June 15, 2025 • 21 mins
January 31st, 2018. Tehran's Shorabad district. Marcus Cole coordinates the most audacious intelligence operation in history as twenty-two Mossad operatives infiltrate a heavily guarded warehouse containing Iran's nuclear weapons secrets. With only six hours before guards return, the team must breach thirty-two reinforced safes and extract half a ton of classified documents proving Iran's deception about their peaceful nuclear program.
But as Marcus watches from his Tel Aviv control center, he begins calculating a different equation—the human cost of preventing nuclear war. Dr. Ahmad Tehrani's research notes are among the stolen files. Captain Reza Amiri will soon begin hunting the thieves. And Marcus discovers that some operations save the world by destroying the people who execute them.
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But as Marcus watches from his Tel Aviv control center, he begins calculating a different equation—the human cost of preventing nuclear war. Dr. Ahmad Tehrani's research notes are among the stolen files. Captain Reza Amiri will soon begin hunting the thieves. And Marcus discovers that some operations save the world by destroying the people who execute them.
To become a premium subscriber (no ads and no feed drops) visit caloroga.com/plus. For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app which seays UNINTERRUPTED LISTENING. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. You also get 25+ other shows on the network ad-free!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Operation Rising Lion is a fictional series based on real
world events. Any similarities between persons living or dead is
purely coincidental. Calarugu Shark Media.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
My name is Marcus Cole. I'm not supposed to be
telling you this story. For twenty years, I coordinated operations
you'll never read about newspapers, missions that changed the course
of history while the world slept. I was good at
it because I learned to see people as variables in
an equation, numbers to be calculated, not lives to be mourned.
(00:48):
But tonight, sitting in my empty apartment in Tel Aviv,
with my brother's dog tags on the table beside me,
I need to tell someone what really happened, what we did,
what it cost, and whether any of it was worth
what we became. This is episode one, the heist. This
(01:17):
story begins on a winter night in Tehran seven years ago.
But to understand why twenty two Israeli operatives risked everything
to break into a warehouse in an industrial district called Shabad,
you need to understand that I was never supposed to
be the one making these calculations. That was Daniel's destiny.
My older brother was everything I wasn't charismatic, fearless, a
(01:40):
natural leader who joined sire at Matkal and seemed destined
for legend. I was the quiet one, the mathematician, content
solving theoretical problems in university lecture halls, while Daniels saved
the world March twenty seventh, two thousand and two, and ied,
and Jeanine and three of his men gone in an instant.
(02:03):
I was twenty nine, finishing my PhD in applied mathematics,
planning a life of academic obscurity. Instead, I found myself
holding Daniel's body while Metics covered the stretcher, his dog
tags warm in my palm from the heat of the explosion.
Three months later, I walked into Masad headquarters and volunteered
to become someone I never wanted to be. They said
(02:25):
I had a gift for seeing patterns others missed, for
coordinating impossibly complex operations, because I thought in systems, not emotions.
Where others saw chaos, I saw interconnected probabilities. It was
exactly the wrong skill for a man carrying his brother's ghost,
but it made me very good at my job. By
twenty seventeen, I'd been coordinating sensitive operations for fifteen years,
(02:50):
assassinations in Damascus, cyber warfare against nuclear facilities, the kind
of work that keeps the world spinning while slowly hollowing
out whatever's left of your See. I kept a private
file of everyone who died because of operations i'd planned,
enemy and ally alike, Their names, their families, their dreams
(03:10):
i'd helped destroy. It was my penance, my way of
ensuring their sacrifices weren't anonymous. The file was already thick
when Director Yosi Cohen called me into his office on
a gray November morning. Marcus, he said, sliding a classified
folder across his mahogany desk, I need you to coordinate
something unprecedented. The photographs inside showed a run down warehouse
(03:34):
in Tehran's Shorabad district, unremarkable concrete walls, corrugated steel roof,
a small office attached to the front, but satellite imagery
revealed reinforced steel doors and power consumption patterns consistent with
climate control systems protecting sensitive materials. Project Ahmad. Cohen continued
(03:54):
Iran's nuclear weapons program. Western intelligence assumed it was shelved
in two thousand and three. We now know better the
complete archives are hidden in that building, blueprint specifications, test data, video,
documentation of warhead designs, everything they need to build fifteen
nuclear weapons. I studied the floor plans, guard schedules, security systems,
(04:17):
mathematical problems wrapped in geopolitical consequences. Sir, the logistics alone
are impossible, he finished, which is why we're going to
do it. Prime Minister Weiss wants this not copies, not photographs,
the actual documents, all of them. Weiss, Benjamin Weiss, had
(04:39):
been pushing for military action against Iran's nuclear program for years.
