Israel’s plan to kill more than a dozen of Iran’s top nuclear scientists all at once was the culmination of a decade-and-a-half of stalking and targeting — and seemed so far-fetched it was dubbed “Operation Narnia.”
The June 13 stealth attack saw nine scientists wiped out when Israel dropped a barrage of missiles onto their Tehran homes in a near-simultaneous onslaught.
At least five more were killed in subsequent strikes by the Jewish state
The timing of the strikes, carried out at the outset of what President Trump has dubbed the “12-day war,” was chosen to ensure the scientists couldn’t scatter or go into hiding, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the plan.
The codename for the plot was a reference to the fantasy world created by author C.S. Lewis — and a nod to its complexity, as it required detailed intelligence about human targets, Israeli air superiority over Iran, and strategic deception by the governments in Jerusalem and Washington
The planners had been closely tracking some of the top scientists since 2003, just a few years after Israeli intelligence first detected efforts by Iran to go nuclear, sources told the Journal.
However, Israel appeared to step up its efforts in 2010, when two scientists were targeted in assassination attempts. One of those killed in this month’s strikes — Fereydoon Abbasi, a former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran — survived an attempt on his life in 2010.
Israel has neither confirmed or denied its role in the deaths of five Iranian scientists between 2010 and 2020.
Most of the scientists taken out in the 12-day war are believed to have been involved in the testing and assembling key parts of a nuclear warhead.
Among those killed was Sayyed Seddighi Saber — a top scientist who had only just been sanctioned by the US due to his work on nuclear weapons, according to Israeli and Iranian media.
Saber was the head of Iran’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research’s Shahid Karimi Group, which specifically worked on explosives-related projects, the State Department said.
“It’s one thing to lose that expertise slowly over time, especially if you are not trying to actually build a bomb. You have time to replace them,” Eric Brewer, a former US national security director for counterproliferation, told the outlet.
“But if you’re in the middle of trying to build a bomb or if you see that as a potential near-term option, then it’s going to have a bigger impact.”
Meanwhile, a separate Israeli mission that wiped out scores of Iran’s top military commanders was codenamed “Red Wedding” — after a notorious scene from the TV show “Game of Thrones.”
In that attack, more than 200 Israeli Air Force aircraft hit roughly 100 targets, including nuclear facilities and ballistic missile factories.
Dozens of high-ranking Iranian officials — including Gen. Hossein Salami, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Mohammad Bagheri, chief of the country’s military; and Gholam Ali Rashid, head of Iran’s emergency command — were obliterated in the attack.
