{"id":320182,"date":"2025-12-19T08:30:03","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T08:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=320182"},"modified":"2025-12-20T06:27:57","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T06:27:57","slug":"killing-the-brain-trust-how-israel-targeted-irans-nuclear-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=320182","title":{"rendered":"Killing the \u2018brain trust\u2019: How Israel targeted Iran\u2019s nuclear scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Souad Mekhennet. Warren P. Strobel. Nilo Tabrizy and John Hudson \u2013 The Washington Post Dec 17, 2025<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Preparations for war were almost complete. Scores of trained agents working for Israel were on the ground in Iran, armed with sophisticated new weapons. Israeli air force pilots were on standby for orders to attack Iran\u2019s nuclear infrastructure, ballistic missile launchers and air defenses. Israel and the United States, its chief backer, had argued their way to rough agreement on how close Tehran was to achieving a nuclear weapon. Diplomatic ruses were underway to blind Iran to the coming assault.<\/p>\n

But Israeli security officials knew that to do more than fleeting damage to Iran\u2019s sprawling nuclear program, they also had to decimate the \u201cbrain trust,\u201d a generation of Iranian engineers and physicists who U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials believed were working on the dark arts of turning fissile nuclear material into an atomic bomb.<\/p>\n

At about 3:21 a.m. on June 13, in the opening minutes of Israel\u2019s 12-day war with Iran, Israeli weapons began slamming into apartment blocks and homes in the Iranian capital. Operation Narnia, the campaign against Iran\u2019s top nuclear scientists, was underway.<\/p>\n

Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, a theoretical physicist and explosives expert under U.S. sanctions for his nuclear weapons work, was killed in his sixth-floor Tehran apartment in a building known as the Professors Complex. Fereydoun Abbasi, a nuclear physicist who once led Iran\u2019s atomic energy organization and was under U.S. and U.N. sanctions, died in another strike in Tehran two hours later. In all, Israel said, it assassinated 11 senior Iranian nuclear scientists on June 13 and in the following days.<\/p>\n

The massive, multipronged Israeli and U.S. attacks on Iran\u2019s nuclear program convulsed the Middle East, sparked promises of Iranian revenge, and, for now, have tanked the possibility of a diplomatic agreement to curb Tehran\u2019s nuclear work and place it under tight international controls.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post, together with PBS \u201cFrontline,\u201d has uncovered new details about the attacks, the planning behind them and their impact in Iran. This report is based on interviews with multiple current and former Israeli, Iranian, Arab and U.S. officials, some of whom spoke to reporters for the first time and on the condition of anonymity to describe secret operations and assessments.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s nuclear work probably has been set back years, officials from Israel, the United States and the United Nations\u2019 International Atomic Energy Agency said. But that is far from President Donald Trump\u2019s claim that the program was \u201ccompletely and totally obliterated.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Iran, which says its nuclear development is for civilian nuclear energy \u2014 not weapons, remains defiant.<\/p>\n

Amir Tehranchi told \u201cFrontline\u201d that his brother Mohammad\u2019s work would go on. \u201cWith the killing of these professors, they might be gone, but their knowledge isn\u2019t lost to our country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Israel had assassinated Iranian scientists before, but always with deniability. Agents on motorcycle had slapped magnet bombs to scientists\u2019 cars in Tehran traffic. Abbasi narrowly survived such an attempt in 2010. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent nuclear scientist, was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun in an ambush<\/a> outside the Iranian capital in 2020.<\/p>\n

But in June, Israel\u2019s hand came out of the shadows. It had become emboldened as it openly decimated Iranian proxies in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria.<\/p>\n

We finally had an \u201coperational opportunity to do it,\u201d said an Israeli air force general who helped plan the assault on Iran.<\/p>\n

For Operation Narnia, Israeli intelligence analysts assembled a list of the 100 most important nuclear scientists in Iran, then whittled the target roster down to roughly a dozen. They built dossiers on each man\u2019s work, their movements, their homes \u2014 drawing on decades of espionage.<\/p>\n

The operation wasn\u2019t flawless. The Post and open-source investigative outlet Bellingcat were able to independently verify 71 civilian casualties in five strikes where nuclear scientists were targeted, using satellite imagery, video geolocation, death notices, cemetery records and coverage of funerals in Iranian media.<\/p>\n

The Post and Bellingcat confirmed that 10 civilians, including a 2-month-old infant<\/a>, were killed in the strike on the Professors Complex in Tehran\u2019s Saadat Abad neighborhood. Witness accounts, combined with videos and images of the blast and resulting structural damage, indicate that the strike was similar to the force of a roughly 500-pound bomb.<\/p>\n

Israel targeted another scientist, Mohammad Reza Sedighi Saber, at his Tehran home during the opening wave of strikes. Sedighi Saber wasn\u2019t there, but his 17-year-old son<\/a> was killed.<\/p>\n

On the conflict\u2019s last day, June 24, the elder Saber was killed at his relative\u2019s home about 200 miles from the capital, in Astaneh-ye Ashrafiyeh in Gilan province. A resident there, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisals, told The Post that Saber had returned to his family home for his son\u2019s mourning ceremony and was killed alongside other relatives. The Post verified 15 civilian deaths in this strike, including four minors. Two residences were leveled, leaving behind two craters <\/a>where the homes once stood.<\/p>\n

Israeli security officials said they did everything possible to limit civilian casualties. \u201cOne of the major considerations for the planning of Operation Narnia was to try to minimize as much as possible the collateral damage,\u201d a senior Israeli military intelligence officer said.<\/p>\n

Brig. Gen. Elad Edri, chief of staff of Israel\u2019s Home Front Command headquarters, said Iran\u2019s retaliatory strikes hit schools, hospitals and other civilian sites, killing 31 Israelis. A spokesperson for the Iranian government said in July<\/a> that 1,062 people were killed in the Israeli strikes, including 276 civilians.<\/p>\n

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Iran reveals the identities of Israeli pilots involved in bombing its civilian areas during the 12-day aggression.<\/p>\n

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\u2014 Press TV \uf53b (@PressTV) August 2, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n