FUNNY: West Beat Iran’s Vaunted Cyber-Warriors By Hacking This Humble Device

Orwell dubbed it ‘Big Brother’. Whatever you call it, a tyrannical state cannot control its own citizens without information. The days of informants like East Germany’s Stasi have been replaced by newer, more reliable tech.

Iran, for example, was described as leaning into the Brave New World of surveillance tech this way back in May of 2025:

Authorities are deploying everything from internet monitoring and mobile signal tracking to facial recognition, shop surveillance, and even mandatory in-home cameras to build a digital control society. The goal: neutralize dissent before it begins.

This new architecture of repression aims to present a softer, even “benevolent” face of policing—one nearly invisible thanks to smart technologies. The result is a seamless, predictive regime designed not only to watch citizens, but to sort, anticipate, and contain them. — IranIntl

Iran Intl is one of the most influential foreign-based news outlets for Farsi-speaking Persian readers, and has been known to be openly critical of the regime.

There’s an unspoken weakness with weaponizing tech in that way. If that information falls in the wrong hands, the consequences can be catastrophic. And guess what?

Israel had hacked into Tehran’s surveillance systems years ago, and was using it to keep track of their leader’s movements. Not just his, either. Bodyguards, other officials.

The very tools that Tehran intended to use in crushing protesters and other opposition to the regime led to the demise of the regime itself.

One traffic camera proved key, as the angle gave it a view of where the leader’s security team parked. They built a mountain of intelligence out from that little detail. Addresses, work schedules, protectees. All of it.

And then came the day of the attack itself. They had a little trick up their sleeve to tilt the odds in their favor.

Israel and the US also disrupted cellular service on Tehran’s Pasteur Street, where Khamenei was assassinated, so those trying reach the bodyguards and deliver possible warnings would receive busy signals, per the report.

“We knew Tehran like we know Jerusalem,” an Israeli intelligence official tells the Financial Times. “And when you know [a place] as well as you know the street you grew up on, you notice a single thing that’s out of place.”

Israel used AI tools and algorithms it had developed to sort through mountains of data it was amassing on Iran’s leadership and their movements, according to official who spoke with the British daily.

That allowed them to track Khamenei to the Saturday meeting where he was struck, and assured the Mossad and CIA that senior officials were on their way to the meeting. The CIA also had a human source who provided key intelligence, according to the sources. — Times Of Israel

Ironically, if the Supreme Leader weren’t so damned authoritarian, Israel may not have had the tools they needed to dispatch him.

The Greeks called it ‘hubris’.

Everyone else is just glad to see him gone.