Middle East Shadow War: How Israel Crippled Iran’s Nuclear Brain Trust

[Social Media]

 

Shadow War: How Israel Crippled Iran’s Nuclear Brain Trust

 

In a string of precisely coordinated attacks, Israel has dealt a major blow to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, targeting the scientists behind its most sensitive work. In what was internally dubbed “Operation Narnia,” Israeli operatives launched a pre-dawn assault on June 13 that killed nine top Iranian nuclear scientists in near-simultaneous strikes. The victims were long-time veterans of Tehran’s secret nuclear program, and the aim, according to sources familiar with the operation, was to eliminate them before they could disappear underground.

 

 

The attacks culminated a 15-year Israeli campaign to erode Iran’s nuclear capabilities by surgically removing its most valuable human assets—scientists with decades of technical experience. Just eleven days later, hours before a U.S. and Qatar-brokered ceasefire came into effect, another strike in northern Iran killed Sayyed Seddighi Saber, a scientist who had been sanctioned by the U.S. weeks earlier for nuclear weapons-related activities.

 

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed these killings have set Iran’s nuclear program back by years. While assessments of the physical damage to nuclear infrastructure are ongoing, experts and former officials agree that eliminating this caliber of talent—those with hands-on knowledge of warhead components like detonation systems and neutron triggers—has a more immediate and profound effect. “It’s one thing to lose that expertise slowly over time,” said Eric Brewer, former U.S. national security director for counterproliferation. “But if you’re in the middle of trying to build a bomb or if you see that as a potential near-term option, then it’s going to have a bigger impact.”

 

 

Although Iran insists its nuclear ambitions are peaceful, the United Nations’ atomic agency has confirmed that Iran maintained a weapons-related program, the AMAD project, until 2003. Since then, Western intelligence believes Iran’s nuclear weapons development has continued in fragmented form, largely through computer modeling and research designed to appear conventional.

 

 

In the wake of the June 13 attacks, Israel also deployed a drone to kill another unnamed scientist in Tehran, supposedly hidden in a secure location. Israel additionally claimed responsibility for striking the headquarters of SPND—the AMAD project’s successor. These were the first direct killings of Iranian nuclear scientists since 2020, when Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated using a remote-controlled weapon. Between 2010 and 2020, five other scientists were killed under circumstances widely attributed to Israel, though never officially acknowledged.

 

Among those reportedly targeted was Fereydoon Abbasi-Devani, former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization and a central figure in Iran’s nuclear weapons efforts. “If they tell me to build a bomb, I will build it,” he declared recently on Iranian television. Abbasi-Devani survived an assassination attempt in 2010. Another target was Mohammad Mehdi Teranchi, a U.S.-sanctioned scientist who led high explosives research under Fakhrizadeh and later taught at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University—a hub for nuclear talent.

 

Sayyed Seddighi Saber, the final known victim, headed the Shahid Karimi Group, a unit under SPND responsible for explosives research. “Seddighi Saber is linked to projects including research and testing applicable to the development of nuclear explosive devices,” the U.S. Treasury Department said in its May 12 sanctions.

 

Andrea Stricker of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies said Israel’s campaign had removed the “brain trust” of Iran’s nuclear program. “It dealt a blow to Iran’s ability to draw on people who have past and possibly ongoing experience in constructing specific components of nuclear weapons.”

Yet others caution that Iran has invested heavily in preserving and transferring this knowledge.

 

It has developed a distributed, resilient network of universities and institutions—including Shahid Beheshti, Sharif University of Technology, and Malek Ashtar University—where senior scientists mentor younger protégés. Israeli security analyst Ronen Solomon noted that two scientists killed on June 13, Ahmadreza Zolfaghari and Abdulhamid Minouchehr, had just published advanced modeling work on neutron sources—a key part of triggering nuclear chain reactions.

 

“There are the professors, and they are teaching the younger scientists… to enter the heart of the Iranian nuclear program,” Solomon said.

While Israel’s strikes may have decapitated the current leadership of Iran’s weapons program, the infrastructure to train replacements appears intact. Whether that next generation can fully replace what was lost remains an open and critical question.

 

Related Topics:

Iran Acknowledges Major Damage to Nuclear Facilities Amid Strained Diplomacy

IAEA Chief Confirms Devastating Blow to Iranian Nuclear Facility Following U.S. Strike

After the Bombing: IAEA Chief Calls for Urgent Diplomacy with Iran Amid Nuclear Uncertainty

 

  Adapted by ASEAN Now from WSJ  2025-07-01

 

 

[Srikcir]

On 7/1/2025 at 4:02 AM, Social Media said:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed these killings have set Iran’s nuclear program back by years.

Pre-nuclear Pakistan and North Korea overcame such limitation to become nuclear armed nations. Now with nuclear-armed Russia and North Korea as supporters of Iran, might their nuclear expertise be shared with Iran, albeit have allegedly offered nuclear weapons to Iran for nuclear parity with Israel?

Ironically, by US's declaration of war against Iran by its direct attack against Iran, it may have lost any negotiation role to achieve Iran's denuclearization ambitions to China! 

• "China’s Five-Point Proposition on the Iranian Nuclear Issue", https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/wjbzhd/202503/t20250314_11575919.html

 

[Eric Loh]

 

On 7/1/2025 at 4:02 AM, Social Media said:

In a string of precisely coordinated attacks, Israel has dealt a major blow to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, targeting the scientists behind its most sensitive work. In what was internally dubbed “Operation Narnia,” Israeli operatives launched a pre-dawn assault on June 13 that killed nine top Iranian nuclear scientists in near-simultaneous strikes. 

Israel can blow up Iran's nuclear sites and killed many nuclear scientists but they will not blow up or kill minds and ambitions. The attacks may even hardened their resolve to strive for their nuclear deterrent. The only possible path is have middle-east become a Middle-East weapons of mass destruction-free zone (MEWMDFZ) and all the countries signed the non proliferation treaty and open their respective country for IEAE inspection.