IRGC media report claims Israel assassinating Iranian leaders through cell phone tracking

Israel is reportedly using cell phone tracking to assassinate senior Iranian leaders, according to a media outlet affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which made the claim on Monday.

"Israel uses mobile tracking to assassinate individuals in Iran. It previously killed Ismail Haniyeh the same way in Tehran," the report claimed, referring to the late Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh who was eliminated last July by Israel while staying at an IRGC-controlled safehouse in Tehran. 

The IRGC-affiliated report further warned that even switched off phones could reveal the location of a specific individual. It consequently urged users in Iran to apply secure anti-tracking measures to their phones in order to minimize exposure to potential Israeli surveillance.

WhatsApp criticized the Iranian regime for using “false reports” as an excuse to further restrict communication for ordinary Iranians. 

“We’re concerned these false reports will be an excuse for our services to be blocked at a time when people need them the most,” a WhatsApp spokesperson said in an interview with CNN.

WhatsApp dismissed the Iranian charges that the popular communication platform could be used by third parties to track specific individuals. 

“All of the messages you send to family and friends on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted, meaning no-one except the sender and recipient has access to those messages, not even WhatsApp. We do not track your precise location, we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging, and we do not track the personal messages people are sending one another,” the WhatsApp spokesperson explained. 

Israel has already eliminated more than 20 top Iranian military leaders since the beginning of the Israeli “Operation Rising Lion” early on Friday morning. Iran’s top military echelon was eliminated within the first 24 hours, including IRGC’s hawkish top commander Hossein Salami who only 24 hours earlier had repeated his threat to wipe Israel off the map. 

Israel also eliminated most of the senior leadership of the IRGC Air Force, including its top commander, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who played a central role in the ayatollah regime’s missile and drone attacks on the Jewish state in April and October 2024. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had previously awarded General Hajizadeh medals for leading last year’s aerial assaults on Israel.

Major General Mohammed Bagheri, the overall head of Iran’s armed forces, was eliminated within the first 24 hours of the aerial strike on Iranian military and nuclear assets. Major General Gholam Ali Rashid, deputy commander of Iran’s armed forces and head of the Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarters, was also killed on Friday.

Just four days later, the Israeli Air Force eliminated Rashid’s successor, Major General Ali Shademani, who at the time of his death was serving as the de facto operational commander of both the Iranian armed forces and the IRGC.

In addition to eliminating Iran’s top military leadership, the Israeli military and Mossad confirmed that they have eliminated at least 9 senior Iranian nuclear scientists who played key roles in the development of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program. Jerusalem views the elimination of the Iranian nuclear scientists as a central component in the goal of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program and nuclear knowledge bank in Iran.