Spy dental chip and more.. The many theories on how Mossad tracked Khamenei

The death of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has left the world shaken. Khamenei was killed in joint airstrikes by Israel and the United States on Saturday (February 28).

The United States and Israel have claimed that they had no choice but to act as Iran was intent on developing a nuclear weapon, allegations that Tehran has denied.

As the attacks have broken out into a wider conflagration that threatens to engulf the entirety of West Asia, theories are flying thick and fast about how Israel tracked Khamenei.

From dental implants to a spy inside the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), high-tech surveillance and the hacking of prayer apps, let’s take a closer look at the theories doing the rounds.

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Dental implants

One of the theories going around is that Israel somehow managed to plant a tracking device or multiple tracking devices in dental implants. According to posts on social media, Israel’s spy agency Mossad posed as doctors and dentists and planted these inside the mouths of Khamenei and other top Iranian officials.

“Over the past few years, Mossad undercover agents infiltrated Iran as doctors and dentists. The dentists gave priority to key military and elite Iranian personnel. While doing a routine dental check-up, they implanted tracking devices as fillings for cavities,” one user claimed.

Other users claimed that gastroenterologists similarly inserted tracking microchips during medical procedures on Khamenei and top political and religious elites of Iran. However, experts have poured cold water on this theory, saying doing so for a long period of time without being discovered would be extremely unlikely. So far, none of the users online have provided any hard evidence to back up their claims.

Spy inside IRGC?

Another theory has claimed that Mossad managed to infiltrate Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Posts have claimed that Esmaeil Qaani, commander of the Quds Force of the IRGC, was working as a covert informant for Mossad and even the CIA.

Users online pointed to the fact that Qaani was near Khamenei prior to the strike and the fact that he survived. Interestingly, this theory has cropped up on the back of unconfirmed reports that Qaani has been taken into custody for links to Mossad and other Israeli intelligence services. If true, this could mean that Iran has suffered a massive breach in its security apparatus. However, once again, no hard evidence of the same is forthcoming.

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High-tech surveillance

_Financial Times_ has reported that Israel’s spy agency Mossad hacked into Iran’s traffic cameras to track Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials.

People in the know said that the cameras in Tehran had been hacked for years. The cameras, ironically, are part of the regime’s surveillance apparatus, which it uses to crack down on citizens and protesters. Sources told the outlet that the traffic footage from Tehran was scrambled and uploaded to servers in Tel Aviv and southern Israel.

The data was then fed into complex algorithms which configured what intelligence officials described as a “pattern of life”. This included addresses, work schedules and, crucially, which senior officials were being protected and transported.

Hacking of prayer app

Another user claimed that Israel hacked BadeSaba, a popular prayer app in Iran, as part of waging psychological warfare in the overall war plan.

“The BadeSaba app, Iran’s popular prayer time app with over 10 million users, has been hacked amid ongoing strikes. The app began broadcasting messages titled ‘Help has arrived’, calling for the military to defect and join a popular uprising against the regime,” one user claimed on X.

The hacking of the app, along with other Iran’s major media groups including IRNA, ISNA, Tabnak, and Asr-e Iran, has now been confirmed by reports.

It has now been verified that Israel hacked the BadeSaba prayer app used by millions of Iranians. Iran’s major media organisations, including IRNA, ISNA, Tabnak, and Asr-e Iran, were also hacked.

“The operations of Israel included the hacking of multiple news websites to display various messages and the hack of BadeSaba, a religious calendar app with more than 5 million downloads, which displayed messages telling users, ‘It’s time for reckoning’ and urging armed forces to give up weapons and join the people,” according to Reuters.

With inputs from agencies