This operation would either provide the evidence to justify strikes
or the intelligence to prevent them. Either way, it meant
crossing lines we'd never crossed before. How many lives are
we calculating here, I asked. It was my standard question,
(05:00):
the mathematical baseline for any operation. Cohen's expression darkened. If
Iran completes their weapons program, we're looking at nuclear war
in the Middle East, millions dead. If this operation fails
and we're exposed, we might trigger that war early. And
if we succeed, he paused, we'll have stolen state secrets
(05:20):
from a sovereign nation. The consequences could be severe. I nodded.
The math was brutal, but clear. Steal the archives, prevent
nuclear war, get caught, possibly start one, do nothing, definitely,
Phase one later. Sometimes the calculations make themselves. I'll need
three months to plant it properly, I said, you have
(05:43):
four weeks. The planning consumed my life, twenty hour days
in secure briefing rooms, coordinating with assets I couldn't name,
reviewing intelligence from sources I couldn't verify. We identified our
window Tuesday night, January three, thirtieth into Wednesday morning, January
thirty first, twenty eighteen. The warehouse operated on skeleton security,
(06:08):
two guards, completing final rounds at ten thirty pm, not
returning until seven am, eight and a half hours, barely
enough for what we needed to accomplish. The team was
small by necessity, twenty two operatives, each hand picked for
specific skills. Sarah Rosen would lead Entry, a former paratrooper
who could cut through steel like paper. Eli Davidson handled
(06:31):
electronics and surveillance countermeasures. David Stern managed transportation and extraction routes.
And then there was doctor Miriam Levy, our most valuable
and most vulnerable asset. Miriam was a linguistics professor from
Hebrew University who'd spent six months in Tehran the previous
year establishing academic credentials while conducting reconnaissance. Her mission had
(06:53):
been simple in concept, terrifying in execution. Pose is a
French researcher studying Persian lettergy establish a pattern of evening
walks through Shrabad and map every detail a casual observer
might notice. The neighborhood is working class, she'd reported in
her debriefing, her hands still shaking slightly from months of
(07:14):
living a lie. People mind their own business. The mosque's
prayer schedule creates predictable foot traffic, and there's a twenty
four hour tea house three blocks away where truck drivers gather,
perfect for blending in. During extraction, She'd worn traditional Iranian dress,
accompanied by a male guardian, one of our deep cover assets,
(07:36):
and had spent weeks becoming a familiar face in the district.
Local residents grew accustomed to seeing the quiet academic in
her protective companion strolling past at the same time each evening.
What they didn't know was that Miriam was memorizing guard rotations,
delivery schedules in the precise moment each night when the
warehouse stood completely undefended. The weight of using her, a
(07:59):
civilian academic with no combat training, for such a dangerous operation,
sat heavy in my calculations, But the intelligence sheet gathered
was irreplaceable, another variable in an equation that had to
balance regardless of the human cost. Three days before the operation,
I received the final intelligence briefing that made my blood
(08:20):
run cold. Our sources confirmed the warehouse contained thirty two
reinforced safs, each approximately two meters tall, constructed of hardened steel.
We couldn't cut through all of them in one night.
It would take days. Instead, we'd identified six saves marked
with discrete symbols that contained the core documentation of Project Demand.
(08:42):
Six safes forty minutes each to breach properly four hours
of cutting minimum. That left four and a half hours
for infiltration, document extraction, clean up, and withdrawal from the
heart of enemy territory. The margins for error were essentially zero.
