The disclosure comes against the backdrop of a series of Israeli Air Force strikes during Operation Roaring Lion, which led to the killing of senior figures and key operatives in the covert network.
Several weeks ago, a terrorist infrastructure was foiled in Azerbaijan that had been advancing plans to strike a strategic target, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline running through Georgia and Turkey, as well as several Jewish targets and institutions in the country, including the Israeli Embassy, a synagogue in Baku and leaders of the Jewish community.
Members of the operational cell were arrested by Azerbaijani authorities with explosive drones and fragmentation charges they had smuggled into the country. To carry out the planned attacks, the cell gathered intelligence on the targets using a range of methods, including physical surveillance and photography. All of this was done on the orders of their handlers directly from Iran.
That exposure, together with an intensive intelligence investigation and additional operations on the ground, led to the uncovering of the covert terrorism apparatus established within the Revolutionary Guards, as well as its chain of command.
At the head of the covert attack network was Rahman Moghadam, who also served as head of the Special Operations Division, Unit 4000, in the Revolutionary Guards' Intelligence Organization. He was struck by the Israeli Air Force at the start of Operation Rising Lion. Unit 4000 is responsible for promoting and directing terrorist activity outside Iran against Israeli and Western targets, as well as attempts to smuggle advanced weaponry into Israel. All of this was carried out under the guidance and with the knowledge of senior Revolutionary Guards official Majid Khademi, head of the Intelligence Organization, who was also killed by the IDF during Operation Rising Lion.
In his role as head of the apparatus, Moghadam in recent years advanced the network's terrorist efforts around the world. The activity included recruiting and training terrorists in Iran and abroad to carry out intelligence-gathering missions on senior Israeli political figures and members of Israel's security community, as well as on military sites, both Israeli and Western, ports and Israeli vessels in Israel and around the world.
Under Moghadam's command, another key terrorist figure operated under the name Mohsen Suri, serving as a central and leading operator in the covert attack network alongside his additional role as a senior official in Unit 4000. Suriwas also killed during the war in an Israeli Air Force strike directed by Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence, after the agencies identified the emergency facility where he was staying with other Revolutionary Guards personnel. As part of his operational activity, and like other operatives in the covert apparatus, he played a significant role in the network's activity outside Iran and took part in numerous activation rounds during which he met local terror cells and directed them in carrying out missions on the ground.
Alongside Suri, other Revolutionary Guards officers operated in Europe, the Middle East and Azerbaijan, including Mehdi Yekta-Dehghan, known as "the Doctor," who led the terror effort in Azerbaijan. Dehghan has been known since January 2026, after the arrest of an operational infrastructure in Turkey that, under his direction, was working to smuggle explosive drones from Iran to Turkey and from there to Cyprus, while gathering intelligence on Incirlik Air Base, the US Air Force base in Adana.
It should be recalled that surveillance missions targeting Western bases were exposed in the past as well, for example during Operation With the Strength of a Lion, when Azerbaijani suspects were arrested on suspicion of collecting intelligence on Israeli targets and military bases in Cyprus and Crete.
In recent years, the Iranian regime has used its various security and intelligence bodies to advance dozens of attack routes against Israeli, Jewish and Western targets. Operation Rising Lion led to a further loosening of restraints in Iranian aggression in the region, including an effort to expand those capabilities. It is also known that operatives in the apparatus have worked in cooperation with other axis elements, including pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, to carry out attack plans.
