On Saturday, February 28, at around 8:10 a.m. local time in Tehran, Israeli fighter jets struck Beit Rahbari, also known as the House of Leadership, the official residence and office complex of Iran’s Supreme Leader.
After repeated denials throughout the day, on Saturday, Sunday morning, Iran’s state media announced to the world that its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been killed in a US-Israeli operation.
The US-Israeli operation that killed Khamenei
Saturday’s strike ended nearly four decades of Khamenei’s iron-fisted rule over Iran, even as the regime continues to fight back.
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Saturday’s strike, in which Israeli fighter jets dropped 30 bombs on the compound, was the culmination of months of careful intelligence planning.
“Highly Sophisticated Surveillance”
Although the exact details of how they did it are not known, US President Donald Trump has hinted that they are keeping a close eye on him.
“He was unable to evade our intelligence and highly sophisticated surveillance systems, and in close cooperation with Israel, there was nothing he or the other leaders who were killed with him could have done,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
Tracking Khamenei’s month
According to The New York Times, the CIA had been monitoring Ayatollah Khamenei for months, gaining more confidence in his location and his patterns. This behavioral analysis allowed the agencies to obtain “high fidelity” of his likely locations and daily routines.
The meeting that sealed fate
However, the most crucial information came a few hours earlier – a meeting of Iran’s top leadership, where the supreme leader will be present.
The information provided “opportunities” for both countries to achieve “a critical and early victory: the removal of Iran’s top officials and the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei,” the report said. The CIA passed its intelligence, described as offering “high fidelity” on Khamenei’s position, to Israel, according to people briefed on the operation.
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Based on this information, the US and Israel planned an attack, which also signaled the start of a wider campaign.
According to reports, the governments of the United States and Israel originally planned to launch the attack at night, but switched to a daylight strike after learning of the leadership gathering in Tehran.
ABC News also confirmed the chain of events that led to the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei and reported that the CIA had been monitoring him for months.
The timing of the attack shifted when they learned there was going to be a senior-to-supreme leader meeting on Saturday, a source told ABC News, adding that the agency had high confidence in their analysis.
ABC News also reported that Israel had been planning for months with its own intelligence to attack Iran’s leadership.
‘US Used Claude’
Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported that the attack was carried out with the help of “Claude,” an artificial intelligence tool developed by Anthropic, just hours after the federal administration announced it was ending its contract with the firm, calling it a “security threat.”
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According to the WSJ, military commands around the world, including the United States Central Command in the Middle East, use Cloud “for intelligence assessment, target identification and simulation of battle scenarios.”
Key things
- Intelligence agencies have used AI technology for strategic planning and execution.
- Cooperation between the US and Israel was key in carrying out the operation.
- Behavioral analysis of Khamenei’s movements and routines played a key role in the success of the strike.