On the evening of January thirtieth, I set in my
control center, three floors beneath Tel Aviv, surrounded by screens
(09:05):
showing satellite feeds, encrypted communications channels, and real time updates
from our advanced team already in Tehran. They'd entered the
country days earlier using Canadian passports, Their cover stories as
software consultants visiting Iranian technology companies meticulously crafted to with
stand scrutiny. At exactly ten fifteen pm Tehran time, our
(09:29):
surveillance confirmed the guards completing their evening rounds, two men
in their fifties, following the same routine they'd maintained for months.
They locked the facility and departed in their small sedan,
unaware that twenty two shadows were converging on their warehouse
archive control. This is blackbird, Sarah's voice, crackled through my headset.
(09:49):
Perimeter is clear beginning approach. I watched through night vision
cameras as our team moved through the Tehran darkness. Sarah
and her entry specialists, Eli with his electronic warfare equipment,
David coordinating multiple extraction routes, and twenty others whose names
I won't mention, whose faces I can't forget. The warehouse
(10:12):
looked innocent enough under the winter moon, concrete walls weathered
by decades of Tehran pollution, a small sign in Farsi
identifying it as document storage Facility seven. Nothing to suggest
it hows the most dangerous secrets in the Middle East
Blackbird to archive control, Sarah reported electronic countermeasures deployed alarm
(10:34):
systems are dark. ELI had spent months studying the warehouse's
security set up standard Iranian government installation, motion sensors, door contacts,
basic surveillance cameras, sophisticated enough to deter common criminals, primitive
enough that our electronic warfare capabilities could neutralize them without
triggering backup alerts. Entry Team, you are clear to breach,
(10:57):
I transmitted. The cutting began at twelve oh one am.
Sarah and her team used specialized Israeli designed torch equipment
that could slice through reinforced steel while maintaining precise temperature
control to avoid heat signatures detectable by satellite surveillance. The
main door yielded in six minutes and forty three seconds.
(11:20):
I know because I was timing everything, calculating every variable
that might mean the difference between success and catastrophe. Archive
control were inside, Sarah whispered, confirming thirty two containers as
briefed beginning selective extraction. The interior matched our intelligence exactly.
(11:42):
Thirty two safes arranged in precise rows, each containing fragments
of Iran's nuclear weapons program. Our technical team had practiced
on identical safes for months in a facility outside Tel Aviv,
but practice and reality are different mathematical equations. The cutting resumed.
Each safe required approximately forty minutes to breach, careful work
(12:04):
that couldn't be rushed without damaging the contents or triggering
vibration sensors we might have missed. As the first safe open,
revealing meticulously organized filing systems and digital storage devices, I
felt the weight of what we were attempting. These weren't
just classified documents, they were the architectural blueprints for nuclear
war in the Middle East. Archive control David's voice carried
(12:28):
unusual tension. We have a problem. My blood temperature dropped
five degrees. Report. Safe number four contains more material than anticipated.
The volume. We're going to need additional transport capacity. This
was a contingency we'd planned for, but planning and execution
are different kinds of mathematics. Each operative carried specialized equipment
(12:52):
designed to compress and protect document storage, but the sheer
quantity of material was overwhelming our capacity. Safe number four
alone contained what appeared to be fifty thousand pages of documentation,
engineering specifications for nuclear weapon components, test data from explosive
lens experiments, video recordings of senior Iranian officials discussing warhead
(13:17):
delivery systems, and photographs. Dozens of photographs showing construction at
military facilities that officially didn't exist. Implement backup protocol. I
ordered photograph everything we can't physically extract. High resolution photography
began immediately. Military grade cameras captured every page, every diagram,
(13:40):
every handwritten note with forensic precision, but the physical documents
remained our priority. These were the evidence that would prove
Iran's deception to the world. Hours passed, the Tehran night
remained quiet, but tension mounted with each passing minute. At
three thirty am, AUR perimeters Security reported increased police activity
(14:03):
six blocks away routine patrol adjustments, but concerning nonetheless archive control,
Sarah reported Safes one through six are fully compromised. We've
extracted approximately fifty thousand pages of hard copy documentation and
one hundred and sixty three digital storage devices, ready to
begin cleanup and withdraw. The cleanup process was as critical
(14:27):
as the extraction itself. Our team carefully arranged the open
safes to obscure the extent of what had been taken.
