The End Of The Islamic Republic Update: A Victory For Intel Ops

Military And CIA Preparation Yielded Opportunity, And Donald Trump Made The Most Of It

By now it is apparent that the twin US and Israeli attacks on Iran—Operation Epic Fury by the US and Operation Roaring Lion by Israel—is an unqualified military success.

As was finally confirmed by Iranian state media late yesterday, the attacks succeeded in killing the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

While most of the media attention is naturally focused on the deaths of Khamenei and the other members of Iran’s top leadership killed in the attacks, we should also step back to note the intelligence victory these deaths represent.

The Roman poet Seneca is said to have pithily observed that “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Both Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion are legitimately proud proofs of this dictum.

A combination of military and intelligence preparation resulted in a momentous opportunity, and Donald Trump made the most of it.

The twin operations are an unqualified success not just because Ayatollah Khamenei was killed. This graphic from the New York Times illustrates how much of Iran’s top leadership has been eliminated.

To that list we can also add Defense Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani and former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

These deaths were not mere casualties of war. These deaths were operational objectives. That was readily apparent just from the targets selected by US and Israeli forces, targets where Iran’s leaders worked and frequently met.

This had been noted by independent reporting on social media yesterday even as the attacks were ongoing.

Reuters confirms strikes targeted Khamenei and Pezeshkian. CNN confirms months of joint US-Israeli planning. Israeli officials confirmed the strike hit the location where Iran’s top officials were gathered. Whether Khamenei was moved before the strike or extracted after is the most consequential unknown on the planet right now. If before, someone inside Tehran’s inner circle told Jerusalem when and where the meeting would happen. If after, the strikes hit the room and he survived. Both scenarios are catastrophic for the regime.

While speculative social media reporting must often be taken with a grain of salt, as more information has emerged, this report proved to be fairly accurate. Iran’s leadership was not merely targeted. Iran’s leadership was tracked until an optimal moment to strike presented itself.

As reported by the New York Times, the CIA has been monitoring and tracking the whereabouts of Khamenei and other top officials literally for months.

The C.I.A. had been tracking Ayatollah Khamenei for months, gaining more confidence about his locations and his patterns, according to people familiar with the operation. Then the agency learned that a meeting of top Iranian officials would take place on Saturday morning at a leadership compound in the heart of Tehran. Most critically, the C.I.A. learned that the supreme leader would be at the site.

The United States and Israel decided to adjust the timing of their attack, in part to take advantage of the new intelligence, according to officials with knowledge of the decisions.

That the CIA (as well as Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency) had achieved pinpoint level of detail on where Khamenei and others would be is illustrated by the apparent last-minute decision to execute the strikes in the morning rather than at night as is the historical norm.

That the militaries of both countries were able to respond quickly to an up-to-the minute flow of intelligence information speaks volumes about the planning and preparation which had already been put into the operations.

The success of Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion also compel us to reevaluate a boast Donald Trump made in the runup to last summer’s Operation Midnight Hammer: that he knew exactly where Khamenei was and could kill him at any time.

While even most members of the MAGA Coalition tend to take Donald Trump seriously but generally not literally, Operation Epic Fury tells us this was no mere boast by the President. As the St. Louis Cardinals pitching great Dizzy Dean once observed, “It ain’t bragging if you can do it.”

Clearly, Donald Trump was not bragging last June.

We also need to recall once again what I highlighted yesterday: that the US government, via the National Endowment for Democracy, has for months been smuggling Starlink terminals into Iran.

The End Of The Islamic Republic Update: The Republic Strikes Back

As has been demonstrated in Ukraine, access to Elon Musk’s Starlink Internet service provides comprehensive communications facilities. Were these terminals part of how the CIA was able to monitor Khamenei’s movements so precisely?

That possibility remains very much on the table, principally because the Ranking Member on the House Oversight Committee did not want the head of the NED talking about Starlink on the record.

One interesting development actually occurred a few days ago, during a House Oversight Committee hearing, when the head of the National Endowment for Democracy casually let slip that his agency had smuggled thousands of Starlink internet terminals into Iran in recent months.

Damon Wilson, the head of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), was interrupted by a member of Congress during a House oversight hearing on February 24 after revealing that his agency “began supporting the deployment [and] operation of about 200 Starlinks early on” amid the violence which swept through Iran last month.

Before he could finish the sentence, he was cut off by the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, Rep. Lois Frankel, who told Wilson: “You know what, I’m going to interrupt you – we’d better not talk about it.”

Roughly two weeks prior, it was reported by the Wall Street Journal and picked up by other outlets that some 6,000 terminals had been smuggled into Iran by the US State Department.

The US sent around 6,000 terminals to Iran in an unprecedented, direct attempt to deliver internet freedom to regime-stifled protestors, according to officials cited by the outlet.

The majority of the US State Department’s purchase of almost 7,000 terminals was made in January, utilizing funds diverted from similar “internet-freedom initiatives,” to “help anti-regime activists circumvent internet shut-offs in Iran,” officials told WSJ.

Has the United States been laying groundwork for an Iranian insurgent effort to topple the regime in the aftermath of a major attack? We are presented with apparently corroborated evidence arguing that it has, which means the preparations for this attack have been ongoing for quite some time, longer than most of the US military assets deployed to the Middle East recently have been on station.

While the National Endowment for Democracy is a nominally independent non-profit institution, the reality of the organization is that it is funded primarily by Congress, which arguably makes it a vehicle for expressing and implementing US foreign policy—or for gathering intelligence on foreign countries.

This is not to say that the NED efforts in Iran were conclusively part of any intelligence effort by the CIA. This is merely to highlight that the US government has been actively making significant efforts to smuggle highly mobile and effectively untraceable communications technology into Iran for quite some time.

This is also to say that, whatever methods were used by the CIA and Mossad to track the movements of the Iranian leadership, they were extraordinarily successful.

That the CIA has the ability to track foreign leaders in near realtime this way, to the point where mission plans can be changed on the fly with no loss of mission readiness, is quite a testimony to the agency’s intelligence gathering capacities.

More importantly, there is nothing in the CIA’s efforts in Iran which are unique to Iran. The same technologies which worked so well in Iran will work in nearly any other moderately developed country. What worked in Iran would also work in Russia or China, for example.

That aspect of Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion should give the leaders of American adversaries such as China pause. Can the CIA track Xi Jinping the way it tracked Ayatolla Khamenei? Can the CIA track Vladimir Putin the way it tracked Ayatolla Khamenei?

Quite possibly, the answer is “Yes.”

Quite possibly, the CIA may already be tracking Vladimir Putin’s movements the way it tracked Khamenei’s.

Given Ukraine’s demonstrated capacities to conduct drone strikes deep inside Russia at will, coupling CIA intelligence gathering on Putin with Ukraine drone forces could put a target on Putin’s back as has not been done before.

Ukraine's Drones Fly Deep and Strike Hard

Note that I am not speculating on what either Ukraine or the CIA is doing presently. So far there is no reason to even speculate that the Trump Administration wants Vladimir Putin targeted and assassinated.

Rather, I am pointing out how the intelligence gathering capabilities the CIA demonstrated in Iran could be used against the leaders of other foreign countries. I am pointing out how the preparations made in Iran are not, based on what has been described, country-specific.

Operation Epic Fury has been a clear win for the United States. It is a victory not just for what was done, but for what the United States has shown it can do—track the movements of political leaders in near real time, regardless of the security precautions those leaders may have taken.

Operation Epic Fury is a remarkable demonstration of US intelligence gathering capabilities, making this attack on Iran a subtle warning to the rest of the world: The United States still knows how to prepare for conflict.