57. Why Israel Attacked Iran

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Classified – Episode 57: Why Israel Attacked Iran

Release Date: June 18, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 57 of The Rest Is Classified, hosts David McCloskey and Gordon Corera delve into the intricate and covert conflict between Israel and Iran, focusing on Israel's recent overt attacks on Iran's nuclear infrastructure. This episode serves as a comprehensive re-examination of previously covered events, contextualizing them within the latest developments (00:24).

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The Shadow War: History and Context

The episode begins by outlining the prolonged and secretive "shadow war" between Israel and Iran, highlighting a series of covert operations aimed at decapitating Iran's nuclear leadership. McCloskey and Corera reference past missions, including the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020, to illustrate the sustained efforts to undermine Iran's nuclear ambitions (00:29–02:14).

“There is essentially an Israeli air campaign over Iran attempting to target sites associated with its nuclear program.” (02:16)

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Renewed Israeli Offensive: Why Now?

The hosts explore the motivations behind Israel's intensified actions against Iran's nuclear program. They discuss Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's long-standing obsession with preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear capabilities and how recent intelligence suggesting imminent weaponization spurred Israel into more aggressive measures (02:44–04:10).

“Why have the Israelis chosen to do this now? It seems like they're pushing forward in ways they've always wanted to.” (02:50)

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The Shadow War Evolves: From Covert to Overt Actions

McCloskey and Corera trace the evolution of Israel's tactics from discreet assassinations of nuclear scientists to more visible airstrikes and drone attacks targeting key figures (04:16–05:14). They emphasize how these actions represent a shift from deniable operations to overt attempts to cripple Iran's nuclear capabilities.

“We've gone from doing it in a kind of semi-deniable, more quiet way to just openly hitting them.” (04:27)

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The Assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh: A Case Study

A significant portion of the discussion centers on Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, dubbed Iran's "Oppenheimer," who was pivotal in advancing Iran's nuclear program. The hosts provide a biographical sketch of Fakhrizadeh, highlighting his dual role as a respected nuclear physicist and a brigadier general in the Revolutionary Guards (09:00–23:04).

“Fakhrizadeh was running the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, the hub of Iran's nuclear program.” (30:27)

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The Technology Behind the Operation: Robotic Guns and AI

One of the most compelling segments details the sophisticated method Israel employed to assassinate Fakhrizadeh. Utilizing a remote-controlled, satellite-linked robotic gun equipped with artificial intelligence, Mossad orchestrated the killing with unprecedented precision (70:59–78:38).

“They used a robotic machine gun, operated by satellite, assisted by artificial intelligence. It's not science fiction; it's reality.” (17:30)

“The gun fired three times, precisely hitting Fakhrizadeh while sparing his wife, demonstrating extraordinary accuracy.” (87:14)

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Ethical and Strategic Implications of Targeted Killings

The hosts engage in a critical analysis of the ethical dimensions and strategic effectiveness of Israel's targeted assassination strategy. They question whether eliminating key individuals like Fakhrizadeh genuinely hinders Iran’s nuclear progress or merely delays it without addressing the broader strategic calculus (97:08–98:40).

“Did the assassination slow the nuclear program? It's impossible to say definitively, but it certainly hasn't stopped it.” (97:15)

“Is it morally justifiable to target civilian scientists who are pivotal to a military program?” (46:45)

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Conclusion: The Future of Israel-Iran Relations and Nuclear Tensions

In wrapping up, McCloskey and Corera reflect on the ongoing tensions and the precarious future of the Israel-Iran relationship. They ponder whether continued covert operations will eventually lead to an open conflict or if diplomatic avenues might still offer a path to de-escalation (101:42–103:02).

“Ultimately, this is not about changing the strategic calculus; it's about buying time to possibly prevent a disastrous war.” (98:09)

“The shadow war raises thorny ethical issues and questions its long-term efficacy in achieving national security goals.” (103:02)

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Notable Quotes

• “Israel's Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu has wanted to go after Iran for years...” (04:03) – David McCloskey
• “We'Re seeing right now a shadow war that we've talked about erupting into the open.” (02:50) – Gordon Corera
• “He's hanging over this is a big question, why now?” (02:44) – David McCloskey

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Final Thoughts

Episode 57 of The Rest Is Classified offers an in-depth exploration of the covert and overt measures Israel has undertaken to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. Through meticulous research and expert analysis, McCloskey and Corera shed light on the complexities of espionage, the ethical quandaries of targeted killings, and the uncertain future of Middle Eastern geopolitics. This episode is essential listening for those intrigued by the clandestine maneuvers shaping global security dynamics.

Transcript

[Unnamed Host]

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad free.

[David McCloskey]

Listening, early access to series first look.

[Unnamed Host]

At live show tickets, a weekly newsletter and discounted books. Join the declassified [e-mail].

[David McCloskey]

Well, welcome to the Rest is Classified. I'm David McCloskey.

[Gordon Carrera]

And I'm Gordon Carrera.

[David McCloskey]

And I'm. And this is not an episode about Osama bin Laden.

[Unnamed Host]

So for all of you who have scampered here looking for that, that series is fully out now. This week we released our episodes on the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the raid that killed him.

[David McCloskey]

But I guess, Gordon, I'd say we.

[Unnamed Host]

Wanted to do a little bit of a Rest is classified take on what.

[David McCloskey]

Is going on right now between Israel and Iran. We should say we are recording this.

[Unnamed Host]

Right now on the 17th of June, and this is very much a very fluid and dynamic situation.

[David McCloskey]

But we wanted to, I guess, have.

[Unnamed Host]

A little bit of a conversation about.

[David McCloskey]

What'S going on right now in Israel, Iran and put it in this kind.

[Unnamed Host]

Of Rest is Classified take on the.

[David McCloskey]

Shadow war between these two countries.

[Unnamed Host]

And we should say that this episode.

[David McCloskey]

Is really a re release of an.

[Unnamed Host]

Episode that we did a couple months ago on an Israeli operation to assassinate the head of Iran's nuclear program, which took place in 2020, and which I.

[David McCloskey]

Think we both agree says something about the conflict that's going on right now.

[Unnamed Host]

Between Israel and Iran.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, that's right.

[Unnamed Contributor]

We're kind of re upping the previous episodes on Mohsin Fakhrizade and the assassination.

[Gordon Carrera]

Because we think it is relevant. And for those who maybe didn't hear it first time around, it's a chance.

[Unnamed Contributor]

To hear it again.

[Gordon Carrera]

But also just for us, before we.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Get into that, to provide maybe a little bit of context to it in the light of what's happened just in the last week, really, since Israel struck Iran and went after its nuclear program.

[Unnamed Host]

That's right. I mean, we're in a situation where.

[David McCloskey]

There is essentially a, an Israeli air campaign over Iran attempting to target sites.

[Unnamed Host]

Associated with its, its nuclear program. Targeting, I mean, as was the case.

[David McCloskey]

With Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, targeting very senior Iranian officials, military officers and nuclear scientists, just like Fakhrizadeh. I mean, part of this campaign that.

[Unnamed Host]

We'Re seeing right now has been to.

[David McCloskey]

Essentially attempt to decapitate the Iranian leadership.

[Unnamed Host]

Of the nuclear program.

[David McCloskey]

And I think, I mean, Gordon, hanging over this is a big question, why now?

[Unnamed Host]

I mean, why have the Israelis chosen to do this? Now we're kind of seeing this shadow war that we had talked about in the Fakhrizadeh episodes erupting into the open.

[Unnamed Contributor]

It's a really big and interesting question because I think there's no doubt that Israel's Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu has wanted to go after Iran for years in the Iranian nuclear program. And I think it's fair to say he is a big obsessed with it. And so for years, since really 2002, when Iran's enrichment program was first revealed, he has wanted and at various points come close to taking military action, but often has held back from it because of the risks, sometimes because of American diplomacy. And yet that clearly changed. Now the Israelis are saying that they had intelligence about moves towards weaponization by Iran. Western governments seem to not be aware of that and to have. I'm not sure if they're sceptical, but they don't feel they've seen that same intelligence, that there might have been some small moves, but not necessarily the dramatic steps that meant Iran was racing towards a bomb. So there is one question there, which is, was there some intelligence that pushed the Israelis towards feeling they had to take action?

[Gordon Carrera]

Now, as I said, I think there's.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Some skepticism about that.

[Gordon Carrera]

I think there's also this question about whether Netanyahu felt there was a kind.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Of closing window of opportunity. There were talks going on. I don't think he wanted a deal, frankly. I think he wanted to strike. And he's pushed towards carrying out a strike. And he might have felt, well, this is the window that I have to go after the Iranian program. And that window may close if there is a diplomatic deal. So he might have almost begun preempting a deal. And it's certainly true that in the last few years, you can see Israel having done damage to Iran's ability to respond. So they took out Hezbollah, those famous pager attacks on Hezbollah operatives and some of the Hezbollah leadership, which would have been one means of Iran deterring or responding to attack, you know, and they've also.

[Gordon Carrera]

They took out Iranian air defenses, the.

[Unnamed Host]

One last spring, right?

[Unnamed Contributor]

Yeah, so. So you can see Israel almost preparing the way for something that they've always wanted to do. And Netanyahu going at this moment, we're just going to do it. And I think for whatever reason, the Trump administration either wasn't able to or didn't want to stop them doing that in a way that might have been possible in the past.

[Unnamed Host]

I think what's also fascinating, Gordon, about.

[David McCloskey]

The scope, I guess you could say.

[Unnamed Host]

Of the Israeli attack right now is.

[David McCloskey]

What they're Essentially doing is very overtly.

[Unnamed Host]

Going after targets that have already been.

[David McCloskey]

Targeted in more covert ways throughout this.

[Unnamed Host]

20 plus year shadow war between the two sides.

[David McCloskey]

And we talk about this in the episode on Mohsen Fakriza Day, which is starting in 2007, the Israelis began assassinating.

[Unnamed Host]

Iranian nuclear scientists and engineers on the.

[David McCloskey]

Streets of Tehran using assets. So that started in 2007, that that.

[Unnamed Host]

Program continued in sort of fits and.

[David McCloskey]

Starts, the assassination program up until the.

[Unnamed Host]

Very point in 2020 where the Israelis.

[David McCloskey]

Killed Mossad Fakhrizadeh with a robotic, potentially.

[Unnamed Host]

AI assisted, satellite linked machine gun. Now we're seeing these kind of overt.

[David McCloskey]

Targetings and airstrikes and using drones of Iranian nuclear scientists. So same targets.

[Unnamed Host]

Right.

[David McCloskey]

It's just we've gone from doing it in a kind of semi deniable, more quiet way to just openly hitting them.

[Gordon Carrera]

But then it's interesting as well because there have been other ways in which.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Both the US And Israel have been trying to slow the program. And obviously diplomacy was one way of trying to slow the program, to kind of defer this moment when you might reach crisis point. And I think, you know, one of the other big interesting ones is the use of cyber attacks. And Stuxnet, which is this famous computer virus which was unleashed into the Iranian centrifuge program at Natanz, and that is one of the sites which has been bombed now. And so previously, if you look back, you know, they used Stuxnet, a computer virus, to damage the centrifuges spinning there to enrich uranium in a more covert operation.

[Gordon Carrera]

But it's really interesting and I think.

[Unnamed Contributor]

We'Re going to be looking at Stuxnet soon and we're going to do it, do some episodes on it, because it's, it's very interesting because that was an.

[Gordon Carrera]

Example where it was always been seen.

[Unnamed Contributor]

As a joint US Israeli operation, but with the understanding that the purpose was to delay what we've seen in the last week, which is a kind of crisis. So it seems as if the Americans signed up to it and signed up to going after the Iranian nuclear program.

[Gordon Carrera]

Through covert cyber attacks precisely to kind.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Of put the Israelis off carrying out a military strike. So under the Obama administration, the view.

[Gordon Carrera]

Was we want to defer a deal.

[Unnamed Contributor]

With Netanyahu's desire to attack Iran by agreeing with them to use other means to slow it down to, if you like, defer the moment of crisis. And that's what Stuxnet was about, was deferring this crisis, which we've now reached.

[Gordon Carrera]

So the shadow wall was partly trying.