Random papers were scattered to suggest a hurried search rather
than methodical intelligence gathering. Electronic countermeasures were withdrawn, allowing security
systems to come back online without indicating they'd ever been compromised.
(14:48):
All teams I transmitted initiate extraction protocol. The withdrawal was
a masterpiece of coordination. Twenty two operatives carrying half a
ton of stolen intelligence melting into the Tehran Knight using
six different routes. Some posed as early morning laborers heading
to construction sites. Others adopted the personas of medical workers
(15:09):
finishing night shifts. Two operatives used motorcycle courier services, their
document containers disguised as delivery packages. But the real genius
was in the decoy operation. As our primary extraction teams
moved through the city, additional MASAD operatives, who had no
knowledge of the true mission, conducted highly visible surveillance activities
(15:31):
in completely different parts of Tehran. These decoy operations were
designed to be detected, drawing Iranian counterintelligence attention away from
Shoabad Blackbird clear of the objective. Sarah reported at four
forty seven am all teams report clear, David confirmed twenty
three minutes later. By six am, every operative had reached
(15:52):
predetermined safehouses or extraction points. The stolen intelligence was being
transmitted digitally to Tel Aviv, and his physical documents were
smuggled out of Iran through roots that remained classified. At
seven point fifteen am, Iranian security guards arrived at the
Shabad warehouse for their morning shift. They discovered the breach immediately,
(16:14):
but the full extent of what had been stolen wouldn't
become clear for hours. By then, MASSAD operatives were boarding
flights from three different countries, carrying diplomatic pouches that would
never be inspected. I remained in my Tel Aviv control
center for thirty six straight hours, monitoring extraction routes and
coordinating with field teams until every operative was confirmed safe.
(16:38):
The intelligence windfall was extraordinary, one hundred thousand pages of
documentation proving that Iran's nuclear weapons program had never truly ended.
But as I sat in that windowless room, surrounded by
the evidence of our success, I found myself thinking about
doctor Ahmad Tarani. We'd identified him in the stolen documents,
(16:59):
a brilliant run nuclear physicist who'd spent years working on
what he believed was peaceful atomic research. His handwritten notes
filled dozens of pages, meticulous calculations for uranium enrichment processes
that had obvious weapons applications. In the margins, he'd drawn
sketches of his daughter, a medical student in London who
(17:20):
dreamed of returning to Iran to help build hospitals. Doctor
Tehrani had no idea his peaceful research was feeding a
weapons program. He was just a scientist trying to serve
his country while supporting his daughter's education abroad. But the
documents we'd stolen would eventually make him a target, would
force him to choose between his homeland and his conscience.
(17:41):
Another name for my private file, another human cost in
the equation of preventing nuclear war. Three months later, Prime
Minister Weiss would stand before the world in a dramatic
(18:02):
presentation revealing Iran's deception, using the very documents we'd stolen
from that warehouse in Shoabad. Within weeks, President Mitchell would
withdraw the United States from the Iranian Nuclear Agreement, citing
evidence that the regime had violated the spirit of the accord.
But that night in January, as snow fell over Tehran,
and Iranian security forces began their frantic investigation. I knew
(18:26):
we'd crossed the line we could never uncross. We'd reached
into the heart of our enemies most protected secrets and
emerged with proof of their lives. The archive heist was complete.
Project Ahmad's secrets belonged to Israel. But sitting here now,
seven years later, with Daniel's dog tags warm in my
palm and that private file of names growing thicker every year,
(18:50):
I have to ask the question that haunts every equation
I've ever calculated. Was it worth it? The documents we
stole that night would eventually lead to the operation the
world knows as Rising Lion. They would provide the intelligence
for precision strikes that prevented Iran from building fifteen nuclear weapons.
They would save millions of lives that would have been
(19:12):
lost to nuclear war. But they would also cost us
everything we had left to lose. Doctor Ahmad TEHRANI never
made it home to see his daughter graduate medical school.
Captain Reza Amiri, the Iranian intelligence officer who began hunting
us after that warehouse heist, would die defending Tehran from
our final assault, and somewhere in the shadows of a
(19:33):
seven year shadow war, Marcus Cole would discover that preventing
the apocalypse requires becoming something monstrous. That's the real mathematics
of modern espionage. Every operation saves some lives by destroying others.
