How Mossad Smuggled Drone Parts to Strike Iran From Within

By the time Israel's advanced F-35 jet fighters swooped in to attack Iran's nuclear facilities and military leadership, a lower-tech threat had already crossed the border and was in position to clear the way.

- Dov Lieber & Andrew Dowell

Israel had spent months smuggling in parts for hundreds of quad-copter drones rigged with explosives—in suitcases, trucks, and shipping containers—as well as munitions that could be fired from unmanned platforms, people familiar with the operation said.

Small teams armed with the equipment set up near Iran's air-defense emplacements and missile launch sites, the people said. When Israel's attack began, some of the teams took out air defenses, while others hit missile launchers as they rolled out of their shelters and set up to fire, one of the people said.

The operation helps explain the limited nature of Iran's response thus far to Israel's attacks. It also offers further evidence of how off-the-shelf technology is changing the battlefield and creating dangerous new security challenges for governments.

The exploit came just weeks after Ukraine deployed similar tactics, using drones smuggled into Russia in the roofs of shipping containers to attack dozens of warplanes used by Moscow to attack Ukrainian cities.

The intelligence operations showed how attackers are using creativity and low-cost drones to get past sophisticated air-defense systems to destroy valuable targets in ways that are hard to stop.

The operation by Israel's spy agency, Mossad, was aimed at taking out threats to Israeli warplanes and knocking out missiles before they could be fired at cities.

The teams on the ground hit dozens of missiles before they could be launched in the early hours of the attack, one of the people said.