How Israel Hacked Traffic Cameras To Track Iran's Supreme Leader | Vantage with Palki Sharma

It was a quiet Saturday morning in Thran. Iran's Supreme Leader walked into

Thran. Iran's Supreme Leader walked into what was supposed to be another meeting and minutes later he was dead. Ayatah

Kame was killed in a joint strike by the US and Israel.

But you already know this. Our story

tonight is not the strike. Our story is the run-up to the strike and how it came about. It begins with surveillance.

about. It begins with surveillance.

Surveillance that went on for years.

This is according to a new report by the Financial Times. It talks about

Financial Times. It talks about surveillance so thorough that Israel knew Iran like the back of their hand.

We're not talking about a spying operation limited to a few officials. We

are talking about hacking a city's entire traffic network.

You heard that right.

Apparently, Israel hacked into Thran's traffic network, and that meant access to cameras.

You see, Iran has built a very extensive internal surveillance system. It had

installed cameras to spy on its own people, to monitor protesters and dissenters.

Unfortunately for them, the same cameras were used by the enemy to spy on the regime.

One camera placed at just the right angle reportedly showed something small but something very very critical. It

showed the place where Ayatah Kamina's security detail parked their cars.

So Israel started analyzing this footage. They started analyzing the

footage. They started analyzing the patterns. When do the guards arrive?

patterns. When do the guards arrive?

Where do they park their cars? Who

drives which official? Who protects

whom? Who swap shifts? Israel gathered

all these details by hacking Thran's traffic cameras and it proved to be a gamecher because you don't kill a leader by watching him. Leaders are hard to track anyway. You kill a leader by

track anyway. You kill a leader by watching the people around him and that's what Israel did over time. The

Israeli intelligence built data files.

They called these pattern of life files.

That's what they built. They gathered

home addresses, commuting routes and duty hours of these guards. It's like

building a Google Maps timeline, but for a regime's inner circle.

And Israel did this for years.

Leading the project was Unit 8200.

This is Israel's elite signals intelligence unit. The report says Unit

intelligence unit. The report says Unit 8200 fed mountains of data into AIdriven systems. I'm talking about billions of data points, phone signals, camera

feeds, movement patterns, relationship maps. They use something called network

maps. They use something called network analysis.

What does that mean? It's basically

mapping who talks to whom and who influences whom. You try to make sense

influences whom. You try to make sense of a network. And with this, they built a whole picture of Ayatah Kam's daily life.

Now, here's where this becomes almost sci-fi. On the day of the strike,

sci-fi. On the day of the strike, something strange happened.

Cellular networks around Kame's compound were disrupted.

Phones rang busy and warnings could not get through. Say you were Kab's

get through. Say you were Kab's bodyguard. You could not reach your

bodyguard. You could not reach your team. Your calls were failing.

team. Your calls were failing.

At the same time, Israeli and US intelligence was at work. They confirmed

that Kame was at his residence and that he was meeting top officials.

And here's the other thing. They were

not just depending on data. American

intelligence also had a human source confirming all of this. That's what

reports say that they also had human intelligence. Now Iran knew that an

intelligence. Now Iran knew that an attack was coming. They knew that Israel and the US were going to strike at some point. Of course, the Ayatollah knew

point. Of course, the Ayatollah knew that knew that too. But apparently he refused to go to a bunker. He wanted to die as a so-called martyr.

What the did not anticipate was a timing. They did not think that the

timing. They did not think that the strike would come in the morning.

They did not think that it would happen in broad daylight.

That's what happened. And as dramatic as this backstory is, it's not new for Israel. Their intelligence is known for

Israel. Their intelligence is known for things like this, for operations like this. You may remember what happened in

this. You may remember what happened in 2024, the pager explosions. Israel

crippled Hezbollah's communication network. Their rank and file used pagers

network. Their rank and file used pagers to communicate. Israel hacked those

to communicate. Israel hacked those devices and blew them up. So thousands

of pages exploded simultaneously and this killed thousands of Hisbullah fighters. That operation too is said to

fighters. That operation too is said to have taken years of infiltration, years of analyzing the same data, of figuring out patterns and knowing when to strike.

And it tells you a lot about modern warfare. Wars today are not fought with

warfare. Wars today are not fought with just missiles and jets. They're fought

with data, with years of invisible surveillance and algorithms. And it's something that Israel has mastered. The

long game in a world of fastm moving conflicts.

>> Power doesn't end quietly.

Some deaths are not accidents. They are

messages. A gunshot.

A crowd. A country frozen. The killer

disappears.

The questions don't. This is not just about who died. It's about what followed. Governments fell, armies

followed. Governments fell, armies moved, history rewrote itself. Five

leaders, five moments, one pattern. The [music] assassination.

one pattern. The [music] assassination.