Inside the plan to kill Ali Khamenei

Mehul Srivastava in Istanbul, James Shotter in Jerusalem, Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv and Steff Chávez in Washington PublishedMAR 2 2026 UpdatedMAR 2 2026, 15:01 When the highly trained, loyal bodyguards and drivers of senior Iranian officials came to work near Pasteur Street in Tehran — where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in an Israeli air strike on Saturday — the Israelis were watching. Nearly all the traffic cameras in Tehran had been hacked for years, their images encrypted and transmitted to servers in Tel Aviv and southern Israel, according to two people familiar with the matter. One camera had an angle that proved particularly useful, said one of the people, allowing them to determine where the men liked to park their personal cars and providing a window into the workings of a mundane part of the closely guarded compound. Complex algorithms added details to dossiers on members of these security guards that included their addresses, hours of duty, routes they took to work and, mo

Mehul Srivastava in Istanbul, James Shotter in Jerusalem, Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv and Steff Chávez in Washington PublishedMAR 2 2026 UpdatedMAR 2 2026, 15:01 When the highly trained, loyal bodyguards and drivers of senior Iranian officials came to work near Pasteur Street in Tehran — where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in an Israeli air strike on Saturday — the Israelis were watching. Nearly all the traffic cameras in Tehran had been hacked for years, their images encrypted and transmitted to servers in Tel Aviv and southern Israel, according to two people familiar with the matter. One cam