In connection with the Israeli air campaign, the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, has been operating on Iranian soil and targeting senior Iranian nuclear scientists and military officers in an attempt to shatter the Iranian military’s chain of command.

President Donald Trump opposed an Israeli plan to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to two sources, amid ongoing waves of tit-for-tat strikes between Israel and Iran as the US president is making publicly and privately clear he prefers to keep the United States out of the fray for now.