On July 24, Iran’s Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib was asked about the achievements during his tenure since 2021. He pointed to Iran’s most immediate security problem, repeated operations by Israel on Iranian soil and its assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientists, and claimed he had solved it.
“With the grace of God, Mossad’s network and its accesses and capabilities have been destroyed,” Mr Khatib said.
These comments haven't aged well. Exactly a week later, one of the most high profile assassinations yet
conducted on Iranian soil took place. An operation widely attributed to Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Palestinian militia Hamas. Haniyeh was a special guest of Tehran, in town to attend the inauguration of Iran’s new President, Masoud Pezeshkian.
A war of narratives has since emerged over the details of Haniyeh’s assassination. According to the New York Times, based on speaking to several sources in the region, Haniyeh was killed by a bomb planted in his residence months ago, suggesting a deep penetration of Iran’s security infrastructure. Refuting the story, Iran and Hamas maintain that a projectile was fired at the compound hosting Haniyeh and are using this to justify a military response to Israel.
But even if Iran’s story is true, it doesn’t make it any less of a security-intelligence failure. How did the Israelis know the room where Haniyeh was staying, leading them to such an accurate assassination?
This failure becomes more evident when we consider the vast extent of Israeli operations on Iranian soil. At least five nuclear scientists have been killed in Iran in recent years, with the most recent and dramatic example being Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in 2020, a key figure in Iran’s nuclear programme. In 2018, Israel was able to get away with stealing Iran’s nuclear archive and in 2022 and 2023, it captured, interrogated and then released Iranian security personnel on Iranian soil.
With such a poor track record, the Iranian authorities must be aware of the dire straits they are in. Some have complained loudly about this situation.
In 2020, in response to Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, Hossein Dehqan, a former defence minister and later a military adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, admitted to the “gaps in our intelligence and security” and asked the authorities to figure out how they could be filled.
In 2021, former intelligence minister Ali Younesi claimed that Israel had infiltrated the country so thoroughly that all Iranian officials should fear for their lives.
A tougher assessment came from former MP and nuclear scientist Fereydon Abbasi who knows a thing or two about the topic since he survived an attempt on his life in 2011. Speaking in 2018, when he chaired the parliament’s energy committee, Mr Abbasi said Iran's intelligence authorities had learnt little from the attack on his life and had taken few security precautions to prevent other attacks in the future. Events prove him right.
In response to Haniyeh’s assassination, many voices are louder in their calling for a security reckoning.
In fact, there is currently something of a bifurcation in Iranian establishment responses: hardliners are calling for a “blood revenge” and a robust and direct attack on Israel, while reformists and many centrists warn Iran about walking into Israel’s trap by starting an all-out war. The latter believe Iran’s first response should be to put its own security in order.
The Iranian Reformist Front, for instance, condemned Israel for the assassination and said it was “deserving of global punishment.” But it also called on Iran to “immediately fill the security gaps existing in the country” and added that it must “not fall into the trap of the right-wing Israeli government which wants to pull Iran into a direct war, in line with the long-term interests of Israel and the US.”
The argument also has important implications for domestic policy. Critics of Iran’s repression of women and civil society make a rhetorical point: Aren’t Iranian security authorities failing because they are going after Iranian activists and youth instead of focusing on actual security threats?
Furthermore, even some of those generally supportive of a military response by Iran on Israel have attacked Iran’s harsh enforcement of a mandatory hijab policy for women as hurting the country by adding to its social turmoil. One went as far as claiming that Iran’s threats emerged from two main sources: Israel with its “campaign of violence” and the “domestic extremists” with their harsh enforcement of hijab.
Others are looking at some peculiarities of Iran’s intelligence apparatus. For instance, by law, Iran’s intelligence minister must be a cleric with the rank of Mojtahed. This rule was made in 1984, when the ministry was founded, based on the idea that an official in charge of sensitive security matters must also have religious authority. Critics say this has hampered the country by reserving a key security post to clerics who may not have the requisite credentials.
Hours after Haniyeh’s killing, Hesameddin Ashena, a key adviser to former centrist Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, publicly called for a change in this rule.
As a former security official himself, who once served under his father-in-law, intelligence minister Qorbanali Dorri Najafabadi, Mr Ashena brings an insider perspective to the question.
But it’s not clear if the Iranian hardliners see the gravity of the moment. Instead of a serious reckoning with Iran’s woes, Hamshahri, an outlet controlled by Tehran’s hardliner mayor, Alireza Zakani, ran a long list of alleged security failures of the US including the 9/11 attacks. Others seem to reduce the Haniyeh assassination to his use of an iPhone, with some going as far as shifting the blame to the Palestinian delegation’s own security entourage.
But without a serious reckoning, no matter how many missiles Iran might lob at Israel, it will remain seriously vulnerable on its own soil.
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