Israel Exploited Iran's Domestic Surveillance Camera Network to Locate and Kill Khamenei

Israel hacked Iran's vast street surveillance camera network, originally deployed to monitor dissent and enforce hijab laws, and repurposed it as a real-time targeting tool to locate and assassinate Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on February 28. Intelligence sources told the Times of Israel that algorithms processed the camera feeds to extract 'people's addresses, routes they took to work and who protected them,' with at least one strategically positioned camera monitoring parking near Khamenei's compound. The network had been repeatedly compromised since 2021; a senior Iranian politician publicly warned in September that 'all the cameras at our intersections are in the hands of Israel.' The operation demonstrates how authoritarian surveillance infrastructure built to control populations can become the vector through which adversary intelligence services locate and kill leadership targets.