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Unnamed Host
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David McCloskey
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Unnamed Host
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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.
Podcast Summary: The Rest Is Classified – Episode 57: Why Israel Attacked Iran
Release Date: June 18, 2025
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).
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Notable Quotes
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.