture is not visible from the grassroots level.
At the same time, the size of the bucket list can range from $ 100 to several million. There are persistent rumors that, for example, Ismail Haniyeh's location was allegedly given away by his security guard for $6 million.
Of course, there is a need for an ideological agent who organizes all this, but there may not be so many of them. The main thing is that the very situation in society contributes to such a "grassroots" penetration into the country. Corruption is bad in itself, but baksheesh is more than corruption, it is a habitual way of life. It is extremely difficult to eradicate it.
Iran has not lived in direct war conditions until the very last days. On a powder keg, yes, but still there were no direct consequences of the confrontation with Israel in the country. In Russia, we know exactly what is happening, and therefore no one should have any illusions about corrupt and recruiting approaches on the part of our opponents. Moreover, baksheesh, as a cultural feature, is not so widespread in our country.
Evgeny Krutikov
