Israel assassinated nine of Iran’s ten most senior nuclear scientists in their sleep during its initial assault on Iran last week, dealing an unprecedented blow to the heart of Tehran’s nuclear program.

The operation — code-named Operation Narnia — unfolded in the dead of night between Thursday and Friday and was followed hours later by the killing of the tenth scientist, according to Israel’s Channel 12, which broke the story on Thursday.

The assassinations were part of a broader, multi-pronged Israeli strike that also targeted Iran’s ballistic missile infrastructure, key nuclear enrichment facilities at Natanz, and senior figures in the Islamic Republic’s military command.

Channel 12 reported that the assassinations were carried out using a classified weapon, the nature of which remains under censorship and has not been disclosed publicly.

The nuclear scientists were all killed while sleeping in their homes, with Israeli intelligence deliberately orchestrating simultaneous hits to avoid any chance of a warning or escape, according to the report. In previous incidents, Iranian nuclear scientists had often been targeted while commuting.

“These scientists believed their homes were safe zones,” a senior Israeli official told Channel 12. “They never imagined they would be reached in their bedrooms.”

According to the report, Israeli intelligence had been surveilling these ten individuals for years and marked them for assassination in November of last year, after determining they were irreplaceable assets in Iran’s nuclear development chain.

While Iran has long relied on its military-industrial complex and sprawling ballistic missile program to project power, Israeli officials viewed the scientific elite behind the uranium enrichment efforts as far more irreplaceable than missile hardware or battlefield generals.

“It’s easier to replace a general than a nuclear physicist with 20 years of expertise,” one Israeli official was quoted as saying. “We struck the brain trust.”

Operation Narnia marked a dramatic shift in Israel’s approach to Iran. While targeted killings of Iranian scientists have occurred sporadically over the past two decades — including the 2020 assassination of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh — this latest action represents the first time Israel has reportedly wiped out nearly an entire echelon of nuclear leadership in one night.

Channel 12 said the decision to strike all ten at once was aimed at eliminating any possibility that surviving members could alert others or go into hiding.

Iran has not publicly confirmed the deaths of the scientists, but local media in Tehran have reported “unexplained fatalities” among scientific personnel and have blamed “foreign agents” for sabotage and attacks on military sites. The regime has so far not commented directly on the reported deaths.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)