Israel’s wide-ranging strikes on Friday were the product of years of intense spy craft that enabled Israel to degrade Iran’s defenses while bombing sensitive nuclear targets and killing top personnel, according to three Israeli officials with knowledge of the operations.
It was a multipronged operation that included deploying drones and other weapons smuggled into Iran by Israeli operatives, according to one of the officials and two senior Iranian officials with knowledge of the matter.
Israel also identified and tracked the movements of the key scientists and military officials who were assassinated, including at least four senior commanders.
The effort was planned and carried out jointly by Israeli military intelligence and the Mossad foreign intelligence service, and code named “With the Strength of a Lion,” one of the officials said.
The Israeli and Iranian officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters. The two Iranian officials said they did not know how or when the weapons were smuggled into the country, as the attack was still under investigation.
Iranian officials have condemned the attack and announced the names of officials who were killed but have not spoken publicly in detail about other aspects of the operation.
Friday’s offensive marked a new chapter in Israel’s efforts to leverage intensive intelligence collection into powerful strikes aimed at weakening and deterring its foes across the Middle East.
In recent years, Israel’s intelligence apparatus has located and killed leaders of Iran-backed militant groups across the region, including Hezbollah and Hamas, and key Iranian military officials and nuclear scientists inside of Iran. Its deep infiltration of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, enabled Israel to severely degrade that group’s military capabilities and leadership during a weekslong war last year.
While Israel has previously bombed sites inside of Iran, Friday’s attacks were much more extensive, both in the number of officials they killed and in their focus on disrupting Iran’s nuclear program. The sites hit included Iran’s main nuclear fuel enrichment facility at Natanz.
The strikes followed more than a year and a half of Israeli military action against Iran and its regional proxies that began after the deadly surprise attack on Israel by Hamas from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, Israel has weakened the so-called “axis of resistance” that Iran built to advance its regional interests and deter Israeli attacks.
Wars have depleted Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon; airstrikes on key facilities have damaged the Houthi militia in Yemen; and the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad by rebels in December deprived Iran of its sole state partner in the Arab world.
The degradation of those forces decreased the chances that direct strikes on Iran would prompt an overwhelming response from around the region.
The new strikes also had the potential to disrupt efforts by President Trump to negotiate a new nuclear accord with Iran. Mr. Trump on Friday said that Tehran “must make a deal, before there is nothing left.” The future of the talks remains unclear.
Israeli leaders have said that such an accord would not stop Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
“We are embarking on a campaign that is nothing short of existential — against an enemy that seeks to destroy us,” Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder, head of the intelligence directorate of the Israeli military, said after the attacks on Friday. “We aim to disrupt, degrade, and eliminate this threat.”
The attack was choreographed to simultaneously take down Iran’s defenses, degrade its ability to retaliate, kill key figures and damage nuclear sites.
One of the Israeli officials said that preparations included commando operations inside the Iranian capital, Tehran, and the establishment of positions inside of Iran armed with weapons that targeted Iran’s air defenses and explosive drones that hit long-range missiles that could be fired at Israel.
The Iranian officials said that teams of covert Israeli operatives had launched missiles and drones at targets from inside Iran.
A senior Israeli air force officer said that more than 100 aircraft had taken part in the attacks and that precise tracking enabled the targeting of senior military officials, nuclear scientists and command centers.
Israeli intelligence has been at the heart of a series of operations aimed at Iran and its proxies in recent years.
Israel assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, with a remote-controlled gun in 2020, and assisted the United States’ killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, in a drone strike the same year.
In 2022, two assassins on motorcycles shot and killed Col. Sayad Khodayee, an officer in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards; Israel confirmed its role to the United States. Last year, Israel was able to kill Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, by planting an explosive device in a Tehran guesthouse run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
During its battle with Hezbollah last year, Israel targeted its members by remotely detonating their pagers and walkie-talkies, killing dozens of people and injuring thousands. It was also able to infiltrate the group’s communications, culminating in airstrikes in September that killed the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
Ronen Bergman is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, based in Tel Aviv.
Ben Hubbard is the Istanbul bureau chief, covering Turkey and the surrounding region.
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