Arabic → English transcript

The truth is that all of us, I mean,

we were astonished by the extent of the Israeli penetration of Iran.

Your diagnosis of the weak points, how was Israel able to penetrate Iran from

within like this, and target political, military, nuclear,

and academic elites so strikingly?

Israel’s influence was not in the way that was talked about,

rather it was the lowered level of vigilance in Iran that actually happened.

In my opinion, these two issues should not be mixed. Israel, like any country,

looks for spies, but there was a kind of lack of care and caution that

occurred in Iran, and work was done to resolve these problems

in various agencies within state institutions, and we struck their

networks and raised the level of caution. How? We should not talk about these

matters in front of the camera. But the operation, I mean, it is clearly difficult,

major infiltrations that need a long period of time, perhaps, to eliminate

the spies and followers,

especially since there is an internal Iranian

rivalry between factions, And some might benefit from targeting the Iranian regime,

I mean among the Iranians themselves. In Iran there are different beliefs,

since Iran is a big country and it has many opinions. But when facing Israel,

everyone is united. Even those who are opposition figures abroad also

view Israel negatively, except for some individuals and certain intellectually

incompetent people who do otherwise. But overall, the rational currents in the

opposition all oppose Israel. And as soon as it attacked us,

a very sacred union was formed in Iran, and this was an important achievement.

And I think the Americans and the Israelis understood this message,

that Iran is a country with a great and important civilization,

and therefore the awareness of Iranians regarding national issues

is very high.