[Unnamed Contributor]

To degrade and undermine Iran's push for nuclear program, partly trying to defer this very unpredictable situation we've now embarked on, where no one's quite sure how it's going to play out.

[Unnamed Host]

Well, exactly.

[David McCloskey]

And Mayor De Gan, who was a former head of the Mossad and is a kind of key character in the setup for the story of the shadow war, really talked Gordon about how really.

[Unnamed Host]

He saw, I guess, the combined effort.

[David McCloskey]

Of all of these different elements of.

[Unnamed Host]

Assassinations, cyber attacks to slow down enrichment, even things like there was a very brazen Israeli operation in 2018 to actually.

[David McCloskey]

Go into Iran and steal documentation from.

[Unnamed Host]

Warehouses in south Tehran that showed really the progress that the Iranians had made on the nuclear program.

[David McCloskey]

Right.

[Unnamed Host]

The Israelis actually went in and just stole documents and then made a lot of them public to make the case that the Iranians continue to press toward, you know, this nuclear capability. So there's all these different sort of.

[David McCloskey]

Elements to the shadow war, all designed to slow down Iran's progress on a bomb.

[Unnamed Host]

And Merdagan has the greatest fear in many respects. And the reason why he believed killing Iranian scientists was justified as part of this was because he thought the. The kind of war that we seem.

[David McCloskey]

To be walking into now was going.

[Unnamed Host]

To be so disastrous and would leave.

[David McCloskey]

So many dead that killing an individual.

[Unnamed Host]

Iranian scientist here and there to slow the program down was totally justified.

[David McCloskey]

He called it killing to save lives.

[Unnamed Host]

And the story of Mohsin Fakhrizadeh, which, which we hope everyone here will listen.

[David McCloskey]

To, I think is a case study in the logic behind Israel's shadow war.

[Unnamed Host]

And in how the Israelis very specifically target individuals in Iran, which is, of course, something we're seeing at a much wider scale today.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Yeah, that's right.

[Gordon Carrera]

I mean, it's interesting as well that.

[Unnamed Contributor]

At various times, Israeli intelligence chiefs have been at variance difference in tension with Netanyahu over his desire to strike Iran. And there's been messages inside the system, you know, and people sometimes when they've left, saying, I cautioned the prime Minister to not press ahead with this. So it'd be very interesting to see what was going on in the system now and whether there really was new intelligence. But it's certainly the case that the intelligence that Israel has had on the Iranian nuclear program is extraordinary. And their insight into those scientists, you can see it in what's happened in the last week or so, their ability to target the multiple nuclear scientists and military commanders at the same time as they are launching the air raids, the drone raids, all These other operations inside Iran, clearly something they've been preparing for for years. But the intelligence penetration and the ability to understand the movements and the location of those scientists all at the same moment is extraordinary.

[Gordon Carrera]

And I think you do get an.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Insight into what that takes from these episodes we've done on Mohsen Fakhrizade. He was certainly one of the most valuable nuclear scientists.

[Gordon Carrera]

I think the story really gives you.

[Unnamed Contributor]

A sense of what it takes to do that kind of operation.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah. So with that, we hope you enjoy.

[Unnamed Host]

These episodes on Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and the hunt for Iran's top nuclear scientist.

[Gordon Carrera]

Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today. This cowardice with serious indications of an Israeli role shows desperate warmongering. The Zionists seek to intensify and increase pressure on Iran to wage a full blown war. We will descend like lightning on the killers of this oppressed martyr and we.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Will make them regret their actions.

[Gordon Carrera]

Well, welcome to the Rest is classified. I'm Gordon Carrera.

[David McCloskey]

And I'm David McCloskey.

[Gordon Carrera]

And those were the fighting words of an Iranian government official after the assassination on 27 November 2020 of a man called Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. He may not be a household name, but he is an important man. And this week we're going to look at his story and what it tells us about Iran's nuclear program and the efforts to stop it and my pronunciation perhaps of his name. Go on. How do you rate it?

[David McCloskey]

Your Persian accent during the reading, I think left much to be desired.

[Gordon Carrera]

It was an Anglo Persian accent.

[David McCloskey]

It's an Anglo, an Anglo Persian accent. That's right. And I have had some extended conversations with Persians about how you actually pronounce Mohsen Fakrizade's name.

[Unnamed Host]

And I've been told my pronunciation is very poor.

[David McCloskey]

Okay. It's hard, I think it's hard for us Anglos to get the name, the name right. So we will go with.

[Gordon Carrera]

Is the closest we'll go with.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, I think that's, I think that's pretty close. I think you're putting the wrong emphasis.

[Unnamed Host]

On the wrong syllable in there.

[David McCloskey]

But it's not, it's. I think it's close enough. It's close enough. That's.

[Gordon Carrera]

Who was he? Why, why are we talking about him and not just the pronunciation of his name?

[David McCloskey]

That's right. Well, so as you teed up, Gordon, in your, your sort of C minus Persian accent during the reading.

[Gordon Carrera]

Thanks.

[David McCloskey]

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was an Iranian nuclear scientist and I think it's fair to say that he wasn't. We, we know, Gordon, that we love Oppenheimer. Reference on the rest is classified.

[Unnamed Contributor]

We do.

[Unnamed Host]

And I think here it's actually apt.

[David McCloskey]

I think we could say that Mohsen.

[Unnamed Host]

Fakhrizadeh, before his death, was Iran's Oppenheimer.

[David McCloskey]

He was the.

[Unnamed Host]

The father of Iran's nuclear program, the.

[David McCloskey]

Brains behind it, from both, frankly, a scientific standpoint, but also an organizational and kind of bureaucratic standpoint. And he was made me like the actual Oppenheimer out at Los Alamos, sort.

[Unnamed Host]

Of shrouded in mystery as he worked. I mean, even to his own family. But Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and the reason we're.

[David McCloskey]

Talking about the man today and ultimately.

[Unnamed Host]

The operation that will claim his life.

[David McCloskey]

Is that he has had a tremendous.

[Unnamed Host]

Profound impact on the Middle east from the shadows.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's right, because I think he gives us a glimpse into Iran's nuclear program and that kind of shadowy aspect of this conflict. It's not quite a war, but it is a conflict between Israel and Iran, which has been going on for decades, really, and it's been running pretty hot in the last year or two. You've had drone attacks, we've had missile attacks, we've had air attacks between Israel and Iran almost for the first time kind of directly engaging in striking each other as well as Iran's proxies, like Hezbollah, seeing their pagers explode in Lebanon. But behind all of that recent activity is this question of Iran's nuclear program and the issue of whether Iran, as its adversaries like Israel say, is going for a nuclear bomb. The efforts to stop that and the different ways, often covert sometimes, moreover, in which Israel and others have been trying to stop them. And that's something which I think has.

[Unnamed Contributor]

Been in the news, but is going.

[Gordon Carrera]

To be in the news in the next few months, because it does look like it's coming to a head again. And I think it's quite likely that this year there's either going to be a diplomatic deal over Iran's nuclear program or there's going to be a military strike on the nuclear program, I think by Israel and maybe by the US as well. So it is a very important story in the Middle east. And Fakhrisadeh is in the middle of it, isn't he?

[David McCloskey]

That's right. And I think, Gordon, I mean, so often in these headlines, in these stories about the shadow war between Tel Aviv and Tehran or between Tel Aviv and.

[Unnamed Host]

Iran's sort of clients or partners or proxies in the region.

[David McCloskey]

We get a lot of the what.

[Unnamed Host]

So we understand what's happening, be it missile volleys, drone volleys, back and forth, be it those pager attacks you mentioned.

[David McCloskey]

But we don't often get a lot of the how. We don't really understand exactly how both.

[Unnamed Host]

Sides conduct this conflict.

[David McCloskey]

And I think the Fakrizadei assassination, because.

[Unnamed Host]

Of some of the information that has come out since, I mean, in the five years since. We actually have a really interesting case study in how the Israelis operate inside.

[David McCloskey]

Iran and how the Israelis think about.

[Unnamed Host]

This shadow conflict, the risks they're willing.

[David McCloskey]

To take, the sort of operations they're willing to conduct, and ultimately the threats that they feel from Iran, from its nuclear program, sort of as personified by a man like Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's right. And he's an extraordinarily important figure. But also the operation to kill him is an astounding one, isn't it, in terms of the details of the way it's done? It's a story with. With robotic killer machine guns. Talk about artificial intelligence. I mean, it does sound like something out of sci fi, doesn't it?

[David McCloskey]

Well, it really does. And what's so interesting about this story.

[Unnamed Host]

Is sort of a robotic machine gun.

[David McCloskey]

Operated by satellite, assisted by artificial intelligence. I mean, that is the weapon that the Israelis will choose to, you know.

[Unnamed Host]

To use in this operation.

[David McCloskey]

And we're not talking about sci fi. We're not talking about the future. We're talking about something that happened five years ago.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, almost.

[David McCloskey]

Right. And it's hard. I mean, there's so many interesting questions of sort of spy craft and espionage.

[Unnamed Host]

And how you conduct these operations.

[David McCloskey]

But there's also a big question, I.

[Unnamed Host]

Think, around whether these sorts of operations.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, there's the whole question of whether they're justified.

[Unnamed Host]

Right?

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

And then there's the question of, well.

[Unnamed Host]

Do they achieve their goals?

[David McCloskey]

You know, do they.

[Unnamed Host]

Do they practically help the Israelis achieve security or political goals?

[David McCloskey]

Which I think is a sort of evergreen question that hangs over this type of work, and one that will. Will be absolutely critical to understanding what impact the hit on Mohsen Fakhrizadeh has. And maybe we should start with him, Gordon, and just kind of dig into the man and his life and kind.

[Unnamed Host]

Of set him up to get going.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah. And there isn't much on him, is there? I mean, he was genuinely a pretty shadowy figure, even by the standards of nuclear scientists and people in the center of Iran. I mean, few pictures Few details.

[David McCloskey]

Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, called Fakhrizadeh the shadow man in Iran's nuclear effort. And it's fair to say that, I mean, most of what we know about the man really does come after his.

[Unnamed Host]

Death or is leaked by the Israelis. Right.

[David McCloskey]

So just to kind of set up the, the biography, I think we've got some interesting facts and bits on him, but I think the picture really is not fully complete. I mean, the first photos of the man only come out really in 2018, so a couple years before he's dead, which is really remarkable in an age.

[Unnamed Host]

Of so much just digital content out.

[David McCloskey]

There that the first photos come out just a couple years before he's killed.

[Unnamed Host]

And I will say in these photos.

[David McCloskey]

If you're trying to get a sense of what this guy looks like, he's very unsmiling.

[Unnamed Host]

He's well bearded.

[David McCloskey]

I think he looks like a very dower, sort of disappointed Persian grandfather would be how I would, I would urge.

[Unnamed Host]

Listeners to picture him, but we, we do know a few things about him.

[David McCloskey]

So he's born and in like the late 50s, maybe early 60s. Again, not. We don't have precise information. We have contradictory information about when he's born. He's born in com to a conservative, pious Shia family. And so by the time of the.

[Unnamed Host]

Revolution in 1979, he's in his late teens.

[David McCloskey]

Right.

[Unnamed Host]

So in this kind of very formative.

[David McCloskey]

Period now, he is, I think, ideologically.

[Unnamed Host]

Devoted to the Islamic State. I mean, he's a true believer.

[David McCloskey]

Right. He spends time each morning studying scripture and Islamic philosophy. And he'll become a member of the.

[Unnamed Host]

Revolutionary Guards in the aftermath of 1979.

[Gordon Carrera]

And we should probably explain what the Revolutionary Guards are. They are an enormously powerful group within Iran set up after the revolution in 79 to defend the revolution. They're a military group, but separate from the regular armed forces, and they report directly to the supreme leader. They've got militias at home to enforce power. They've got an external wing which runs all these proxy groups in places like Lebanon and Syria and Iraq. But they also run chunks of the Iranian economy, and they're hugely influential within government. So it's a kind of elite within the elite, isn't it? And he's very much part of that.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think the economic sprawl is also a fascinating piece because usually, I would say most of us in.

[Unnamed Host]

The west, when we encounter the name.

[David McCloskey]

The Revolutionary Guards, we're oftentimes reading articles about particular pieces of the irgc, this Revolutionary Guard Corps that are sort of.

