How Mossad and Unit 8200 Hacked GPS to Spy on Khamenei Officials' Lifestyles

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed last Saturday in an airstrike launched by Israel. The attack occurred at his office on Pasteur Street in Tehran while he was engaged in discussions with several other prominent Iranian leaders.

For this operation, Israel launched about thirty missiles at the office building, killing about forty high-ranking officials, including Khamenei.

This assassination was not merely an instantaneous decision but had been planned by Israel for many years. The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and its Unit 8200 jointly built this intelligence network by hacking all traffic cameras in the capital city of Tehran. The footage obtained from these cameras was encrypted and secretly sent to servers located in Tel Aviv and southern Israel.

The American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also assisted in this complex operation, specifically using a specialized camera to monitor where senior officials' bodyguards and drivers parked their vehicles. This enabled the collection of a comprehensive database under the intelligence concept known as 'Pattern of Life,' covering officials' homes, their reporting times for duty, travel routes, and the VIPs they protected.

Israel also took steps to hack mobile phone towers around Pasteur Street to prevent any warnings from reaching security forces at the time of the attack. Israel's Unit 8200, Mossad's human resources, and military intelligence divisions jointly used a mathematical methodology called 'Social Network Analysis' to analyze billions of data points. An Israeli intelligence officer stated that they know Tehran as well as Jerusalem and can detect even the smallest changes there.

After two informants confirmed that Khamenei was holding a meeting with high-ranking leaders at his office on Saturday morning, the CIA and Israeli authorities seized this opportune moment to launch the attack. This sudden attack was planned because he might hide in bunkers once a war began. Khamenei, who had refused to hide in bunkers like Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, had previously publicly stated that his death would have no impact.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who became Iran's Supreme Leader after the death of Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, held that position for 37 years. He played a prominent role in overthrowing the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He was elected president in 1981 and served in that position for eight years, also surviving a mosque bombing in the same year.

Iranian state media has confirmed that Khamenei's wife, Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, who was seriously injured in the attack, also passed away on Monday, two days after the attack, while receiving treatment. Born into a religious family in Mashhad in 1947, she married Khamenei in 1964.

Previously, in June 2025, during a 12-day war, Israel had assassinated several Iranian nuclear scientists and senior officials. In that instance, Israel took steps to destroy Iran's air defense system using cyberattacks, small drones, and 'Sparrow' missiles capable of striking targets over 1000 kilometers away. For this current attack, Israeli fighter jets also flew for several hours, releasing more than 30 missiles at specific targets.

A major factor behind this assassination was the severe crisis between the United States and Iran regarding the nuclear deal. With the breakdown of talks in Geneva on February 17, 2025, the US began to encircle Iran. Accordingly, the aircraft carriers USS Gerald Ford and USS Abraham Lincoln were sent to the Middle East, marking the largest American military deployment in the region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Additionally, approximately 150 American fighter jets were stationed, and on February 24, 12 F-22 fighter jets were deployed to Israel's Ben Gurion and Ovda airbases.