Every success carries the weight of those who didn't survive
your calculations. I've spent seven years asking myself if the
(19:55):
equation balanced, if the nuclear war we prevented was worth
a shadow we fought, if the lives we saved justified
the lives we sacrificed. I still don't know the answer,
but I know the story deserves to be told, all
of it, the brilliance and the brutality, the impossible decisions
in their human costs, the seven years that began with
(20:17):
twenty two shadows in a Tehran warehouse and ended with
the operation that changed everything. Next time, I'll tell you
about Colonel Darius Karimi, the Iranian intelligence officer tasked with
finding the operatives who robbed that warehouse. What we didn't
know then was that Colonel Karimi had been working for
US all along, and doctor Ahmad Tarani was about to
(20:40):
discover that his peaceful research had been feeding a weapons
program designed to incinerate cities. Some equations take years to balance,
some prices take decades to pay. Welcome to Operation Rising Lion.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
This episode is a production of Caloroga Shark MAE executive
producers Mark Francis and John McDermott. For more shows like
this based on real world events, please go to callaoga
dot com. The link is in the show notes. AI
production assistance may have been used in this series.
Operation Rising Lion is a fictional series based on real
world events. Any similarities between persons living or dead is
purely coincidental. Calarugu Shark Media.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
My name is Marcus Cole. I'm not supposed to be
telling you this story. For twenty years, I coordinated operations
you'll never read about newspapers, missions that changed the course
of history while the world slept. I was good at
it because I learned to see people as variables in
an equation, numbers to be calculated, not lives to be mourned.
(00:48):
But tonight, sitting in my empty apartment in Tel Aviv,
with my brother's dog tags on the table beside me,
I need to tell someone what really happened, what we did,
what it cost, and whether any of it was worth
what we became. This is episode one, the heist. This
(01:17):
story begins on a winter night in Tehran seven years ago.
But to understand why twenty two Israeli operatives risked everything
to break into a warehouse in an industrial district called Shabad,
you need to understand that I was never supposed to
be the one making these calculations. That was Daniel's destiny.
My older brother was everything I wasn't charismatic, fearless, a
(01:40):
natural leader who joined sire at Matkal and seemed destined
for legend. I was the quiet one, the mathematician, content
solving theoretical problems in university lecture halls, while Daniels saved
the world March twenty seventh, two thousand and two, and ied,
and Jeanine and three of his men gone in an instant.
(02:03):
I was twenty nine, finishing my PhD in applied mathematics,
planning a life of academic obscurity. Instead, I found myself
holding Daniel's body while Metics covered the stretcher, his dog
tags warm in my palm from the heat of the explosion.
Three months later, I walked into Masad headquarters and volunteered
to become someone I never wanted to be. They said
(02:25):
I had a gift for seeing patterns others missed, for
coordinating impossibly complex operations, because I thought in systems, not emotions.
Where others saw chaos, I saw interconnected probabilities. It was
exactly the wrong skill for a man carrying his brother's ghost,
but it made me very good at my job. By
twenty seventeen, I'd been coordinating sensitive operations for fifteen years,
(02:50):
assassinations in Damascus, cyber warfare against nuclear facilities, the kind
of work that keeps the world spinning while slowly hollowing
out whatever's left of your See. I kept a private
file of everyone who died because of operations i'd planned,
enemy and ally alike, Their names, their families, their dreams
(03:10):
i'd helped destroy. It was my penance, my way of
ensuring their sacrifices weren't anonymous. The file was already thick
when Director Yosi Cohen called me into his office on
a gray November morning. Marcus, he said, sliding a classified
folder across his mahogany desk, I need you to coordinate
something unprecedented. The photographs inside showed a run down warehouse
(03:34):
in Tehran's Shorabad district, unremarkable concrete walls, corrugated steel roof,
a small office attached to the front, but satellite imagery
revealed reinforced steel doors and power consumption patterns consistent with
climate control systems protecting sensitive materials. Project Ahmad. Cohen continued
(03:54):
Iran's nuclear weapons program. Western intelligence assumed it was shelved
in two thousand and three. We now know better the
complete archives are hidden in that building, blueprint specifications, test data, video,
documentation of warhead designs, everything they need to build fifteen
nuclear weapons. I studied the floor plans, guard schedules, security systems,
(04:17):
mathematical problems wrapped in geopolitical consequences. Sir, the logistics alone
are impossible, he finished, which is why we're going to
do it. Prime Minister Weiss wants this not copies, not photographs,
the actual documents, all of them. Weiss, Benjamin Weiss, had
(04:39):
been pushing for military action against Iran's nuclear program for years.
