The War itself might have lasted twelve days. Still, Iran will be living with its echoes for years, not with the missiles or the scorched targets, but with the knowledge that during those twelve days the regime discovered the enemy within: spies, sabotage, and assassination of the regime’s key figures. The spectre of penetration had shifted from legend into reality.

In a revealing Iranian radio interview, Intelligence Minister Ismail Alkhatib revealed Tehran’s deepest fear during its recent 12-day confrontation with Israel and America: that the regime was battling blind, unable to distinguish patriots from traitors among its own ranks.

Alkhatib’s admission of perhaps 50 intelligence agencies, regional and international, targeting Iran during the War, with some 30 groups performing assassination and sabotage within Iranian territory alone in the first few days. These facts reveal a horror of strategy that goes far beyond basic military arithmetic. As onetime CIA Chief John Brennan once said, “The most dangerous opponent is not the one who has more firepower, but the one who knows your secrets before you use them.” The 12-day War presented an existential danger to Iran.

Worse still was the battlefield math. Iran had endured decades of sanctions, proxy wars, and missile attacks. Israel’s and America’s bombs were painful, but Iran’s greatest fear was not the explosion radius — it was the inside job. Senior commanders vanished or went AWOL. A chilling tape came out in which an Israeli agent told an Iranian general in Farsi: “You have 12 hours to flee with your wife and son.” The War, as Tehran saw it, was never just on the outside. The evidence filtered through the smoke. Iranian lawmakers claimed Israeli drones had crossed over from Azerbaijan into Iran during the War. Iran did not retaliate because it feared a greater conflict if Turkey intervened to protect Azerbaijan. The vast geography that had once been a plus now seemed a minus. Even as they boasted about “securing nuclear equipment........

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