In days of incessant airstrikes, Israel has targeted Iranian nuclear facilities, military bases and private residences, mainly in western Iran and around the capital Tehran.
Although the attacks came from the sky, it is suspected that the Israeli intelligence service Mossad also played a key role in locating targets and directing operations directly from the ground.
Mossad agents are believed to have used drones smuggled into the country to target remaining Iranian air defense systems, for example, and Iranian authorities have previously admitted that they suspect their security forces have been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence.
A significant number of key military personnel and nuclear scientists have been killed since the Israeli attacks began on June 13, indicating that Israel possessed information about their movements and locations.
It is not easy to assess the Mossad's role in these events.
Israel rarely comments on the organization's activities, and there are other branches of the intelligence apparatus, but here's everything we know so far about the agency's high-profile past operations.
Mossad successes
Assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh
Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated while staying at the residence in Tehran on July 31, 2024.
Israel initially did not claim responsibility for the assassination, but months later Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed that Israel was behind the murder.
However, the circumstances surrounding Haniyeh's death remain unclear.
Khalil al-Haja, a senior Hamas official, said at a press conference that the missile hit Haniyeh "directly," citing witnesses who were with him.
But a report in the New York Times, citing seven officials, claims that Haniyeh was killed by a bomb that was smuggled two months earlier into the building where he was staying.
The BBC has been unable to confirm any of these claims.
Haniyeh is one of many Hamas leaders killed by Israel after the group's attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, including Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, his brother Muhammad, head of Hamas' military wing Muhammad Deif, and his deputy Marwan Issa.
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Exploding Hezbollah devices
Thousands of pagers across Lebanon, mostly in areas with a strong Hezbollah presence, exploded simultaneously on September 17, 2024.
The explosions injured or killed users and some bystanders, spreading general panic and confusion.
The next day, walkie-talkies exploded in the same way, killing and wounding hundreds more.
At the time of the attack, Israel and Hezbollah were fighting a conflict that had spiraled out of control since Hezbollah targeted Israeli positions the day after Hamas's attacks on October 7.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted two months later that Israel was responsible for these attacks, Israeli media reported at the time.
In an interview with CBS, the BBC's American media partner, two former agents revealed details of the operation, saying that the Mossad hid explosive devices in the batteries of functioning walkie-talkies, which are usually worn in a vest near the owner's heart.
Hezbollah unknowingly purchased more than 16.000 walkie-talkies "at a good price" from a fake company 10 years earlier, agents said, and later purchased another 5.000 pagers, CBS reported.
The explosions caused tremors across Lebanon, and detonations occurred wherever pagers were carried, including in supermarkets.
Hospitals were overflowing with victims, many of whom were crippled.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk called the attack a war crime.
Watch video: Pager explosions in Lebanese supermarket
Attendance at Mohsena Fahrizadea
In November 2020, a convoy carrying Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran's most prominent nuclear scientist, came under heavy gunfire in the city of Absard, east of the capital Tehran.
Fahrizadeh was killed by a remote-controlled machine gun with the help of artificial intelligence.
"Executing such surgically precise assassinations on a moving target without civilian casualties requires real-time intelligence from the ground," BBC Persian journalist Jiyar Gol wrote at the time.
In April 2018, Netanyahu displayed dozens of folders of documents allegedly related to Iran's nuclear program, which he said had been stolen by the Mossad several months earlier in a daring raid on a warehouse just 30 kilometers from Tehran (this was later confirmed by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani).
Presenting the archive at a specially convened press conference, the Israeli prime minister highlighted Mohsen Fakhrizadeh's role in what he called an "unofficial nuclear weapons program."
"Doctor Mohsen Fahrizadeh... remember that name," he repeated.
Iran has previously accused Israel of assassinating four other Iranian nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012.
Mahmud al-Mabuh: The Lost
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas military leader, was assassinated in 2010 in a Dubai hotel.
At first it appeared to be a natural death, but Dubai police were eventually able to identify the assassin's team after reviewing security camera footage.
Police later determined that Al Mabduh was killed by electrocution and subsequent strangulation.
The operation is suspected to have been orchestrated by the Mossad, causing diplomatic consternation in the United Arab Emirates.
Israeli diplomats, however, claimed there was no evidence linking the Mossad to the attack.
However, they did not deny involvement, which is in line with Israel's policy of maintaining "ambivalence" on such matters.
Jahja Ajaš and the exploding phone
Yahya Ayash, a key bomb maker for the Palestinian extremist group Hamas, was killed in 1996 by planting 50 grams of explosives in his Motorola Alpha cell phone.
Ayash, a prominent leader of Hamas's military wing, was renowned for his expertise in bomb-making and orchestrating complex attacks on Israeli targets.
He became a primary target of Israeli security forces and one of the most wanted men in Israel.
In late 2019, Israel lifted censorship on some details of this murder, and Israel's Channel 13 TV aired a recording of Ayash's last phone conversation with his father.
'Operation Brothers'
In an extraordinary act of deception, acting on the orders of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the Mossad smuggled more than 1980 Ethiopian Jews into Israel via Sudan in the early 7.000s, using a fake diving resort as a front.
Sudan was an enemy country of the Arab League, so working in secret, a team of Mossad agents set up a resort on the Sudanese coast of the Red Sea, which they used as a base.
