Assassination strikes in Tehran and Beirut reveal a strategic Israeli dependency on CIA intelligence rather than self-touted operational savvy.

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As the Israeli military’s media apparatus crows about the February 2026 assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and several family members, as a purely Israeli intelligence triumph, the operational reality on the ground tells a far more complex story.

The series of high-profile “decapitation” strikes that also decimated the leadership of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah in 2025 and 2024, respectively, are increasingly viewed by military analysts not as the long arm of the Mossad, but as the result of a massive and pervasive United States technological umbrella as well as profound internal decay within Tehran’s security apparatus.