Israel’s unprecedented military operation against Iran was set in motion after intelligence uncovered alarming progress in Tehran’s nuclear weapons development, according to a bombshell report aired by Army Radio on Sunday.

In the days leading up to Friday’s strikes, Israeli intelligence services reportedly presented top political leaders with what officials described as “golden information” — evidence that Iranian scientists had conducted successful tests on critical components of a nuclear explosive device. The findings indicated that Iran was mere weeks away from assembling a nuclear bomb, if it chose to proceed.

But the intelligence also came with a chilling caveat: Israel couldn’t be sure this was the full picture. Officials warned that Iran may have already advanced further in weaponization than the available data suggested.

According to the report, Iran began quietly accelerating its nuclear weapons program around late 2023 or early 2024, shortly after Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel. The regime gathered teams of scientists and divided them into discreet working groups, each assigned a piece of the complex puzzle required to transform enriched uranium into a functioning nuclear warhead.

These covert efforts ran alongside Iran’s ongoing enrichment of uranium to near-weapons-grade levels — far beyond any peaceful civilian need. As of late May, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, if further refined, was sufficient to produce as many as nine nuclear weapons.

The intelligence revelations — and what officials called “irrefutable evidence” that Iran had chosen the path of nuclear armament — left Jerusalem with a fateful decision. The government gave the green light for a sweeping preemptive operation that began in the early hours of Friday.

Among the opening targets: Iran’s top nuclear scientists.

The IDF confirmed that nine senior nuclear experts were killed in pinpoint strikes on Tehran. All had played key roles in the development of nuclear detonation devices and were described by the IDF as “direct heirs” to Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the architect of Iran’s nuclear ambitions who was assassinated in 2020.

The scientists eliminated were:

• Fereydoon Abbasi – nuclear engineering
• Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi – physics
• Akbar Motalebi Zadeh – chemical engineering
• Saeed Barji – materials engineering
• Amir Hassan Fakhahi – physics
• Abd al-Hamid Minoushehr – reactor physics
• Mansour Asgari – physics
• Ahmad Reza Zolfaghari Daryani – nuclear engineering
• Ali Bakhouei Katirimi – mechanical engineering

“These individuals were not only scientists — they were repositories of decades of expertise,” said a senior IDF official. “Their elimination represents a significant setback to Iran’s nuclear project.”

The assassinations were the product of a multi-year intelligence effort, the IDF said, involving dozens of analysts working on a classified operation to monitor, track, and ultimately neutralize key figures in Iran’s nuclear apparatus.

Friday’s pre-dawn offensive, which also took out six senior military officials and multiple missile bases, marked a turning point in the long-simmering shadow war between Israel and Iran.

Military officials said the Israeli operation is expected to continue for at least several more days and could include further strikes deep inside Iran. “We are prepared for heavy fire,” one official said. “But by the end of this operation, there will be no nuclear threat from the Islamic Republic.”

The international community has predictably urged restraint. But in Jerusalem, Israeli leaders insisted they had no alternative.

“This was not a war of choice,” said one Israeli official. “It was a war of necessity — to stop a nuclear-armed Iran before it’s too late.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)