Tehran [Iran], March 3 (HBTV): A report by London-based Financial Times has revealed what it described as a long-term plan by Israel’s spy agencies that led to the targeted killing of Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and members of the country’s top military leadership.
According to Financial Times, which cited multiple sources, Israel spent years hacking Tehran’s traffic cameras and gaining access to mobile phone networks to monitor the movements of Khamenei and his security detail. Nearly all traffic cameras in Tehran were reportedly compromised, with footage encrypted and transmitted to servers.
The report stated that the operation enabled Israeli and American forces to pinpoint Khamenei’s location, leading to his elimination in a targeted strike.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu justified the strikes on Iran in an interview with Fox News, saying the Islamist regime was committed to destroying America.
‘Iran for 47 years has been chanting death to America. They bombed your embassies. They tried to assassinate Donald Trump, the President of the United States, twice. They murdered their own people, they massacred so many. And they spread a worldwide web of terror. This is a regime committed to destroying the United States of America,’ Netanyahu said.
US Vice President JD Vance told Fox News that US President Donald Trump wanted to ensure that Iran could never acquire a nuclear weapon.
‘What the president determined is he didn’t want to just keep the country safe from an Iranian nuclear weapon for the first three, four years of his second term. He wanted to make sure that Iran could never have a nuclear weapon, and that would require fundamentally a change in mindset from the Iranian regime. So he saw that the Iranian regime was weakened, he knew that they were committed to getting on that brink of a nuclear weapon, and he decided to take action because he felt that was necessary in order to protect the nation’s security,’ Vance said.
Earlier, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the current wave of retaliation from Iran demonstrated what the country could have been capable of in the future had the strike not been carried out.
‘This operation needed to happen because Iran, in about a year, they would have so many short-range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it. Look at the damage they’re doing now, and this is a weakened Iran. Imagine a year from now. The bottom line is no matter who governs that country a year from now, they’re not going to have these ballistic missiles and they’re not going to have these drones to threaten us. That’s the objective of this mission,’ Rubio said at a news conference.
His remarks drew a response from Iranian Foreign Minister Syed Abbas Araghchi, who said Rubio had proven that there was no Iranian threat.
‘Mr Rubio admitted what we all knew: US has entered a war of choice on behalf of Israel. There was never any so-called Iranian threat. Shedding of both American and Iranian blood is thus on Israel Firsters. American people deserve better and should take back their country,’ he posted on X.
The conflict in West Asia continues, with Iranian leadership targeting Gulf states and American assets in the region, while the United States has said that further military action could follow.
(ANI)