■■■□□ Cyber capabilities used to target Iranian leader.
Reportedly, cyber operations were instrumental in enabling – but not executing – the Israeli strike that killed Ayatollah Khamenei on Saturday. The killing itself was kinetic: ~30 Sparrow precision missiles fired by jets from over 1,000 km away, each capable of hitting a dining-table-sized target.
The cyber layer was preparation. Unit 8200 had hacked nearly all of Tehran’s traffic cameras years prior, routing them to servers in Tel Aviv. Algorithms built dossiers on Khamenei’s bodyguards – addresses, shift patterns, commute routes, who they were assigned to protect – constructing a “pattern of life.” Israel could also selectively disrupt mobile phone towers near the compound, making phones appear busy and cutting off warnings to the protection detail.
Lukasz Olejnik