Iran's foreign minister has publicly acknowledged that the severe intelligence breach which allowed Israel to strike and kill Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the war's opening blow likely remains active and unresolved, in a rare and embarrassing admission from the top ranks of the Iranian government, according to Kikar HaShabbat.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made the acknowledgment in an interview with Fars News Agency, a mouthpiece of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, saying the same strategic intelligence breach that allowed Israel to land a precise and lethal strike on Khamenei's residential compound on the morning the war began "apparently still exists and has not been resolved." The admission effectively confirms that Iran's regime continues to operate under close surveillance and constant fear of spies or advanced technological breaches within its most sensitive command echelons.
Araghchi did not stop at a general assessment. He offered a rare and detailed account of the hours and minutes preceding the strike that shook the Middle East. According to his own telling, he was present at Khamenei's residential compound that fateful Saturday morning. He recalled meeting first with Iran's president at 8 a.m. and warning him that he sensed extreme tension in the air and felt there was, in his words, an atmosphere of war.
Shortly afterward, at 9 a.m., Araghchi arrived for a scheduled meeting with Ali Asghar Mir Hejazi, who served as the powerful and influential head of Khamenei's office. The purpose of the meeting was to deliver a detailed report on the diplomatic negotiations, a standing procedure in which reports were passed through the office chief, the sole channel who relayed material directly to the supreme leader.
Araghchi described sitting with Hejazi and presenting sensitive material amid an urgent discussion of the high security tensions along Iran's borders when the walls of the compound began to shake and the entire site was struck and bombed with surgical precision. Araghchi did not detail exactly how he believes the tactical information about the meeting leaked, but he stressed that holding this kind of working session during those tense days was not unusual in Tehran's governing landscape. The failure he considers unfathomable, he said, lies in the fact that the enemy knew not only that such meetings were taking place, but the precise schedule, the exact location within the compound, and the identities of those present at that specific moment.
Khamenei's killing in the opening phase of the war is widely regarded as an unprecedented historic turning point, one that shook the foundations of the Shiite regime and dealt a severe blow to the command and control chain across the so-called axis of resistance. In the months since, Iran's internal security and intelligence services, together with special Revolutionary Guard units, have been conducting a sweeping hunt for those responsible for the leaks within the system.
The fact that the foreign minister himself was forced to publicly admit, months later, that the breach has still not been closed reflects the depth of Tehran's sense of helplessness and an acknowledgment that its security apparatus remains fully exposed to Israeli intelligence.
