New details are being revealed about the intelligence and operational preparations that led to the attack on Iran, following serious warnings about progress in Tehran's military nuclear program.
According to Omri Maniv's report on Channel 12, last November, the political echelon instructed the IDF to prepare for an attack on Iran.
Immediately afterwards, a special team of the "Hipka Mistraba" unit was established in the Intelligence Division - a secret team that included technological experts who focused on analyzing progress in the nuclear field.
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As early as January, the team warned of "the start of an orderly project to produce the final stage required for launching a nuclear missile." At the same time, the research division of the Intelligence Directorate also issued an advance warning of worrying signs of nuclear weapons development by Iran.
The quotes from the alerts indicate covert activity by a team of Iranian nuclear scientists who focused on components that had never been addressed before - indicating progress towards a critical stage in the program.
In May, the head of the Intelligence Directorate, Major General Shlomi Binder, joined the warnings and warned the political echelon: "I would like to alert decision-makers to disturbing developments in the field of nuclear weapons in Iran. It appears that Iran is continuing to make determined progress that is shortening the technological and cognitive distance required to complete the development of a nuclear weapons device.".
At this point, preparations for the attack were already underway. The operational requirement was to launch an aggressive attack, which would include the simultaneous elimination of many senior figures.
The Intelligence Agency monitored several different possible locations for each of them, such as an office, a private apartment, a hideout apartment, and several others where they had been at times in the past year - so that at the moment of truth, when they see where each wanted person enters, they will know exactly what to hit.
During the two weeks leading up to the attack, the Intelligence Directorate developed a technological means that examined every day the number of senior officials who could be eliminated in real time.
This is how the exact timing - early Friday morning - and the locations of the attack were chosen.
The result: the assassination of more than 30 senior officials, including the Iranian Chief of Staff, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, and key nuclear scientists.
Two of the senior officials who were supposed to be at home surprisingly went on vacation, but they were located and eliminated at the new destination.
