Israel, CIA Shift to Human Intelligence to Track Iran’s New Supreme Leader

According to a report by Britain’s The Times, Israel’s foreign intelligence service—the Mossad—and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are jointly pursuing the location of Iran’s newly elevated Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. He assumed leadership following the death of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in an Israeli aerial strike on 28 February.

How Electronic Surveillance Failed

The report describes the effort to locate Mojtaba Khamenei as a classified operation neither officially discussed nor confirmed. It states that tracking him has become a top priority for both the Mossad and the CIA. The challenge confronting the world’s most advanced intelligence agencies lies in the fact that the target has vanished from view and severed all known communications: he has not used a mobile phone or opened a laptop for approximately 150 days.

The Times notes that Mojtaba Khamenei is believed to be sheltering inside a deep underground bunker, his face reportedly disfigured by injuries sustained during the same airstrike that killed his father. He allegedly avoids daylight exposure out of fear of detection by U.S. surveillance satellites.

In contrast to the operation that located his father, the report explains that Israel and the United States deployed every available cyber technique—including hacking traffic cameras across Tehran—to monitor vehicles used by senior aides and security personnel assigned to the former Supreme Leader. That effort, coordinated by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and Israel’s Unit 8200, successfully identified the precise location where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and top Iranian military and intelligence officials would be present on the day of the strike—resulting in their deaths.

A New Operational Reality

This time, however, the situation differs fundamentally. While questions remain about the strategic logic of targeting the new Supreme Leader amid evidence that Iran’s military establishment holds de facto control, the report affirms Mojtaba Khamenei retains a central role in the regime and in decisions regarding military action—even as he remains entirely out of sight.

His complete withdrawal from digital infrastructure has forced intelligence services to abandon high-tech surveillance in favor of what The Times terms “medieval” methods. Human intelligence—HUMINT—has now become the sole viable path to pinpointing his exact whereabouts.

The report identifies two possible locations: either within a subterranean tunnel network beneath Tehran or inside a military bunker near the religious city of Qom, located roughly 90 miles south of the capital. With cyber espionage proving ineffective, the Mossad has redirected its operational focus—leveraging its network of agents inside Iran, many of whom are Iranian nationals—toward answering two core questions: Is Mojtaba Khamenei alive, and where is he?

The Human Factor in Intelligence Gathering

Rami Eghra, a former head of a Mossad division, compared the current challenge to Israel’s failed efforts to locate hostages held in Gaza. “Israeli intelligence had total control over Gaza,” he said. “Every toilet was equipped with listening devices to track where hostages were being held—but we still couldn’t find them. There was excessive reliance on electronic technology and insufficient dependence on real people—on human intelligence.”

Eghra added that while Mojtaba Khamenei may not use a phone, he likely communicates through alternative means—such as handwritten notes—and employs multiple layers of couriers to transmit messages. These intermediaries, he stressed, are unaware of the content or significance of the material they carry—passing it only from one person to another. “If he is found, it will be because of a human element,” Eghra said. “But the regime in Tehran is fully aware of this risk.”

The Mossad’s current priority, according to the report, is identifying and monitoring those individuals who serve as message carriers to and from Mojtaba Khamenei. Eghra stated plainly: “The only real way to reach Mojtaba is to recruit someone who is in direct contact with him.” Yet he acknowledged the extreme difficulty of such recruitment, noting that Iran enforces rigorous security vetting for anyone close to the Supreme Leader—and that perhaps only two or three members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps know how to contact him directly.

The report also cites other potential avenues: tracking secondary figures via their mobile devices and intercepting conversations about Mojtaba Khamenei’s possible location. It quotes Eghra saying, “Iran is a country whose population suffers from financial hardship, and we have ways to offer online rewards for information.”

Deception, Doubles, and Voice Risks

Avner Afera, a former Mossad spokesman, pointed to another complicating factor: the use of lookalikes. “They’re using stand-ins—exactly as Saddam Hussein did,” he said. According to Afera, Mojtaba Khamenei moves between multiple sites and is fed by different individuals—none of whom can be certain whether they are serving the actual Supreme Leader or a decoy. “They return home at night believing they’ve tended to the Supreme Leader, when in most cases, they’ve merely cared for a double,” he explained.

Afera further noted that even without appearing publicly, Mojtaba Khamenei could issue directives to the Iranian public via audio recordings. Yet doing so carries significant risk: voice files can reveal forensic clues—including the type of recording device used and potentially the physical location where the audio was captured.

A senior former U.S. defense official told The Times: “Given the 28 February airstrike, I am absolutely certain Mojtaba is practicing far more stringent operational security—and as a result, human intelligence will be far more critical in locating him.” He expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of U.S. HUMINT capabilities in Iran, citing the country’s status as a restricted zone for American operatives for four decades. While Israeli HUMINT is assessed as markedly superior, the official emphasized it too faces inherent limitations.

The report concludes that should the Mossad and CIA succeed in determining Mojtaba Khamenei’s location, political leaders in both Washington and Jerusalem would then face the decision of how—or whether—to act upon that intelligence.