Israel’s “eye in the sky” intelligence network has allowed it to target and eliminate thousands of regime thugs, the Israeli military said Wednesday — with the hopes that the strikes could spark a popular uprising.
After three of Tehran’s top officials were killed in airstrikes over the last 24 hours, the Israel Defense Forces has been instructed to kill any senior Iranian officials that have been on their radar, Defense Minister Israel Katz said.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I have authorized the IDF to eliminate any senior Iranian official for whom the intelligence and operational circle has been closed, without the need for additional approval,” Katz said in a statement.
“We will continue to eliminate and hunt them all down,” he added.
The Israeli tactics are also getting personal. Agents with Mossad — Israel’s CIA — are calling some of their targets directly and warning them to stand with Iran’s people or die, according to the Wall Street Journal.
One senior Iranian police commander recently responded by saying, “I swear on the Koran I’m not your enemy.”
He also begged the Jewish state to “please come help us” overthrow the Islamic Republic, according to the contents of a leaked phone call.
The Mossad agent’s warning to the Iranian police chief was clear.
“We know everything about you. You are on our blacklist, and we have all the information about you,” the Mossad agent told the police commander in Farsi. “I called to warn you in advance that you should stand with your people’s side. And if you will not do that, your destiny will be as your leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]. Do you hear me?”
After destroying the vast majority of Iran’s air-defense systems during the current conflict and last year’s 12 Day War, Israel has maintained an “eye in the sky” surveillance system capable of tracking top targets across Iran, IDF spokesman Nadav Shoshani said in a Wednesday briefing.
It’s that very system that Israel deployed on Tuesday to kill Ali Larijani, the head of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, who served as the country’s de facto leader, Shasohani said.
Along with Larijani, Israel conducted separate airstrikes to take out Basij paramilitary leader Gen. Gholam Reza Soleiman and Iranian intelligence minister Esmaeil Khatib.
“As we’ve proven in the last three weeks, we have great intelligence on the warehouse of Iranian leaders,” Shoshani said.
Israel has dropped some 10,000 munitions on thousands of different regime targets across Iran, including more than 2,200 linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Basij and other security forces units, according to the IDF.
Documents detailing Israel’s strikes show a specific interest in decimating Iran’s security forces and its leaders, who were behind the brutal crackdown on protesters in January that left more than 7,000 dead.
As part of this campaign, the IDF aimed for sites where regime personnel were known to be present and even used Iranian officials’ own back up plan against them, according to a review of the documents by the Wall Street Journal.
When the IDF discovered that security forces were gathering at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium as part of a plan to avoid their own besieged offices, the Israeli military waited from the arena to fill up before bombing it on March 5, the WSJ reported.
The strike was among the deadliest of the war, killing hundreds of members of Iran’s internal security services and military.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the strikes targeting top Iranian officials would create the “optimal” conditions for civilians to rise up and oust their government.
“I’m telling the Iranian people, the moment you can come out for freedom is getting closer,” he said in a statement last week. “We are standing beside you and helping you. But at the end of the day, it’s up to you.”
Despite Netanyahu’s repeated calls for an uprising, senior Israeli officials have told American diplomats that protesters would be “slaughtered” if they took to the streets against the regime, the Washington Post reported.
Trump appeared to acknowledge the same conclusion on Friday, noting that a popular uprising did not seem imminent.
“They say if anybody protests, we’re going to kill you in the streets,” he told Fox News. “I think that’s a big hurdle to climb for people that don’t have weapons.”
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