[Unnamed Host]

Expeditionary abroad and very engaged in military activity.

[David McCloskey]

But the reality of the Revolutionary Guards is that it controls a massive amount.

[Unnamed Host]

Of Iran's economic activity as well and is one of the most powerful institutions.

[David McCloskey]

Inside Iran in even, you know, sectors.

[Unnamed Host]

Like construction or engineering or things like that.

[David McCloskey]

Right. So very sprawling, influential group. Now, one kind of interesting detail that we can glean from the photos is that Fakhrizadeh wears a ring. And as a symbol of his devotion, I guess, to the revolution, he's got.

[Unnamed Host]

A silver ring with a large oval, kind of red.

[David McCloskey]

Is it pronounced Agate? Gordon Agate. How does one pronounce this word? I've looked at it. I should do it however you want to.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, you do it however you want to. I'm not going to correct you.

[David McCloskey]

The key here is not my terrible pronunciation of that stone. It's that it's the same type of ring worn by the Supreme Leader of Iran and by General Ghassim Soleimani, who had been the head of the IRGC's Expeditionary Force before he was killed in a US strike back in 2020. Now, like so many Iranians, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

[Unnamed Host]

He'S also an avid reader of classic.

[David McCloskey]

Poetry, Hafiz and Rumi. This is a big focus in Persian culture is this type of sort of epic poetry. So he's an avid reader of that. And Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, he's a physics professor by training who is going to earn a degree in nuclear physics from Isfahan.

[Unnamed Host]

University of Technology, and then he's going.

[David McCloskey]

To become a lecturer at another university in Tehran. He's even got a wonderful alias for his teaching activities, Gordon, Dr. Hassan Mohseni. And so we have this interesting kind of duality of the man emerging here where he is. He is a public physics professor, and in secret, he's a brigadier general, becomes a brigadier general in the Revolutionary Guards.

[Gordon Carrera]

That strikes me as somewhat unusual and perhaps somewhat alien to our cultures. I mean, the idea that your physics professor, if there are any students listening who are physics students, and if they're professors, might also be kind of clandestine leaders in their country's nuclear weapons program and have a kind of military rank and spend their time lecturing students the rest of the week, it's a kind of interesting example of the. I mean, the COVID role of this nuclear program, I guess, and the way in which he's also an interesting man because he is, on the one hand, a kind of academic and a scientist. On the other hand, he's a defense official and within the Revolutionary Guards.

[David McCloskey]

So the equivalent, if we wanted to use an Oppenheimer comparison, I guess the equivalent would be that as Oppenheimer is building the bomb at Los Alamos, he's continuing to commute to Berkeley to give lectures or something like that. Right. And then he's doing the weapons work in secret while he grades student papers. Right. I mean, that's kind of. That is what Fakhrizadeh is doing. And in fact, later in the story.

[Unnamed Host]

This duality is going to end up.

[David McCloskey]

Being one of the vulnerabilities that he actually has, Right?

[Unnamed Host]

Because he is. He's going into Tehran to deliver these. These classes.

[David McCloskey]

So even though we don't know a lot about the man, I think we can make a couple judgments. One is that, as I said, he's.

[Unnamed Host]

An ideological true believer.

[David McCloskey]

Right. I mean, there are plenty of Iranian government officials, you know, and sort of bureaucrats who I'm sure are quite ambivalent about the sort of the Islamic Republic.

[Unnamed Host]

Mohsen Fakhrizade does not appear to be.

[David McCloskey]

One of those people.

[Unnamed Host]

Right.

[David McCloskey]

He's in the irgc.

[Unnamed Host]

He's helping to build Iran's bomb.

[David McCloskey]

This is not a man who's going home with real doubts about the system. Right. I think he's an Iranian nationalist. He is a kind of a hard.

[Unnamed Host]

Man, I think a hard edge, a practical problem solver.

[David McCloskey]

Right. He's a physicist, he's a workaholic.

[Unnamed Host]

We're going to learn. He's pretty humorless, as those pictures show. He's totally secretive.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, even his children are not.

[Unnamed Host]

Going to be fully aware of what he's doing.

[David McCloskey]

And what is going to become his life's work is building an Iranian bomb.

[Gordon Carrera]

And let's talk briefly about Iran's nuclear ambitions. So Iran has got a civilian nuclear program, actually from before the revolution. The issue is, though, from the 80s and 90s, it looks to start to want to secretly at least explore the idea of having a nuclear weapon. It's got the opposition from the U.S. it's also had this war with Iraq in the 80s. So Iran is looking covertly to try and build this program. And it's putting together networks to try and smuggle in some of the components. And Fakhrizadeh looks like he's involved in that. Then in the early 2000s, a secret facility at Natanz used for uranium enrichment gets exposed. So for the first time, the kind of rest of the world wakes up to the idea Iran might be Secretly going for a nuclear weapon. Iran, of course, says this is all for peaceful reasons. We just want nuclear power. Not many people believe them. But it's interesting because at that point it gets exposed. And the Iranians do shift when it gets exposed. And so they actually put a lot of the program underground. They start to disperse it. They pause some of the weaponization aspects of it because they're worried that it will invite a strike. Because this is 2003, when the US has just invaded Iraq. The Iranians are worried that they're going to be next and that they might be attacked. So they kind of take on a different strategy, which is to build up the infrastructure for a bomb without ever actually going, making that last leap towards weaponization and building it, which they know might invite an attack. So they're kind of trying to get as far as they can without making that move. And Fakrizadeh looks like he is playing a particular role. He chairs some meetings, I think, in the summer of 2003 to preserve some of the nuclear program as it's dispersed and to try and protect it. And so it effectively sets the scene for what we see in the last 20 years, which is Iran trying to keep pushing as far as it can, but without inviting an attack. Diplomatic efforts to try and do a deal to stop it, but also covert and sometimes overt attempts to undermine that nuclear program and stop it. But Fakriza Day is at the heart of this inside Iran, even though it's largely unknown.

[David McCloskey]

I was really hoping for a way.

[Unnamed Host]

In, Gordon, to ask you to give us a briefing on the physics of a nuclear bomb again, which listeners to.

[David McCloskey]

Our previous episodes on Klaus Foops will know that both of us are, of course, highly qualified to talk about the.

[Unnamed Host]

Physics of a bomb.

[David McCloskey]

But I didn't find one in your briefing there, Gordon. So kudos to you for defending yourself valiantly. I mean, we should also say that.

[Unnamed Host]

In the summer of 2003, this is.

[David McCloskey]

The point in the invasion of Iraq.

[Unnamed Host]

Where US officials are legitimately talking about.

[David McCloskey]

Doing like a left turn, I think.

[Unnamed Host]

They called into Damascus.

[David McCloskey]

So just sort of, you know, veering left out of Baghdad to go and.

[Unnamed Host]

Wreck the Assad regime.

[David McCloskey]

So, yeah, this is before the insurgency has really taken off and before the.

[Unnamed Host]

Entire kind of nation building project in.

[David McCloskey]

Iraq seems to have gone down as an abysmal failure. And so what the Iranians and what Mohsen Fakrizadeh I think are doing is pretty logical in 2003 because they've got to be looking next door at Saddam and saying well, the Americans just went and wrecked a country who actually didn't have a nuclear program. What might they do if it really becomes fully known how far along we're going? Right, yeah.

[Unnamed Host]

So it does make sense to sort of pause pieces of it, fragment it, which I think, from an intelligence standpoint.

[David McCloskey]

Makes a ton of sense, because if it's centralized, it's probably more vulnerable to sort of understanding both your capabilities and also your plans and intentions. Whereas if it's spread out over, you know, 10, 12, 15 pieces of your bureaucracy, I think it's a more difficult.

[Unnamed Host]

Collection target for Western intelligence agencies to.

[David McCloskey]

Understand what's really going on. But Fakhrizade, he's still in the sort of catbird seat, isn't he?

[Unnamed Host]

I mean, he's still running this thing.

[David McCloskey]

To give the Supreme Leader, to give the Iranian government the capability to eventually have a breakout capacity for a nuclear weapon. And by 2020, by the year that he's finally targeted by the Mossad, Fakirsadeh is running what's known as the Organization.

[Unnamed Host]

Of Defensive Innovation and Research, Persian acronym.

[David McCloskey]

Spnd, which, I mean, sounds very innocent, doesn't it, Gordon? But it's, of course, the hub of Iran's nuclear program. And Bakris today is really the, I guess, chief advisor on almost anything involving the nuclear capabilities right at this point in time. Now, the SPND isn't. They're not only doing weapons research. Fakhrizadeh is helping Iran deal with the.

[Unnamed Host]

COVID pandemic, of all things.

[David McCloskey]

The Iranian vaccine is called Fakravak.

[Gordon Carrera]

It's that after him? Is it named after him?

[David McCloskey]

It's named after him. Wow. That's right. It's pretty extraordinary. I mean, his kids don't have any idea what he's doing, but clearly he's got, you know, a very key role in the program. Now, he's also, you know, he talks about him being a really practical man in many respects. And he has built up by 2020, an underground network of suppliers and logistics routes from Latin America to North Korea to Eastern Europe to get the equipment and parts necessary for this sprawling nuke program. Right now, something we should address is.

[Unnamed Host]

Why do the Iranians want this? I mean, why is it so important to someone like Fakhrizadeh and to the.

[David McCloskey]

Men around him to have a bomb? Because they're really engaged.

[Unnamed Host]

I mean, especially in the kind of.

[David McCloskey]

Post, you know, Operation Iraqi Freedom, period. I mean, they're engaged in a very risky activity here that could, I guess.

[Unnamed Host]

Put them in the US Crosshairs if.

[David McCloskey]

It'S sort of fully revealed and discovered.

[Gordon Carrera]

On the one hand, I think it's entirely logical why Iran would want nuclear weapons if you're the Iranian regime, because it's one of the few things that can, frankly, protect you from what you see as a US policy of regime change. The lesson of the Iraq war in 2003 was Saddam got taken out by the Americans because he didn't have a nuclear weapon to protect him. If you've got a nuclear weapon, if you're in North Korea or somewhere else, then it's much harder to take you on. So it provides a form of protection. And I think also as time goes on, they'll look at, you know, Colonel Gaddafi and Mama Gaddafi in Libya, who also around this time gives up his nuclear program to the West. So in the wake of the Iraq war, he declares it, he gives it up, and what happens A few years later, there's a popular revolution, the west backs the rebels, and he ends up dead. So one of the lessons is a nuke can buy you security. But of course, the dangerous bit is the journey towards the nuke. And I think the Iranians have played a very clever game, which is to build up the capacity but never actually be seen to make that final leap towards making a bomb, to actually weaponizing, which would invite an attack, but to consistently get as close to being able to do that without having an attack as possible to get them the option. And I think that's what they've got themselves effectively. And what Fakhrisadei is doing is getting them the option that if they ever feel they need to make that leap, they can do it well.

[David McCloskey]

And I guess I also think of.

[Unnamed Host]

Our old friend Bashar al Assad in.

[David McCloskey]

Syria, who attempted essentially to buy a nuclear bomb from the North Koreans and.

[Unnamed Host]

Install a reactor in the eastern desert.

[David McCloskey]

That the Israelis found bombed, destroyed. And then a few years later, he's dealing with a popular uprising, and, you know, he doesn't have that.

[Unnamed Host]

That protection.

[David McCloskey]

Right. I mean, even Ukraine, I guess, which gave up its weapons in the early 90s in exchange for security guarantees in part from the Russians, that Ukraine would.

[Unnamed Host]

Be independent and protected.

[David McCloskey]

And look how that turned out.

[Gordon Carrera]

So, yeah, I think it's entirely rational on the one hand, for the Iranians to pursue this strategy. It's also pretty rational for the Israelis, who see Iran as committed to their destruction, to want to stop them. So at that point, maybe let's take a break and we'll come back and we'll look at how the Israelis do decide to go after the Iranian nuclear program and some of the really adventurous ways in which they try and seek to stop it. Welcome back. We're looking at the story of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and the Iranian nuclear program. And we've looked at this man, the Iranian nuclear scientist, the central figure, even if not much is known about him in that Iranian program. But let's look now at the Israeli side, the people who are going to target him and the reasons they want to do it, and the people who are behind going after Iran.

[Unnamed Host]

Well, I think on the Israeli side.