During the day they pretended to be hotel staff and at night they smuggled Jews, who secretly arrived from neighboring Ethiopia, from the country by air and sea.
The operation lasted at least five years, and by the time it was discovered, Mossad agents had already managed to escape.
Retaliation after the kidnapping at the Munich Olympics
In 1972, the Palestinian extremist group Black September killed two members of the Israeli Olympic team at the Munich Olympics and captured nine others.
The hostages later died in a failed rescue attempt by the West German police.
The Mossad then attacked a large number of members of the Palestine Liberation Movement, including Mahmoud Hamshari.
He was killed by an explosive device planted in a telephone in his Paris apartment.
Hamšari lost his leg in the explosion and later succumbed to his wounds.
The assassinations of Hamshari and Ayas highlight a long and detailed history of the use of advanced technology for targeted killings.
'Operation Entebbe'
The 'Entebbe Operation' in Uganda in 1976 is considered one of the most successful Israeli military missions.
The Mossad provided the intelligence, while the Israeli army carried out the operation.
There were 250 passengers on the plane, flying from Tel Aviv to Paris via Athens, including 103 Israelis.
The hijackers, two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and two German accomplices, diverted the plane to Uganda.
Israeli commandos stormed the airport and rescued the remaining 100 Israeli hostages.
Three hostages, all the kidnappers, several Ugandan soldiers, and Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, were killed in the operation.
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The hunt for the Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann
The kidnapping of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann in Argentina in 1960 is one of the Mossad's most famous intelligence successes.
Eichmann, a key architect of the Holocaust, was responsible for the persecution of Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, in which an estimated six million Jews died at the hands of Nazi Germany.
After evading capture by moving between several countries, Eichmann eventually settled in Argentina.
A team of 14 Mossad agents found him, kidnapped him and brought him back to Israel, where he was tried and eventually executed.
Don't be afraid Mossad
Despite numerous successful operations, the Mossad has also had some famous failures.
Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
Attack by Palestinian extremist groups, led by Hamas, when they suddenly invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, caught Israeli security forces completely off guard.
The Mossad's failure to predict the attack is considered a huge fiasco, in terms of projecting, according to analysts, a weakness in Israel's deterrence policy towards Hamas.
The October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of around 1.200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
Another 251 people were taken to Gaza as hostages.
In response to the Hamas attack, Israel declared war on the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 55.000 people so far, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
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The Israeli army announced in February 2025 first official report on the failures which led to its failures during the surprise Hamas attack.
There are no dramatic revelations in the report, but it is still sobering to see the Israeli military's conclusions that it misjudged Hamas's intentions and underestimated its capabilities.
The report states that the military considered Gaza a secondary security threat, with priority given to Iran and Hezbollah, a Lebanese military-political organization that has been supported by Tehran for years.
Its policy towards Gaza, the report says, was "paradoxical: Hamas was illegitimate, but there was no effort to develop an alternative."
The military has chosen a "conflict management" approach in dealing with extremists from the Gaza Strip, it said.
The Israeli military assumed that Hamas was "neither interested [in] nor preparing for a large-scale war," a perception reinforced by Hamas's own deception tactics.
In April 2024, it was announced that Israeli military intelligence chief resigns.
Major General Ahron Haliva will retire when his successor is chosen, the Israeli army announced at the time.
In the letter, he admitted that his intelligence agency "failed to fulfill the task entrusted to it."
He was the first high-ranking official to resign over the deadliest attack in Israeli history.
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The Yom Kippur War
Exactly 50 years earlier, Israel was similarly caught 'on the wrong foot'.
On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel to regain the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights.
The timing of the attack on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of repentance and atonement, caught Israel off guard in the early days of the war.
Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on two fronts.
Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal, suffering only a fraction of the expected losses, while Syrian forces attacked Israeli positions and broke through the Golan Heights.
The Soviet Union provided supplies to Syria and Egypt, and the US provided emergency supply lines to Israel.
Israel managed to repel the forces and the war ended on October 25th - four days after the United Nations passed a resolution calling for an end to the fighting.
Assassination attempt on Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar fails
In 2003, Israel carried out an airstrike on the home of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar in Gaza City.
Although Al Zahar survived the attack, his wife and son Khalid were killed in the strike, along with several other people.
The bombing completely destroyed his house, highlighting the severe consequences of military operations in densely populated areas.
Failed assassination attempt on Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal
One of the operations that led to a major diplomatic crisis was Israel's attempt to assassinate Khalid Meshaal, head of Hamas's political bureau, in 1997 in Jordan.
Israeli agents attempted to poison him but were caught, and Israel was then forced to provide an antidote to save Meshal.
The then Mossad chief, Danny Yatom, flew to Jordan to take the antidote.
This assassination attempt significantly damaged relations between Jordan and Israel.
Afera Lavon
In 1954, Egyptian authorities thwarted an Israeli espionage operation known as 'Operation Susanna'.
The foiled plan was to plant bombs at American and British facilities in Egypt to pressure Great Britain into keeping forces deployed in the Suez Canal.
Such actions are now known as 'false flag attacks'.
The incident became known as the Lavon Affair, named after Israeli Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon at the time.
He is believed to have participated in the planning of the operation.
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