Israel located and eliminated Iranian nuclear weapons experts and top regime operatives during the 12-Day War by tracking and hacking into the mobile phones used by the bodyguards assigned to them, The New York Times reported Saturday, quoting senior Israeli and Iranian officials.
The article describes how “Iranian security guards’ careless use of mobile phones over several years — including posting on social media — played a central role in allowing Israeli military intelligence to hunt Iranian nuclear scientists and military commanders” at the early phases of the Israel-Iran war in mid-June 2025.
Anticipating an Israeli attempt to target the regime’s top nuclear weapons scientists and military commanders, Iran’s dictator, Ayatollah Khamenei, personally ordered an increase in the security details accompanying them. Despite a ban on the use of mobile devices imposed by the ‘Supreme Leader’ himself, some of the bodyguards were using their phones and even posting on social media, allowing Israel to track their location, the newspaper reports.
The article refers to the Israeli airstrikes at the start of the 12-Day War, which began on June 13, 2023. In the first major strike, the Israeli Air Force (IDF) wiped out nearly the entire top Iranian military command, killing around 20 highest-ranking generals and commanders — including the head of the IGRC as well as military and air force chiefs. In subsequent strikes on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Israel took out at least nine senior scientists and technical experts.
The NYT reported the new revelations surrounding the Israeli operation:
Fearing more assassinations on the ground of the sort that Israel had pulled off successfully in the past, the supreme Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ordered extensive security measures including large contingents of bodyguards and warned against the use of mobile phones and messaging apps like WhatsApp, which is commonly used in Iran.
Those bodyguards, Israel discovered, were not only carrying cellphones but even posting from them on social media. (…)
Iranian officials had long suspected that Israel was tracking the movements of senior military commanders and nuclear scientists through their mobile phones. (…)
Smartphones are now completely off limits for senior military commanders, nuclear scientists and government officials.
The cellphone ban initially did not extend to the security guards protecting the officials, scientists and commanders. That changed after Israel’s wave of assassinations on the first day of the war. Guards are now supposed to carry only walkie-talkies. Only team leaders who do not travel with the officials can carry cellphones. (…)
But despite the new rules, according to officials who have held meetings with General Assadi about security, someone violated them and carried a phone to the National Security Council meeting, allowing the Israelis to carry out the pinpoint strike.
The Iranian security lapse is surprising, given the fact that Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah had long prohibited his terrorist militia from using mobile phones, switching to ‘hard to track’ pagers and walkie-talkies. It is most likely that the Hezbollah chief was advised on those matters by his Iranian advisors and handlers.
In February 2024, six months before the pager blasts. Nasrallah told his fellow terrorists in a televised speech to “Shut [the mobile phone] off, bury it, put it in an iron chest and lock it up.”
The decision to switch to pagers and walkie-talkies led him directly into a well-laid Mossad trap, but that’s another story.
The NYT article also reveals that Israel had been tracking Iranian nuclear weapons experts for more than two years, but refrained from taking them out under President Joe Biden’s watch. “Israel had been tracking senior Iranian nuclear scientists since the end of 2022 and had weighed killing them as early as last October, but held off to avoid a clash with the Biden administration, Israeli officials said,” the daily observed.
The revelation comes amid reports that the IDF has carried out another successful decapitation strike, this time against Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, killing the terrorist regime’s ‘prime minister’ and several other senior operatives.
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