[David McCloskey]

Gordon, it makes sense to start the story with a very fascinating man named Merdegan who was the head of Mossad.

[Unnamed Host]

In the early 2000s.

[David McCloskey]

And he actually wasn't the chief in 2020.

[Unnamed Host]

He had retired by then.

[David McCloskey]

And so he's not a decision maker. But Mayor De Gan's I guess, philosophy on the fight against the Iranians really.

[Unnamed Host]

Lays the foundations for, I think, a.

[David McCloskey]

New way of dealing with the Iranian threat. And it's pretty important to set him up to understand why the Israelis are doing what they're doing. So he's born in 1945 to Polish Jewish parents who had fled, I think, in the late 30s to Siberia, where they sort of waited out the war. There is this very, I think, emblematic.

[Unnamed Host]

Story about Mayor De Gan because in.

[David McCloskey]

His office is hanging a picture of a man kneeling in front of a German soldier just seconds before he's being shot. And that's Merdegon's grandfather who is killed by the Nazis in the Second World War. And Merdigan uses, I mean that, I mean, first of all, we should just.

[Unnamed Host]

Imagine, here's a man who has the.

[David McCloskey]

Picture of his grandfather just prior to execution that's actually hanging in his office. And the lesson is that Jews need to fight. You get down on your knees like that, you're going to get shot.

[Unnamed Host]

Right?

[David McCloskey]

Now, eventually the family emigrates to Israel. Merdigan drops out of high school at 17, enlists in a very elite commando force, the Cyrat Met Gal sort of becomes, I guess, a feeder for political.

[Unnamed Host]

Intel, military, kind of the upper echelons.

[David McCloskey]

Of the Israeli security establishment. But he doesn't make the cut. And Degan, he's very interesting because he's.

[Unnamed Host]

Kind of an outsider in Israel.

[David McCloskey]

So he's not a sabra, he's not a native born Israeli.

[Unnamed Host]

Right. He's not a kibbutznik. Right. So he's not a guy who was.

[David McCloskey]

Out on one of these kibbutz farms sort of, you know, settling the land. Right.

[Unnamed Host]

He's a Russian.

[David McCloskey]

Right? He's a Russian who's come to. You can think about him. I mean, I realize he's born in Poland, but he's kind of a Russian settler in Israel. And I think that's not a bad way to think about him.

[Unnamed Host]

Right.

[David McCloskey]

So he's going to spend the next few decades in special ops units in the Israel Defense Forces, the military in the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security force. He's involved in pretty much every one of Israel's wars throughout the the 60s, 70s, 80s.

[Unnamed Host]

One of the soldiers in Degan's unit.

[David McCloskey]

Said that Degan, quote, had a serious.

[Unnamed Host]

Malfunction in his fear mechanism.

[David McCloskey]

So he is physically courageous, adventurous. He's also a landscape painter, interestingly enough.

[Gordon Carrera]

It's one way of relaxing.

[Unnamed Host]

Yes, enjoys that in his downtime.

[David McCloskey]

And in 2002, Ariel Sharon is the Prime Minister of Israel, and he appoints to Gan to head the Mossad, which is Israel's foreign intelligence agency, The Institute.

[Gordon Carrera]

For Intelligence and Specialty, yes, its official name, but everyone knows it as the Mossad.

[David McCloskey]

So many of these security agencies that.

[Unnamed Host]

We talk about on the show, Gordon.

[David McCloskey]

Have just wonderfully bureaucratic acronyms to them to hide the fact that they do incredible things. And Sharon, of course, has a very aggressive outlook. And we'll say at the time that he wants a Mossad chief with a.

[Unnamed Host]

Dagger between his teeth. And so he taps Mayor De Gan for the role.

[Gordon Carrera]

And he takes over from Efraim Halevi, who I actually met many years ago, who was the previous head of. Of Mossad, who is a very different character. I mean, Halevi is more of your kind of George Smiley, like, spy master. Definitely not a man who, when I met him, had a dagger between his teeth as we sat and did a kind of quite genteel interview. I did do a radio series many years ago on the Mossad, and I went over to Israel, and I always remember I arrived at the airport, and when you arrive at the airport at Tel Aviv, they ask you what you're doing in the country, and they kind of question you. And I thought, well, I better be honest. So I said to the woman there at the kind of, you know, at the desk, I said, doing a documentary on the Mossad. And she just looked up and looked at me and went, I'll get my boss.

[David McCloskey]

So thus began Gordon's nightmare experience of being detained at Ben Gurion Airport.

[Gordon Carrera]

No, they were, but they. I thought I might as well be honest about it. But anyway, that was one of the times I Met Halevi, but Halevi, I think it's fair to say, was a different character. And Sharon wanted. Wanted this kind of aggressive character in the form of Mayor De Gan, who was going to be much more proactive, much more arguably violent in what he was willing to do.

[David McCloskey]

Well, and, Gordon, I don't know if you intended to skip past this wonderful quote that I had put in here, but I'm gonna. I'm gonna read it anyway, because I think it's. I think it's illustrative of the sort.

[Unnamed Host]

Of mentality of Mayor De Gan. When Degan takes over, he goes to.

[David McCloskey]

The Mossad kind of canteen, I guess, a place where the workforce congregates and he delivers an opening speech. Right. And as I was reading the setup for this in my head, I was thinking of. It's pretty typical when a new CIA director takes over for them to address the workforce from what we call the bubble, which is our big kind of auditorium that's right there on the Langley campus. Not everybody goes, of course, but it can hold, you know, hundreds of people. Crowd will go in, it'll be on video. It's usually kind of milk toast stuff. Right. And so I'm thinking, well, okay, that's probably what this is going to be.

[Gordon Carrera]

So this is.

[David McCloskey]

This is a line from.

[Unnamed Host]

From Merdegan's sort of opening speech at the Mossad.

[David McCloskey]

And he's telling a story about his. His journeys fighting in Lebanon during the Israeli occupation of much of the country. And he said, in Lebanon, I witnessed.

[Unnamed Host]

The aftermath of a family feud. A local patriarch's head had been split open, his brain on the floor. Around him lay his wife and some.

[David McCloskey]

Of his children, all dead. Before I could do anything, one of.

[Unnamed Host]

The patriarch's sons scooped up a handful.

[David McCloskey]

Of the patriarch's brain and swallowed it. That is how they do things in.

[Unnamed Host]

Family feuds in that place.

[David McCloskey]

Eat the brain, swallow the power. I don't want any of you to have your brains eaten. You eat their brains, and then God.

[Unnamed Host]

Apparently punches his clenched fist into the.

[David McCloskey]

Palm of his hand as he's delivering that last part.

[Gordon Carrera]

So your CIA directors never told you to eat your enemy's brains?

[David McCloskey]

We were not.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, you were not instructed.

[David McCloskey]

No, we were not.

[Gordon Carrera]

Imagine them doing that in MI6, either. It's not the kind of speech you get. The MI6.

[David McCloskey]

The opening speeches were far more boring when. Yeah. You know, when CIA directors took over.

[Gordon Carrera]

Does tell you something, though, does it?

[David McCloskey]

Tells you something about the man.

[Gordon Carrera]

About the man. And also about that. That's what Ariel Sharon wants from the man. And of course, as we said, this is 2002, just at that point where the Iranian nuclear program is being exposed and made public, isn't it? And where it's suddenly becoming an issue that Iran might want the bomb. And so you can see why this is going to be one of the priorities for him.

[David McCloskey]

That's right. Well, and one of my CIA colleagues who got to spend some time with Degan said that sometimes when Degan would be sitting in meetings with American officials.

[Unnamed Host]

Who maybe weren't as educated on the.

[David McCloskey]

Region as they should be, the gone would say in his very thick accent, he'd say, you didn't grow up in.

[Unnamed Host]

This neighborhood, did you?

[David McCloskey]

You know, to talk about the region. And I think that idea that the Israelis are living in an extremely tough neighborhood in which if they do not reach out and touch people, they will be. They will be sort of victimized themselves. Right. Is deeply ingrained in his psychology.

[Unnamed Host]

And I think as Degan looks out.

[David McCloskey]

He'S looking at an Iran that is essentially going to, you know, reach for a nuclear capability which threatens his entire sort of.

[Unnamed Host]

I think he sees it as an existential threat.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

At this point.

[Gordon Carrera]

And so it becomes a priority to deal with that. And it's interesting, isn't it, because there are different options. And at various points, Israel does look at full out military strikes against Iran as one of the options to deal with that program. But actually, in the end, they're going to go down the more covert route as the more effective one, aren't they?

[David McCloskey]

Well, that's right. And here, Gordon, I think we should commend the work of an Israeli journalist.

[Unnamed Host]

Named Ronan Bergman, who has written extensively.

[David McCloskey]

Over the past 20, 25 years about the shadow war between Israel and Iran and who has written an absolutely phenomenal book on Israeli targeted killings and assassinations.

[Unnamed Host]

Called Rise and Kill First.

[David McCloskey]

And so, so much of this story, I think, really comes out of Ronan Bergman's reporting. But he reports in the early 2000s on a critical meeting where at Dagan's Mossad, they're basically laying out options for.

[Unnamed Host]

What to do about Iran's nuclear program.

[David McCloskey]

And these are the three options that Mossad puts out there. One, conquer Iran, okay, to change the regime. Three, slow the program down so at.

[Unnamed Host]

The breaking point, they will not be armed with a weapon.

[David McCloskey]

I think Kissinger used to joke about how you always wanted to have like three options, right. Two which were completely unthinkable to the policymaker, and then one that you wanted them to choose.

[Gordon Carrera]

Oh, I'll have that one?

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, yeah, I'll have that one.

[Unnamed Host]

So there's one realistic option on here.

[David McCloskey]

Which is slow the program down.

[Unnamed Host]

And on this kind of menu, I.

[David McCloskey]

Guess Dagan has put out a lot of different pressure points. There's diplomatic pressure, sanctions, support to the Iranian opposition. One of them, though, is targeted killings, assassinations of really, scientists, civilian scientists involved in Iran's nuclear program.

[Unnamed Host]

And Dagan is going to call these a series of pinpoint operations meant to change reality.

[David McCloskey]

And 15 scientists, researchers, engineers, are put on Mossad's kill list. And one of them, even in the early 2000s, is Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

[Gordon Carrera]

And so it is interesting this, isn't it, because as you said, these are not military targets in the classic sense of it. They are scientists and research scientists. The ethics of that, I think, are questionable, complex. I mean, you know, it's one thing Oppenheimer being targeted perhaps by the Nazis or the Japanese, you could imagine, during World War II, but at that point, the countries are at war. So maybe it's slightly different here. You're in a kind of. There isn't a declared war between the two sides, and yet, you know, one is targeting the. The scientists of the other. I don't know what the comparison or what the parallel would be for the west today. I mean, it would be as if there's some top AI researcher in a Silicon Valley firm who the Chinese or the Russians targeted. Yeah, you know, they're working at, I don't know, OpenAI or Google Leapi or somewhere, and working on some technology which. Which the military in the US Was going to use. And you took them out. I mean, it's not straightforward, is it, in terms of the ethics. But I guess that goes back to the Israelis, if you like having a different view of the world, you know, whatever people may think about it, and acting in a different way.

[David McCloskey]

Well, I think the Israelis essentially collapsed the distinction between an enemy combatant and a civilian who is providing a very unique and critical military capability to an enemy state. Right.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

Because I think here in the States, I think we would draw a distinction. We'd say a targeted killing. To conduct that lawfully, it would have to be someone who is actually an enemy combatant. Right.

[Gordon Carrera]

And posing an imminent threat.

[David McCloskey]

And posing an imminent threat. Whereas an assassination, which would not be permitted would be of a civilian.

[Unnamed Host]

Right. Who's supporting that foreign program.

[David McCloskey]

Whereas I think the Israelis, they do not draw a distinction between those two types of operations.

