A senior Iranian intelligence official, Hossein Taeb, was removed from his position after countless failures due to Israeli intelligence infiltration, the New York Times reports. Taeb served as the director of intelligence for Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) for more than a decade, supporting the Iran regime in its domestic repression and in military aggression abroad. Once seen as “untouchable,” he was brought down by multiple mishaps and defeats, such as the assassinations of Iranian officials and attacks on nuclear sites thought to be at the hands of Israeli intelligence. On Monday, a cyberattack on Iranian steel factories supplying the Iranian military disrupted production. The group of hackers who claimed responsibility for the attack are connected to Israel, according to U.S. officials.
The Times notes:
Keren Hajioff, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of Israel, said in an interview that the strategy targeting Iran was part of Mr. Bennett’s “octopus” doctrine.
“This doctrine is a strategic shift from the past, when Israel focused on Iran’s proxy ‘tentacles’ across the region, in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza,” she said. The new tactic, she added, was “a paradigm shift: Now we go straight for the head.”
The final failure leading to Taeb’s downfall was “a botched Iranian effort to target Israeli citizens in Turkey, which caused an embarrassing diplomatic crisis with Ankara, a regional ally of Tehran.” Turkish and Israeli intelligence thwarted this Iranian plot against the former Israeli ambassador and several Israeli tourists. Although the Iranian regime denied involvement in the plot, the previous Turkish foreign minister and incoming prime minister slammed Iran, saying that the regime “is behind these attempted terrorist attacks. . . . We are not only talking about the murder of innocent Israeli tourists, but also a clear violation of Turkish sovereignty by Iranian terror” — in other words, not only an Iranian intelligence failure but a major diplomatic offense.