Why the US-Israel Intelligence Campaign Matters Even More Than Bombs Falling on Iran

Joint U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iran got underway last night, bringing enormous military assets into a fight that, by all accounts, will last weeks, not days, in pursuit of “regime change.”
Israel’s opening salvo included decapitation strikes, reportedly against the Iranian defense minister, the head of the Islamic Republican Guards Corps (IRGC) and even the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. The variables of this conventional fight, and the risks that Iranian retaliation — thus far most palpably felt in the Gulf Arab states — could drag much of the region into a broader confrontation, were amply discussed even before the first Tomahawks were launched.

And while it may well be the case that Donald Trump has opted to shoot first, sort out the details later, recent precedent suggests a covert campaign of subversion and incentivization will play as much of a role as the televised war.

For one thing, the U.S. hasn’t got the assets in place for a full-scale ground invasion and occupation, nor has this even been suggested. Such an undertaking would dwarf previous efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq; Iran is geographically more than twice the size of the former and four times the size of the latter, and it has a population of 93 million.

Rather, the U.S. strategy appears to be one of fomenting glasnost and perestroika at gunpoint, prompting internal elements to seize power amid the hollowing out of the security apparatus and under the cover of unrivaled airpower.

This strategy worked to a degree in Venezuela. Even before the U.S. Delta Force and CIA Ground Branch snatched dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their fortified compound in Caracas, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been liaising with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez via Qatari intermediaries, and in full view of the U.S. media.

Rubio is reportedly performing the same trick with Raúl Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, Raúl Castro’s grandson. Washington has also allowed some of the Venezuelan oil it now controls to be delivered to private Cuban entities, a discrete offer to wobbly elements within the sclerotic communist regime and its intelligence service of the chance to profit both materially and politically. Acknowledging this outreach, Trump has said, “Maybe we’ll have a friendly takeover of Cuba.”

Maybe. But the Gulf of Mexico is hardly the Persian Gulf, and any clandestine coup or U.S.-imposed transition is orders of magnitude more complicated in Iran. Not that Trump wouldn’t gamble on trying, if only to secure his legacy as the president who ended Khomeinism or defanged a threat to the interests of the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East that has been present for nearly half a century.

Last night, in announcing “Operation Epic Fury,” as the American campaign is codenamed, Trump said that any IRGC officials who lay down their arms will be offered “immunity,” hinting that overtures have already been made by U.S. intelligence to that effect. “Immunity” could also be a byword for compensation in the form of sanctions relief or direct payment.

During the brutally suppressed antiregime protest movement last month, which precipitated Trump’s first warnings of military action against Tehran, the U.S. managed to smuggle in thousands of Starlink terminals, according to The Wall Street Journal, to keep the demonstrators connected and allow them to document atrocities in real time. What else might have been smuggled into Iran in anticipation of the present conflict?

Israel’s capacity for infiltration is even more well-documented. It has assassinated scores of Iranian nuclear scientists with automated machine gun attacks, limpet bombs or drone strikes, and Israeli commandos managed to extract the entirety of Iran’s nuclear archive in 2018 from a secret warehouse in southern Tehran. Well before that, a joint U.S.-Israeli operation managed to disable Iranian centrifuges with a carefully uploaded piece of malware known as Stuxnet. (Israeli cyberoperators have now apparently hacked a popular Iranian prayer app, encouraging military personnel to defect.)

During Israel’s 12-day war in June, which culminated with U.S. attacks that Trump claimed had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, it was clear even before the smoke dissipated that the Israeli Mossad had assets in place all over the country. Networks of “hundreds” of Israeli agents were able to launch drones from secret locations in and around Tehran, taking out military targets such as Iranian air defense systems. In response to this pervasive penetration, the IRGC initiated a counterintelligence dragnet, which no doubt snared more than a few false positives.

What Israeli assets might they have missed? And who else might have been recruited from the Iranian military, IRGC or even senior clerical leadership in the intervening eight months, standing by to earn their immunity and much else?