[Gordon Carrera]

No. And I mean, there's a history of that, if you go back into the past where they're targeting scientists, they're targeting businessmen and engineers. I mean there was a famous guy I think was Gerald Bull who was building a super gun supposedly for Iraq and he gets killed. You know, it's thought by Mossad. So they do have a history of going after those people who are providing, even if they're foreigners, providing capability to a state which Israel considers an enemy. So, so it is within that. But this, I guess what we're talking about here is a very specific campaign to try and degrade that nuclear program. And on the one hand, when you go back to your kind of option, list those three options, it's worth saying that this is partly done to avoid a war. I mean we can see it as a shadow war, but there is also a sense in which the alternative option for Israeli politicians and particularly Benjamin Netanyahu who's kind of very hawkish on Iran is actually a military strike. So it becomes a kind of, well we can either try and degrade them through these over acts and sabotage and things like that or else we're going to have to have an all out war. And if that's your alternative then actually the being offered the chance to try and slow it down and buy time rather than go to war is a perhaps more attractive one.

[David McCloskey]

And Dagon and some of the people.

[Unnamed Host]

Around him will start to call this killing to save lives.

[David McCloskey]

And important to understand their mentality and mindset is Dagan is absolutely horrified by the prospect of an all out war with Iran. It is the thing he is trying most to avoid. And there's a story from 2010 where.

[Unnamed Host]

Netanyahu was apparently close to ordering a.

[David McCloskey]

Strike on Iran and sort of Dagon is like apoplectic about this, right? He doesn't think that there is any way that Israel can stop Iran's nuke.

[Unnamed Host]

Project by force alone.

[David McCloskey]

Because unlike the Iraqi program in the 80s, the Syrian program in 2007, the.

[Unnamed Host]

Iranian program is sprawling and vast, right?

[David McCloskey]

There's multiple facilities, some of which by the late, you know, sort of, I guess aughts early 2000s, you know, it's.

[Unnamed Host]

They'Re underground, deep in bunkers that are.

[David McCloskey]

Unreachable by the munitions that the Israelis have.

[Unnamed Host]

It is homegrown in many respects in.

[David McCloskey]

That the Iranians have a really deep.

[Unnamed Host]

Bench of scientists and researchers and engineers.

[David McCloskey]

Who are building the capabilities for the program. And so I think Dagon looks at this and says we can't really stop.

[Unnamed Host]

This militarily, but by killing a few.

[David McCloskey]

Targeted people we can really slow their progress down, avoid this war, delay it.

[Unnamed Host]

As long as possible, and save a.

[David McCloskey]

Lot of lives as a result. And so Dagon's view, I think, is.

[Unnamed Host]

That these killings are a lot more.

[David McCloskey]

Moral because it's the only way to slow down the program and avoid a war that he, I think, believes Netanyahu wants.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's still the case, isn't it, where people are saying, well, maybe a military strike might happen even this year, but that doesn't necessarily end the program. It might just set it back a few months. But it is well buried, well hardened, and it might just spur the Iranians to move faster once they can rebuild it. So I think it is a really interesting, complicated kind of policy discussion. So back to Fakriza Day. At this point, I guess around about 2007, it seems like we start to see evidence of this new Israeli policy to target the scientists, particularly in the program.

[David McCloskey]

Well, that's right. I mean, and just a few examples of this. And we should say, by the way, the Israelis don't claim any of these, these operations, right? I mean, we, we attribute them to, we attribute them to the Israelis, but they were, they don't claim them publicly. Right? So in, In January of 2007, a nuclear scientist working at this Fahan uranium plant dies under very mysterious circumstances following.

[Unnamed Host]

A, quote, gas leak. And then Iran is convinced that the.

[David McCloskey]

Israelis have poisoned him. In 2010, another scientist, this time someone who's actually working directly with Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, is walking toward his car in North Tehran. He opens his car door. A booby trapped motorcycle next to him explodes and kills him.

[Unnamed Host]

All right?

[David McCloskey]

Later that year, In November of 2010, two motorcyclists blow up the cars of.

[Unnamed Host]

Two figures involved in the nuke program.

[David McCloskey]

One of them is a particle physicist who's killed by Olympic mine just attached to his car while he's in heavy traffic.

[Unnamed Host]

Twenty minutes later, professor of nuclear engineering.

[David McCloskey]

Who worked on Fakrizate's team is almost killed in a northern suburb. But he survives. And Dagan, by the way, in this sort of period, he, his term at Mossad is up, right? And some of his successors have taken over. But the program or this sort of.

[Unnamed Host]

Set of operations to go after the.

[David McCloskey]

Brains of Iran's nuclear program keeps going. In July of 2011, two gunmen on motorcycles follow the car of a nuclear physicist expert in the high voltage switches.

[Unnamed Host]

Used to trigger nuclear warheads.

[David McCloskey]

Bikers kill him, hit him with five shots. And then a year later, in 2012.

[Unnamed Host]

A chemical engineer at a uranium enrichment.

[David McCloskey]

Facility leaves for the lab, limpet mining, gets attached to his car by a motorcyclist. He's killed. Now, Dagan calls these hits divine interventions. Again, the Israelis don't claim them. And I think by this point it's worth maybe reflecting on what all of this means for Mohsen Fakhrizade because we can talk about this kind of clinically, but for him, he's having friends and.

[Unnamed Host]

Colleagues are being murdered.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah. You know, by the Israelis trying to stop his life's work from happening. You know, this is going to really.

[Unnamed Host]

Affect the operation that we're going to.

[David McCloskey]

Talk about in the next episode is that the security has increased massively on scientists and engineers involved in the program.

[Unnamed Host]

Over these years, and especially on Mohsen Fakrizide.

[David McCloskey]

So they've got bodyguards, cops around their homes. A lot of these scientists are probably very miserable because they're not. They're not soldiers.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, it's not much of a life.

[David McCloskey]

Right. They're not soldiers. They're not in a war zone.

[Unnamed Host]

They're living in comfortable neighborhoods in Tehran.

[David McCloskey]

And they're being sort of, you know, put under 247 protection because they've had.

[Unnamed Host]

Friends and colleagues who are being killed by the Israelis.

[Gordon Carrera]

And you get some of what are called white defections, which are where people basically decide, I don't want to do this. I don't want to work on the nuclear program. I mean, you can see why. Yeah, if you're a scientist and you think, well, am I going to work on that and I might have Olympic mind attached to my car and get blown up, or should I go and work on something else? I mean, you can absolutely see why they might ask to be or want to transfer to something else.

[David McCloskey]

I actually think this was probably one of the major effects that mere de.

[Unnamed Host]

Gone was hoping these killings would have.

[David McCloskey]

Is discourage people to create an absolutely chilling effect inside the research institutions, the bureaucracies that.

[Unnamed Host]

That bring these people to work on the new project.

[David McCloskey]

Because Iran is, I mean, obviously it's.

[Unnamed Host]

Not a democratic system, it's not an open system.

[David McCloskey]

But like, you still have people who are probably like, you know, hey, I'll.

[Unnamed Host]

Do a two year rotation to this.

[David McCloskey]

Thing and then I go do something else. Or there's probably some amount of choice involved here. And you'd got to think that at night when some of these scientists go home and talk to their wives about.

[Unnamed Host]

Their next rotation or role, you're thinking.

[David McCloskey]

Maybe I don't work on this anymore.

[Unnamed Host]

Maybe I go do something else.

[David McCloskey]

So I think I think that absolutely was in De Gun's gun sights as he was promoting these attacks. Now we should note, and we won't go into extensive detail on any of this here because these are frankly all.

[Unnamed Host]

Many of these operations are future episodes on.

[David McCloskey]

The rest is classified, to be quite honest. But the killings are only one component of the havoc that Mossad is wreaking on Mohsin Fakhrizadeh in this period.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's right. You've got Stuxnet, you know, the cyber attack which the US looked to have been involved in as well, which undermines the program. You've got an operation in 2018, I think, when the Israelis break into a warehouse, amazing operation in Tehran and actually steal the files, you know, some of the files about the history of the nuclear program.

[David McCloskey]

So that operation in 2018 is absolutely, to use a technical term, bananas. Because what the Israelis do is they. They literally drive trucks into a warehouse facility in a Tehran suburb that is housing all of the hard copy material on the nuclear weapons program going back like many years. Many of those papers are actually, you know, written by Fakhrizadeh and they've got.

[Unnamed Host]

His writing in the margins, his signature on them. And it shows really the full extent.

[David McCloskey]

Of the Iranians deception on the true.

[Unnamed Host]

Nature of the program.

[David McCloskey]

The Israelis quite literally break into the facility, steal the material, put it on trucks and drive it out across the border. And that raid, I think, is actually.

[Unnamed Host]

One of the reasons why we even.

[David McCloskey]

Know as much as we do about Mohsen Fakrizideh, because so much of the information that's come out about him is coming from those files and documents.

[Gordon Carrera]

So by 2020, Israel has really been pushing in lots of ways against Iran's nuclear program. And it has got Mohsen Fakhrizadei in its crosshairs. Now really, it's decided that it's going to go after the mastermind, the man at the center of it. And so I think let's take a break there, David. But when we come back, we will look at this really extraordinary operation involving robotic machine guns, artificial intelligence, satellites, covert operatives, which is used to finally get to this man. Iran's top nuclear scientists woke up an hour before dawn, as he did most days, to study Islamic philosophy before his day began. Then shortly after noon on Friday, November 27, 2020, he slipped behind the wheel of his black Nissan Teyana sedan. Tina. Tiana.

[David McCloskey]

I was actually thinking the same thing. I have no idea. Tiana, Tiana, Tiana.

[Gordon Carrera]

We're not going to be sponsored by.

[David McCloskey]

Nissan this Episode is brought to you by Nissan Teyenna.

[Gordon Carrera]

He slipped behind the wheel of his black Nissan Tiana sedan, his wife in the passenger seat beside him, and hit the road as the convoy left the Caspian coast. The first car carried a security detail. It was followed by the unarmored black Nissan driven by Mr. Fakhrizade. Two more security cars followed. The security team had warned Mr. Fakhrizade that day of a threat against him and asked him not to travel. But Mr. Fakrizade said he had a university class to teach in Tehran the next day and he could not do it remotely. Well, that's the definitive account of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh's last morning, written by the journalists Ronan Bergman and Farnaz Fasihi from the New York Times. Welcome to the Rest is Classified. I'm Gordon Carrera.

[David McCloskey]

And I'm David McCloskey.

[Gordon Carrera]

And we are looking at the story of the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizade on that day, November 27, 2020. As we heard last time, he is the man at the heart of Iran's nuclear program. And we've explored how he played a key role in setting up that program in its clandestine efforts to smuggle the parts in for a bomb, how he's working both as a member of the Revolutionary Guards and as a university professor, as we heard, how Iran's enemies, particularly Israel, have identified him as a key player in that program. And they have been going after the scientists already, and there have been this spate of assassinations of scientists involved in different aspects of Iran's nuclear program. And now as we approach November 2020, they've got Fakhrizadeh himself in their sights, haven't they?

[David McCloskey]

So he is certainly one of their top targets. And we should say, Gordon, that even though Mayor Degan, the sort of the Mossad chief we talked about last time, who was so instrumental to really establishing this policy of targeted assassinations inside Tehran. So Dagan is not the Mossad chief anymore, but the Mossad chief at the time, Yossi Cohen, is a Dagan sort of acolyte, right, or protege, and he's been running the Iran portfolio in part for Dagan all the way back to 2004. So we have a sort of continuous policy of finding opportunities to go after some of these really senior Iranian scientists. And by 2020, as we'll see, the Israelis are at a point where they have a real opportunity to go after Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

[Gordon Carrera]

And worth just setting a bit of the international context at that time because there had been, of course, a deal to put constraints around the Iran nuclear program, which had been signed in 2015. But when President Trump in his first term pulled out of that deal, Iran started to push ahead with its program because there were no longer constraints about it. So there is also a kind of renewed desire, I think, to do something about it. And one of the things Israel is going to do is go after Fakhrizadeh. And now, as we looked at last time, the people around him had been killed, lots of people in his program. So he going to have security to protect him. As we heard, when he's driving, he's got bodyguards, other cars, that kind of situation. It is a challenge, isn't it, to try and understand where you might get that opportunity to go after someone.

[David McCloskey]

And I think there's one other, I.

[Unnamed Host]

Guess, event that's worth mentioning to set.

[David McCloskey]

Up why I think the Israelis believe this operation is worth the risk at the end of 2020, and that's that in early 2020, the US killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, their sort of military expeditionary group. Right. He's killed in Baghdad by the US by the US and there's really not.

