The CIA helped identify a Saturday morning gathering of Iran’s top leaders in Tehran, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, before Israel carried out a strike that killed him and other senior officials, The New York Times reported.
Citing people familiar with the operation and officials briefed on the intelligence, the newspaper said the agency had tracked Khamenei for months and passed “high fidelity” intelligence on his location to Israel ahead of the attack.
According to the report, US and Israeli officials adjusted the timing of their planned strike to take advantage of intelligence that senior political and military figures would gather Saturday morning at a leadership compound housing the offices of the supreme leader, the presidency and the Supreme National Security Council.
Israel had assessed that those present would include Mohammad Pakpour, commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh; Admiral Ali Shamkhani, head of the Military Council; Majid Mousavi, commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force; and Deputy Intelligence Minister Mohammad Shirazi, among others.
The operation began around 8 a.m. Tehran time, when fighter jets took off armed with long-range precision munitions. About two hours later, in Tehran, missiles struck the compound.
Senior national security officials were in one building, while Khamenei was in another nearby structure, the report said.
An Israeli defense official said in a message reviewed by the newspaper that the strike was “carried out simultaneously at several locations in Tehran,” adding that Israel achieved “tactical surprise” despite Iranian preparations for war.
Iran’s state news agency IRNA confirmed on Sunday the deaths of some of the senior military figures Israel said it had killed, including Shamkhani, Pakpour, and Nasirzadeh.
Last June, as plans were underway to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, President Trump said the United States knew where Khamenei was hiding and could have killed him.
