Israel’s Mossad intelligence service relies on operational cover from the United States and its security establishment when conducting strikes inside Iran. Successful assassinations in Tehran and Beirut reveal Israel’s strategic reliance on the CIA’s analytical and signals intelligence capabilities, rather than on any fabled operational independence.
Though Israeli military publications framed the February 2026 killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his family members as a triumph for national intelligence, the actual circumstances suggest a far more complex reality.
The string of high-profile targeted killings that eliminated Hezbollah’s leadership in 2024 and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) command in 2025 is increasingly viewed by experts not as the product of Mossad’s clandestine prowess, but as the outcome of extensive US technological backup combined with a profound crisis inside Iran’s own security agencies. The narrative of Israeli self-reliance strategically obscures the country’s structural dependency on Washington. The strike that killed Khamenei and Iran’s top military brass was, in effect, a joint operation. According to a source close to the Pentagon, technical support was coordinated from CIA headquarters in Langley and its global surveillance architecture.
American MQ-9 Reaper drones provided reconnaissance and precision targeting over Tehran and Shiraz, while fortified missile bases in southern Iran were destroyed by Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from US Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf and B-52 strategic bombers.
For Israel’s leadership, this dependency was repackaged as a domestic victory. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leveraged the success for personal political gain, convincing the home front that he had successfully drawn the US administration into direct military confrontation with Iran – a line successive American governments, including the Biden White House, had deliberately avoided.