[Unnamed Host]

A significant Iranian response to this.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, there's a sort of missile and rocket volley in response to it that does lead to some injuries, but.

[Unnamed Host]

It'S not as much of a response.

[David McCloskey]

Perhaps, as anyone might have expected. And so I think Fakhrizade is a bigger fish to go after than many of the other scientists that the Israelis have targeted in the decade prior. And so I think the risk calculation is also being framed by the fact.

[Unnamed Host]

That Soleimani had just been killed months earlier.

[David McCloskey]

But to go after Fakhrizid, I mean, I think the way from just an operational standpoint listeners should think about this is you want to establish something called pattern of life, because you need to figure out how the target moves lives.

[Unnamed Host]

What they do, what their habits are.

[David McCloskey]

What their routines are to find the vulnerability. Right.

[Unnamed Host]

You don't start with a concept of.

[David McCloskey]

How you kill somebody and then jam it into their life. You watch them if you can, and figure out where you might create an opportunity or exploit a vulnerability to go after them.

[Gordon Carrera]

And it seems pretty clear that he would have been a top collection target for a long time for the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, and they would have been collecting what, signals intelligence, they'd have been trying to get inside of communications, they'd have been trying to get agents close to him. And we won't know the exact details of that, but that's what we're talking about, isn't it?

[David McCloskey]

That's right.

[Gordon Carrera]

Is having as many different ways of understanding his life and his movements as possible.

[David McCloskey]

Well, and I think this is one of the central mysteries that for very good reasons has not come out in.

[Unnamed Host]

Any of the actual reporting on this.

[David McCloskey]

Is exactly how did the Israelis get.

[Unnamed Host]

Insight into his routines and movements?

[David McCloskey]

Right. But what seems pretty clear from the way this killing was planned is that.

[Unnamed Host]

Mossad was in the guy's comms.

[David McCloskey]

Right? They probably had access to phones, emails, you know, laptops. Like they had access to electronics that.

[Unnamed Host]

Were floating around him or that perhaps were even his, it seems to me.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, and potentially for a long time before the hit, because I think they would have, again, we'll see some of the hints later on that they kind of knew this guy's routines really well. So it's not like they'd had this stuff for a couple weeks.

[Unnamed Host]

They'd probably been watching him really closely.

[David McCloskey]

And in Iran, I mean, the way the Israelis talk about this kind of synthesis between SIGINT signals intelligence and human intelligence is what Mossad calls hugent. Hugent, I guess, maybe.

[Unnamed Host]

So it's the synthesis of both of them.

[David McCloskey]

So it's probably some combination of there's somebody that Mossad recruited to get access to those guys. Comms, right? I guess you'd call it human enabled.

[Unnamed Host]

Signals intelligence in many respects.

[David McCloskey]

Right. But we don't know.

[Unnamed Host]

This remains a mystery, I think, exactly.

[David McCloskey]

How they got access to it. In fact, the sort of penetration of Fakhrizade and his inner circle was so complete and total that apparently there was actually a dispute in Mossad about the wisdom of killing him at all, because he was essentially an unwitting source. Because they had access to so much of his life that they could effectively.

[Unnamed Host]

Glean a lot on sort of Iran's.

[David McCloskey]

Nuclear program plans and intentions, that kind of thing, just from watching him.

[Unnamed Host]

Right. So apparently there was some dispute about this.

[David McCloskey]

And there's a great quote in some of Ronan Bergman's reporting. And he is a New York Times journalist and Israeli with exceptional access to the Mossad, who has written, I would say, the definitive account of this hit. And Bergman wrote, mossad breathed with the guy, referring to Fakhrizadeh.

[Unnamed Host]

Woke up with him, slept with him, traveled with him.

[David McCloskey]

They would have smelled his aftershave every.

[Unnamed Host]

Morning if he had used aftershave, which.

[David McCloskey]

Is a great little indication of how close you are, that you even know that this guy doesn't use aftershave, which I guess I would have assumed too, given how bearded he is.

[Gordon Carrera]

Well, we said we don't know much about him, as we said in the previous episode, but one thing we know is he doesn't use aftershave. So there's one of the few things we know.

[David McCloskey]

He's not a big shaver.

[Gordon Carrera]

No. But the picture we have of him is that he's not a soft target. I mean, he's got a security detail, he's got bodyguards all around him when he travels, when he moves, as we heard in that opening quote, he's got a car full of bodyguards with him. So he is taking the kind of precautions you'd expect someone to take in his position to avoid being the subject of one of these assassination attempts, knowing that sometimes it's happened with people driving up to cars, you know, with guns or with mines to attach to them.

[David McCloskey]

So the Mossad watches for a while and they find what they think might be a vulnerability, which is as Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is driving from Tehran, so he's actually got a country house in Absard, which is a bit outside of the city.

[Unnamed Host]

There's a vacation home up on the Caspian.

[David McCloskey]

And Fakhrizadeh likes to drive himself, which I can relate to that. I mean, why would he want to have a driver if he's driving? Especially if he's going up for kind of a personal weekend with his wife, family. Maybe the last thing you'd want is to be in the back seat while you've got this driver driving you there.

[Unnamed Host]

Like you'd rather just drive yourself.

[David McCloskey]

And. Well, of course we're talking about an assassination.

[Unnamed Host]

I mean, in Fakhrizadeh's mind, I mean.

[David McCloskey]

He is on his home turf, driving.

[Unnamed Host]

Between his houses in comfortable places that.

[David McCloskey]

He has known for many, many years. But the fact that he's got this impulse to drive himself is really one of the things that's going to get him in trouble. And in particular, it's this drive from his country house in Absard back to Tehran. Now, just a couple words on Absard. It's actually, I've watched YouTube videos of drives around there. It's a very lovely place. It's a small town set into the mountains, full of apple and cherry orchards, modernist villas, Persian style palaces.

[Unnamed Host]

I guess it's an elite escape from Tehran, Gordon, to spend the weekend.

[David McCloskey]

I don't know what's the British equivalent.

[Unnamed Host]

Of getting out of.

[David McCloskey]

I'm trying to think London for the weekend?

[Gordon Carrera]

Well, three or four Hours. Maybe it's your Cornwall country house, but you'd be lucky to do it in three or four hours even given what the traffic is like there. I don't know, Devon, Dorset, somewhere like that.

[David McCloskey]

Okay.

[Gordon Carrera]

Somewhere a bit out. What's the American equivalent?

[Unnamed Contributor]

Jersey.

[David McCloskey]

I was trying to think about this. Yeah. So maybe it's the equivalent of a.

[Unnamed Host]

Wealthy New Yorker driving from a home.

[David McCloskey]

Like on Martha's Vineyard into one of the suburbs in Connecticut outside New York or something like that. Again, I don't know. The traffic could probably be really nasty there. But the point being is this is, this is a casual day for Mohsinfuckeries today, right. He's not in a war zone. He's on a three to four hour drive on open roads that he knows between his homes. But what's critical from a really an operational planning perspective from Assad is that they've got a guy who's going to be driving his own car, moving down a road and it's not going to be a really packed city road in the crush of Tehran traffic, which Tehran traffic, by the way, is absolutely horrendous and probably contributed and for Cruise today, would remember this, contributed to the death of some of his friends when they were stuck in traffic and would have.

[Unnamed Host]

Basically magnetic explosives attached to their car.

[David McCloskey]

Or someone would pull up on a motorcycle and shoot them dead as they sit in rush hour traffic. So he's going to be moving down a pretty open country road. And Mossad has a vulnerability and now they have to come up with a.

[Unnamed Host]

Plan to exploit that vulnerability.

[David McCloskey]

And one option is to just shoot him, right? Have someone pull up to the car.

[Unnamed Host]

Pull alongside the car and shoot him.

[David McCloskey]

Now this is really risky. I mean, the Israelis have a saying.

[Unnamed Host]

No rescue, no operation. So the plan needs to be foolproof.

[David McCloskey]

They need their agents or assets to escape.

[Unnamed Host]

They do not want to sacrifice agents or assets.

[David McCloskey]

So they, they rule out the run and gun shootout idea.

[Unnamed Host]

Now another one is a roadside bomb.

[David McCloskey]

Or a car bomb. Now that is imprecise, difficult to place correctly. You would also maybe not be certain that you wouldn't kill him. And the Israelis really want to limit collateral damage.

[Unnamed Host]

And if he's driving with his wife.

[David McCloskey]

In the car, there is a really good chance that she would die as well.

[Unnamed Host]

So they come up and this is.

[David McCloskey]

Where it gets a bit wild. Pretty wild. They come up with an extraordinary idea which is a remote controlled satellite linked gun, a robotic gun, which as we were researching this did make me think, I don't know if you've Seen this movie, Gordon? The Jackal, the late 90s Bruce Willis flick?

[Gordon Carrera]

Nope. Nope.

[David McCloskey]

Okay.

[Gordon Carrera]

On my list, sorry.

[David McCloskey]

He uses a robotic machine gun.

[Gordon Carrera]

Okay.

[David McCloskey]

And Jack Black gets his arm blown off by it in the movie, but it's a robotic machine gun.

[Unnamed Host]

And this is the idea that the Israelis have.

[David McCloskey]

Now, the advantages are. I can't believe you haven't seen the Jackal, Gordon. Yeah, I'm sorry, that's a. That's as shameful as the fact that.

[Unnamed Host]

I haven't seen War Games.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, exactly. We'll deal with both of those in time.

[David McCloskey]

I finally got even. So. But the advantages of this gun are, I think, immediately clear which is the support assets that the Israelis will use can place it and then get away.

[Unnamed Host]

There's no shooter on site, so you're.

[David McCloskey]

Going to operate this from. In this case, it's going to be thousand miles away. It can be very precise so that you are not going to kill bodyguards or his wife. And what I think is fascinating is that, I mean, remote operated weaponry is not. Is not particularly new. I mean, it's not a new idea. I mean, we had the Jackal reference, but I mean, it actually goes back to maybe the Second World War where B29 Superfortresses, they had, you know, turrets with separate gunners located throughout the aircraft.

[Unnamed Host]

And then they actually consolidated it into.

[David McCloskey]

One gunner aiming multiple guns from kind of a Plexiglas dome kind of sighting station, and is actually using an early version of a GE computer to direct.

[Unnamed Host]

The guns where they should be pointing.

[David McCloskey]

There's actually another example of this, which is something called the common remote operated.

[Unnamed Host]

Weapons station, or crows.

[David McCloskey]

Now, I know you're a pigeon guy, Gordon, but this is CROWS system.

[Gordon Carrera]

Another bird reference.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah. And basically it's a remote operated gun.

[Unnamed Host]

Set atop a U.S. humvee. Right.

[David McCloskey]

So instead of a gunner actually having their half of their body, their head out, they could be down from the safety of the cab firing the gun.

[Gordon Carrera]

But I guess what's with both of those examples what you're still talking about? It is remote controlled on one level, but only maybe by a few feet. You know, the person is still in the B29 Superfortress or they're in the Humvee. Yeah, they're operating it, but it's basically just, just above them or close to them. So in a sense it's remote controlled, but not in a way this operation is going to be. I mean, I mean, that's what's remarkable about this, is the distance, if you like, between the person operating it, the controller and the target we're talking about, you know, what is that thousand miles? Something, something extraordinary between, you know, Israel and, and this remote part of Iran.

[David McCloskey]

In many respects it's like a land based drone. You know, I mean the Israelis in this case couldn't obviously fly a drone from Israel to Iran without it being shot down or noticed or whatever. But in this case you can have all of the advantages of that distance with all of the accuracy of a gun as opposed to using something from the air. Now what they choose is, seems to be a, an FN Mag machine gun, probably Belgian made, with armor penetrating capabilities. It's attached, according to unnamed Israeli officials, to a robotic apparatus that is very similar to a piece of equipment actually made by a Spanish arms manufacturer called the Sentinel 20. It's essentially a robotic turret that allows.

[Unnamed Host]

The operator to move the gun around and to compress the trigger.

[David McCloskey]

Now it's rigged up with cameras everywhere so you can see probably 360 degrees around this thing up all that. Now one of the problems is that when the Israelis put all this together and of course they test it extensively inside Israel before they ever deploy it, it weighs almost 2,000 pounds.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, it's a big bit of kit.

[David McCloskey]

Right now no one really knows, but in the Ronan Bergman account of the killing he claims that Mossad used maybe about 20 officers and support assets to.

[Unnamed Host]

Sort of assemble and position everything in Iran.

[David McCloskey]

Right. Which means you're probably smuggling this thing in piece by piece in like produce trucks that are going across the border with Iraqi Kurdistan. It probably takes a long time to.

[Unnamed Host]

Get all of this kit into Iran.

[Gordon Carrera]

I actually saw just a reference that a few months ago, so years after the operation the Iranians had charge prosecuted, you know, convicted, I think three people of, of treason for, for a role in this. I mean they were described as Kurdish smugglers and alcohol smugglers, you know, and that had been their cover and that they may have been used to bring in some of those parts. Witting or unwitting, we don't know. And obviously that may only be one part of the operation. But you can imagine a very complex long term operation using smugglers perhaps using existing criminal smuggling networks to bring those parts in and then someone who can assemble it in this place, ready to do it and camouflage it, I guess, make sure it doesn't look, you know, suspicious. Have the cameras there wire it up so it's ready to go. I mean that's, it's a pretty serious bit of effort. But I guess that's the advantage of having chosen this remote Location in the middle of the countryside on this route.

[David McCloskey]

And everything you just laid out there, Gordon. It's very labor intensive, I think, to do this right. And they decide to rig it up, rig the gun up on the back of a Zamoyed pickup truck, which is a type of truck, very common in Iran, and to camouflage it so it.

[Unnamed Host]

Looks like a workman's truck.

[David McCloskey]

Right. So it kind of has tools, construction equipment in the back, all situated to hide this gun. Now the Israelis have another problem, which is they need to verify in real time that it's Mohsen Fakriz a day in the car.

[Gordon Carrera]

At the wheel.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, at the wheel.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's the one driving, right?

[David McCloskey]

Because could be his wife driving it could be a body.

[Unnamed Host]

I mean, they need to, they need.

[David McCloskey]

To be certain that it's him. And so they come up with another idea, which is to basically set up a car along the route that will proceed. The Zambiad pickup truck that's got the gun and that will be rigged up with cameras to allow the Israelis with enough time to confirm or to call the whole thing off that it's actually Fakhrizadei at the wheel.

[Unnamed Host]

So they position a car on the.

[David McCloskey]

Route which is going to look broken down. It's got a wheel missing. You know, it's sort of on a jack as if a tire is being changed, maybe someone's left it there. But in it is a series of cameras which will grab an image of.

[Unnamed Host]

Who'S driving the cars in the convoy.

[David McCloskey]

And it's just far enough from the side of the gun to give the Israelis time to confirm the identity of the driver and adapt what they're doing. So, yeah, that's how they'll do the check. Now there's, there's another problem which we haven't discussed and I think this is how we end up with the maybe somewhat exaggerated claim that the gun that killed Mohsin Bakris today was AI enabled. And it's the idea that that distance from Israel, where presumably the operators of this robotic gun will be sitting and Iran, there's a lag, there's a comms lag from that message going from the operator in Israel to Iran and back and forth. So you, you have a time lag issue. You also have an issue of most of the remote operated weapon systems. We were just talking about The Crows, the B29. The guns are really, they're on a very stable surface, right? Or they're sort of stabilized. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Gordon Carrera]

So because it's going to move as.

[David McCloskey]

When you it's going to move, there's going to be recoil. Right. Every time you fire the pickup, the Zambiad is going to sort of rock and tilt the car. So you've got, you've got the movement of the vehicle that the gun is in and you've got that, that comms delay.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah. Which is about one and a half seconds.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, that's right. The Israelis calculated it's 0.8 seconds each way. So round trip it's a 1.6 second delay. And by the way, you're going to be aiming at a car that might be moving. Yeah, that has vacrized a in it. So it's a little bit like I guess the lag Gordon in like a video game.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

And the Israelis develop a piece of software to overcome this to compensate. And that is where we get these claims that it's AI enabled.

[Unnamed Host]

Right.

[David McCloskey]

But it's really, it's an algorithm that the Israelis have built, purpose built to account for the rock of the car, the movement of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh's car and the comms lag between Israel and Iran.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, I think it's worth stressing that because I think when people hear about AI robot guns they immediately think of something which is if you like, an autonomous weapon where some computer algorithm is deciding its itself when to fire and when to shoot and what to shoot at. And that's the kind of, you know, that's the sci fi vision of if you like about AI and warfare and drones and which we're, which to some extent we're heading to. And you're starting to see some of that autonomous weapon systems being used in places including in Ukraine and Russia. But this is slightly different. It's AI assisting a remote controlled weapon rather than if you like, an autonomous weapon which fires by itself. So it's very, it's not quite the killer robots idea. And so there with the gun in place, controlled, remotely hidden in the pickup truck. Let's take a break and when we come back it's going to be the 27th of November 2020. An otherwise pleasant afternoon on Imam Khomeini Boulevard, that is the street name outside this lovely country town of Absad. And we'll see what happens with this operation to target Mohsen Fakhrizade. Welcome back. It's dawn on Friday 27th November 2020. There's a blue gun laden Zamoyad pickup parked on the side of this road in the countryside. A car with a flat tyre is parked at a roundabout just before it. And Mohsen Fakhrizade is at the wheel of his car, a black Nissan. He's driving and his wife is in the passenger seat.

[David McCloskey]

They're on the road late that morning. It's a convoy, we should point out, because as we mentioned, Gordon Fakhrizadeh of.

[Unnamed Host]

Course has a security detail with him at all times.

[David McCloskey]

The first car carries the security guys. The second car is Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and his wife in the family Nissan. And then there's two cars that have security men behind them. So it's a four car convoy. And what I think is quite wild is that later the Iranians will say they actually got wind that there might be a threat against Fakhrizadeh, but they didn't know when or where it would happen. Fakhrizadeh had nonetheless been warned against travel. One does wonder if in the years.

[Unnamed Host]

Since his friends and colleagues were targeted.

[David McCloskey]

By the Israelis, if he's getting a constant stream of threats all the time, many of which are quite vague, and he's just totally desensitized to them at this point.

[Gordon Carrera]

But I also love the detail. He's teaching a class in Tehran the next day. It goes back to his dual life as kind of, you know, secret commander of this nuclear weapons program and then under another identity, an academic. And he's due to be teaching. And he doesn't want to do it remotely.

[David McCloskey]

Right.

[Gordon Carrera]

He doesn't want to do it by zoom, which I've got to give him.

[David McCloskey]

Some respect for from a pedagogical standpoint.

[Gordon Carrera]

He wants to see his students in person.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, that's right.

[Gordon Carrera]

You could imagine this guy going, no, I don't. You know, I've had this warning, but I'm tired of these warnings. I've got to get to my class. And also I'm going to drive my car, you know, brushing it all off. But I guess that's, I guess that's him. And maybe he's just stubborn.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, I think there's some stubbornness here.

[Gordon Carrera]

Maybe complacent, I don't know, maybe a bit of that.

[David McCloskey]

He's also like a. I think he's probably a very stubborn kind of hard headed old guy who wants to drive his own car, who's probably getting 15 of these threat reports every year and nothing has come to pass in, you know, recent memory for him also, I mean, I think we shouldn't brush past the fact that dread of a zoom.

[Unnamed Host]

Call probably contributes to his death in.

[David McCloskey]

Some way because he did not want to teach the class remotely. Right. And he presumably could have, but I can also understand that as he doesn't want to do it.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

You know, he's got his own play and he wants to run it. So by 3:30 local time, the motorcade has arrived outside Absard. And here I think it is a little fascinating to speculate on what's actually going on in that car because he's just in there with his wife, I mean, listening to music, a podcast, a book on tape.

[Unnamed Host]

Are they arguing?

[David McCloskey]

Are they in a silent, you know, sort of just silent car ride, enjoying the scenery? We have absolutely no idea, but it's a very human moment. I mean, we've all been on road trips with, with, you know, friends, family, significant others.

[Gordon Carrera]

It's this idea. He likes to drive himself, I find quite interesting. You can imagine, without the bodyguards in the car, time with his wife. This is almost the closest he gets to relaxing, you know, as he's in the countryside and they're coming south down the road from the Caspian crosses over these beautiful mountain ranges. I think it's amazing scenery.

[Unnamed Host]

Yeah, it's beautiful.

[David McCloskey]

It's beautiful. And you can actually see some of.

[Unnamed Host]

These drives on, on YouTube.

[David McCloskey]

And it's very lovely countryside, mountains, rolling hills, orchards.

[Unnamed Host]

Quite lovely.

[David McCloskey]

So he's probably just taking in some.

[Unnamed Host]

Of the scenery, enjoying the drive, enjoying being out of the grind of Tehran.

[David McCloskey]

Traffic kind of on the, on the open road. And they come to this U turn where essentially Fakriz a day, in order to turn right onto Imam Khomeini Boulevard, which is this fateful road, they've got to go up kind of past Imam Khomeini Boulevard and hit a roundabout and kind of turn back around so they can actually make that right hand turn. And that is where that roundabout is, is where the Israelis have placed the car.

[Gordon Carrera]

The lookout.

[Unnamed Host]

The lookout car.

[David McCloskey]

Exactly. To. To confirm that it's Fakhrizide. So the convoy turns, something interesting happens. The lead car kind of jets off for the main house, which makes sense.

[Unnamed Host]

Because they want to go and check things out at their destination.

[David McCloskey]

Right. It would be logical that a foreign intelligence service like the Israelis would know where he was going and could have sprung a trap on him at the house. And so the lead car zooms out to go and look. Now what is terrible about this from a security standpoint for Mohsin Fakhrizadeh is that he's now fully exposed because he's driving the lead car.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

Of the convoy by himself with his wife. Right. So there's no security in There. And Mossad might even be a little bit shocked by that, because that makes their job a lot easier. Now, Mossad has placed that blue Zamyat with the robotic gun in it about 500 meters south of the junction. So he's going to turn off on Imam Khomeini Boulevard. The Zam yet is parked about 500.

[Unnamed Host]

Meters south of that.

[David McCloskey]

Now, this shows, I think, the amazingly granular detail of the intelligence that the Israelis have, because you can actually see them on the satellite imagery. There are speed bumps on Imam Khomeini Boulevard. And so the whole convoy has to slow down for the speed bump right before it reaches the pickup.

[Unnamed Host]

And so they placed this pickup, Mossad.

[David McCloskey]

Has placed this pickup very intentionally to.

[Unnamed Host]

Make the shooter's job easier.

[David McCloskey]

So he's not going to hit a car going 30, 40 miles an hour. He's going to hit a car that's almost stopped, or is it sort of a, you know, a rolling stop? And we're told it's going to, you know, comes up to that speed bump, it slows down. And we're told in the Ronin Bergman Farnas Fasihi account in the New York Times that, quote, a stray dog began crossing the road, which I assume wasn't.

[Gordon Carrera]

A Mossad dog, which I assume was.

[David McCloskey]

Not a Mossad dog.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

And I think is indicative of the sourcing that these journalists had for this piece, because that's probably coming from somebody who actually watched the video in real time or later. Now, the machine gun fires. So it hits the front of the car, kind of. Right. Maybe on the top part of the hood before the windshield.

[Unnamed Host]

The account isn't clear here, but I.

[David McCloskey]

Think it suggests that in this initial volley, Vachrisade perhaps was not hit. Now, the car swerves, comes to a stop.

[Unnamed Host]

The shooter in Israel.

[David McCloskey]

And by the way, we've got no idea who this person is, but he makes an adjustment and they fire again, hit the windshield maybe three times. And here they hit Fakhrizade once in the shoulder. And how do they know it's the shoulder? Well, you might hold it a bit. Maybe they had a look at the tape afterward. But in any case, Pakrizade slumps out.

[Unnamed Host]

Of the car and crouches behind the door.

[David McCloskey]

Now, he's probably confused as to what's going on here. Yeah, where the bullets are, where's the shooter? Right. The Iranians will claim that three more bullets hit him. He falls dead on the road. Now, Mrs. Fakrizide is in the car. She's unhurt, at least bodily. Even though she's about to 10 inches away and not a single one of the assassins is in the country.

[Gordon Carrera]

What's remarkable is the ability to move that gun because he comes out of the car, it looks like, and it's, you know, they are able to move the gun, point it to him and shoot him and kill him and not hurt his wife. I mean, it's remarkable how accurate that is given that it's all done remotely. So at this point, the operation looks remarkably successful from an Israeli point of view. One bit does go wrong though, doesn't it, because they'd wired up the robot gun to blow up and to destroy the evidence. But it looks like that didn't quite work. After it's done its job, obviously the.

[David McCloskey]

Israelis would prefer that the Iranians have very little to really peek through or exploit afterward. And they have rigged up the Zamoyad and the gun with explosives. But whether it was the quantity of.

[Unnamed Host]

Explosives or their positioning or something else.

[David McCloskey]

What they do is instead of destroying the gun explosives, launch it skyward, but intact mostly.

[Unnamed Host]

And the Iranians are later able to.

[David McCloskey]

Piece together what's happened, and they come to the conclusion that 15 bullets were fired out of this gun and the whole thing took less than a minute. I mean, it is amazing, extraordinary.

[Gordon Carrera]

So I remember this as a journalist being called by the news desk on the day it happened. And it was fascinating because it was clear that he'd been killed and that something dramatic had happened. But there were really conflicting reports about what it was. There was lots of talk about a shootout. And I think the assumption from a lot of people was that a team of gunmen had ambushed the vehicle, had shot him, and then escaped. And that was definitely the view, that there was a group of 12 shooters and 50 support personnel. There had been a gun battle, he'd been dragged from the car. These were some of the stories that came out at that point. And then soon after you started to hear this talk about a robotic machine gun being used in the aftermath, I think it took a few weeks. And I remember people actually dismissed it at first.

[David McCloskey]

Oh, just laughed at it.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, they laughed at it because people said, well, that's absurd, that's science fiction. And also they were saying, well, this is the Iranians trying to justify what was clearly a huge security lapse in allowing their top nuclear scientists to be killed. So they were coming up in response with some wild idea about robotic machine guns to cover up the fact that a group of gunmen had got in and managed to kill him and then escape, but actually it appears that was the truth of what happened. And it was a remarkable fact which took some time to emerge and which I think people just didn't believe at first because it just seemed too much. Well.

[David McCloskey]

And Fakhrizade is given a full martyr's funeral. The coffin was draped in the Iranian flag. It's carried by an honor guard on.

[Unnamed Host]

A pilgrimage of sorts to shrines in com and Tehran.

[David McCloskey]

It ends in a big state funeral. Now this is Covid times. And so everyone is wearing masks in.

[Unnamed Host]

The videos of the funeral.

[David McCloskey]

You can tell by the chair placement it's a socially distanced funeral. The chairs are six feet apart. And the Iranians, despite this incredible security failure, you know, they sort of lionize Fakhrizadeh, they print his mug and put it on posters and they say, we.

[Unnamed Host]

Will chase the criminals to the end.

[David McCloskey]

And Mohsin, fuck for you. Zday is buried and put to rest. So I think, Gordon, there's. There's so many different ways we could talk about what all of this means. I think one of them which is very striking to me is that there.

[Unnamed Host]

Can be a tendency to talk about.

[David McCloskey]

AI, facial recognition, autonomous weaponry as the.

[Unnamed Host]

Future, but in reality it's kind of the past.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, this was.

[Unnamed Host]

We're talking about a killing that happened five years ago.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

And it makes you think that science fiction like this is really. I mean, it's here.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, we're starting to see it. As we said, this was kind of AI enabled remote weaponry.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Host]

And not autonomous.

[David McCloskey]

Not autonomous. Autonomous out there. But you're. It's not at all. But.

[Gordon Carrera]

But I think what's interesting is if you just took that on one step and you said, well, what if the cameras, the two sets of cameras in the observation car and in the shooting pickup had had facial recognition software which were designed to automatically work out and do facial recognition on who was sat at which point in which car and then shoot the gun based on spotting it. Yeah, that is technically feasible. So in that sense you could see the technology to make a weapon system like that actually fully autonomous, just using facial recognition rather than having a human remotely authorize it and physically pull the trigger. So technically it's possible to move that on to remote controlled and autonomous. And you are starting to see that being used. I mean, there's a lot of interesting kind of work around this autonomy of weapons, particularly with drones. And that's the main way we think about it. And you see it with, with some of those drones which are being used in the Russia, Ukraine conflict to target people and where there's elements of AI now, we haven't quite got to that fully autonomous killer robots world yet, but I don't think it's that far away. And I think this shows us the way it might be used for very targeted operations against individuals. I think in many ways it's quite a terrifying future. You know, if someone can launch a drone or have a killer robot hidden somewhere and just wait for someone to pass who a facial recognition software says, yep, that's the target or the type of target.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah.

[Gordon Carrera]

And based on a certain signature or facial recognition, you know, launch the drone, drop the bomb, fire the machine gun. I mean, this is the future, if not of warfare, of covert operations, I think, by intelligence agencies.

[David McCloskey]

It's interesting. It did make me think of the mass production of kind of first person.

[Unnamed Host]

View FPV drones that we're seeing now in the Russia, Ukraine conflict.

[David McCloskey]

How cheap they are and how effective they are at killing from just an.

[Unnamed Host]

Efficiency standpoint, well beyond what you would.

[David McCloskey]

See from kind of dumb munitions or artillery. And we are not far from, in fact, probably already in a world where you can merge really cheap drone technology with really cheap facial recognition technology and have something that could be used in a really terrifying way in our societies.

[Unnamed Host]

In the west too, that are not in war zones.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, the issue with the Fakhris a day killing and what made it so labor intensive was the legwork required to smuggle all of this stuff in into Iran, put it together there.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

And. And probably to develop the intelligence picture in the first place.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, to get a hard, well protected target.

[David McCloskey]

Right, exactly. Exactly. And I think that kind of work across massive kind of distance will continue.

[Unnamed Host]

To be really labor intensive.

[David McCloskey]

Right. Especially if you're trying to limit collateral damage. But if you're not concerned with limiting collateral damage and you're going after targets.

[Unnamed Host]

That are not all that far away, the implications of it get really spooky really quickly.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah. And some people do worry that the remoteness of being able to kill people also makes it easier to pull the trigger, if you like. I mean, I remember going to visit Creech Air Force Base in Nevada in the US where at that point the RAF was flying Reaper drones. So this was the Brits operating Reaper drones over Afghanistan and where they were starting, just as I was there to start to use them to drop bombs as well as to kind of carry out some ends. I remember asking one of the operators, doesn't it feel like a video game? And they got very offended with me. And I can understand why, because in their view, they are in combat. They are involved in potentially killing people. And yet the distance of the fact that they would then go back to their homes in Las Vegas at the end of the day, where they were saying the disconnect between those two realities of being able to kill people at a distance remotely in that way, or at the next stage, perhaps even just programming it and not even having to pull the trigger yourself, it does raise quite complicated issues about how. How warfare is changing and whether that makes it, if you like, too easy to kill people at a distance because you're not seeing them eye to eye, but equally, you're not putting your own people at risk.

[Unnamed Host]

Right.

[Gordon Carrera]

Which is why people want to do it. It's why the Israelis did it in this case, and why people use drones rather than manpower, planes in some cases to drop munitions in other situations. So it is an interesting one ethically. I think also the ethics and the efficacy of targeting these scientists and these nuclear scientists is another interesting one. A, is it right? And B, does it work? Those are the questions about it.

[David McCloskey]

Yeah, let's take the efficacy point first. I mean, did the assassination slow the nuclear program?

[Unnamed Host]

Or did.

[David McCloskey]

Did this whole set of targeted killings going back almost 20 years now, has it. Has it had a material impact on Iran's race toward a bomb? I mean, that is, I think, probably an impossible question to answer because we can't know. It's a. You know, the counterfactual is, well, if you hadn't killed any of these people.

[Unnamed Host]

Would the Iranians, Would they be three years ahead?

[David McCloskey]

Would they be five years ahead? It's almost impossible to say. I think we can say, though, that the Iranians at this point have never been closer to a breakout capability.

[Unnamed Host]

Right.

[David McCloskey]

So it's possible that these killings have slowed the program.

[Unnamed Host]

They certainly have not stopped it.

[David McCloskey]

And I think you have to say, though, that you have to say it's almost. It's just. It's an impossible counterfactual to answer, really. I mean, but it's.

[Unnamed Host]

I think it's possible they've slowed the program down.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

Ronan Bergman's book on targeted killings, I mean, he basically makes the point after hundreds and hundreds of pages of going through these operations that the Israelis have had a really hard time connecting these targeted killings to broader kind of political or strategic outcomes.

[Unnamed Host]

Right.

[David McCloskey]

And I think you have to say in this case that the whole suite of pressure measures that the Israelis have taken has not stopped the Iranians from pursuing a bomb.

[Unnamed Host]

And why would it?

[David McCloskey]

Right.

[Unnamed Host]

It has not changed the Strategic calculation.

[David McCloskey]

For the Iranians to go after a weapon.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think it hasn't changed their desire to do it. Certainly some individuals can play an important role, but often, almost always, they are replaceable or have passed on their knowledge or information. And so taking them out of the picture does not stop the program. I think it's very rare where you have one individual who, by removing them, would stop it. I mean, if you think, you know, if you go back to the Oppenheimer comparison, I mean, if somehow, I don't know, the Japanese or the Germans in World War II had got to Oppenheimer, I don't think it would have stopped the Manhattan Project. There were too many people, too many things already set in train. Too much of the knowledge had been dispersed. So I'm not sure that it makes a strategic difference. You can buy a bit of time. And I think that is the only point where I think it is interesting to think, well, ultimately, this is not about changing the strategic calculus. All it is doing is buying perhaps some time. And in that time, the question is, what else can you do? Can you come up with diplomatic solutions? Can you find out with some other ways of changing the calculus about Iran, or if it is simply about avoiding a military strike? And I do take that point from inside Mossad and back to Mayor Degan thinking, actually, I'm doing what looks like a very aggressive action, but I'm actually doing it to stop a war because otherwise my Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may do something actually quite crazy, which may have very detrimental consequences. You know, these are the quite complex equations I think people are making in this situation.

[David McCloskey]

You're right. I mean, there's. There's a whole bunch of complex strategic and operational and ethical questions to this. There's also, at the root of it, something exceedingly simple. So Bergman's book is titled Rise and Kill first, and it got that title because as he was interviewing people in.

[Unnamed Host]

Mossad who were involved in these operations.

[David McCloskey]

He kept getting quotes from, of all places, the Babylonian Talmud, when they were having conversations about sort of the justification for these operations. And the piece of scripture was, whoever comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first. So there is a very simple, I think, perspective here inside the Mossad as well, which is the Iranians are trying to build the capability to destroy us. We are justified as a result of that in going and killing people who are involved in, you know, threatening us. It's kind of not more complicated than that in some respects, but I Suppose.

[Gordon Carrera]

My question is, does it actually serve your country's interest and your national interests in the long run compared to a policy which might try and put a different strategic or diplomatic lid on the Iranian nuclear program? If this becomes a substitute for a. A policy which might actually be able to restrain Iran, then I, I kind of question it.

[David McCloskey]

I think the assumption is that it's not realistic, that there's not a path toward, you know, a sort of better way of interacting with, well, with the Islamic republic. Right. I mean, I think that's the assumption. Right. You'd have to say, look, the assumption.

[Gordon Carrera]

From the hawkish quarters. But I guess there was a lid on the Iranian nuclear program for a few years with a deal. So I don't think it's impossible. I don't think the Iranians are crazy enough not to look at the possibilities of deals and are not to be subject to other incentives. I think it's an interesting question. I guess in some ways we may find out some of the answers this year as to how Iran and Israel play out that calculation about whether to go for the bomb or whether to attack Iran if you're Israel. Because I think all the signs are in the next few months this issue may come to a head, and it may come to a head in terms of military action or in terms of a deal, but who knows which, David? I guess we'll have to wait and see.

[David McCloskey]

So maybe there, Gordon, with really thorny issues of ethics and efficacy, maybe totally unresolved, let's. Let's end it and end our exploration into the life and times and death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and our journey into the shadow war between Israel and Iran.

[Gordon Carrera]

So see you on Monday.