This operation would either provide the evidence to justify strikes
or the intelligence to prevent them. Either way, it meant
crossing lines we'd never crossed before. How many lives are
we calculating here, I asked. It was my standard question,
(05:00):
the mathematical baseline for any operation. Cohen's expression darkened. If
Iran completes their weapons program, we're looking at nuclear war
in the Middle East, millions dead. If this operation fails
and we're exposed, we might trigger that war early. And
if we succeed, he paused, we'll have stolen state secrets
(05:20):
from a sovereign nation. The consequences could be severe. I nodded.
The math was brutal, but clear. Steal the archives, prevent
nuclear war, get caught, possibly start one, do nothing, definitely,
Phase one later. Sometimes the calculations make themselves. I'll need
three months to plant it properly, I said, you have
(05:43):
four weeks. The planning consumed my life, twenty hour days
in secure briefing rooms, coordinating with assets I couldn't name,
reviewing intelligence from sources I couldn't verify. We identified our
window Tuesday night, January three, thirtieth into Wednesday morning, January
thirty first, twenty eighteen. The warehouse operated on skeleton security,
(06:08):
two guards, completing final rounds at ten thirty pm, not
returning until seven am, eight and a half hours, barely
enough for what we needed to accomplish. The team was
small by necessity, twenty two operatives, each hand picked for
specific skills. Sarah Rosen would lead Entry, a former paratrooper
who could cut through steel like paper. Eli Davidson handled
(06:31):
electronics and surveillance countermeasures. David Stern managed transportation and extraction routes.
And then there was doctor Miriam Levy, our most valuable
and most vulnerable asset. Miriam was a linguistics professor from
Hebrew University who'd spent six months in Tehran the previous
year establishing academic credentials while conducting reconnaissance. Her mission had
(06:53):
been simple in concept, terrifying in execution. Pose is a
French researcher studying Persian lettergy establish a pattern of evening
walks through Shrabad and map every detail a casual observer
might notice. The neighborhood is working class, she'd reported in
her debriefing, her hands still shaking slightly from months of
(07:14):
living a lie. People mind their own business. The mosque's
prayer schedule creates predictable foot traffic, and there's a twenty
four hour tea house three blocks away where truck drivers gather,
perfect for blending in. During extraction, She'd worn traditional Iranian dress,
accompanied by a male guardian, one of our deep cover assets,
(07:36):
and had spent weeks becoming a familiar face in the district.
Local residents grew accustomed to seeing the quiet academic in
her protective companion strolling past at the same time each evening.
What they didn't know was that Miriam was memorizing guard rotations,
delivery schedules in the precise moment each night when the
warehouse stood completely undefended. The weight of using her, a
(07:59):
civilian academic with no combat training, for such a dangerous operation,
sat heavy in my calculations, But the intelligence sheet gathered
was irreplaceable, another variable in an equation that had to
balance regardless of the human cost. Three days before the operation,
I received the final intelligence briefing that made my blood
(08:20):
run cold. Our sources confirmed the warehouse contained thirty two
reinforced safs, each approximately two meters tall, constructed of hardened steel.
We couldn't cut through all of them in one night.
It would take days. Instead, we'd identified six saves marked
with discrete symbols that contained the core documentation of Project Demand.
(08:42):
Six safes forty minutes each to breach properly four hours
of cutting minimum. That left four and a half hours
for infiltration, document extraction, clean up, and withdrawal from the
heart of enemy territory. The margins for error were essentially zero.
On the evening of January thirtieth, I set in my
control center, three floors beneath Tel Aviv, surrounded by screens
(09:05):
showing satellite feeds, encrypted communications channels, and real time updates
from our advanced team already in Tehran. They'd entered the
country days earlier using Canadian passports, Their cover stories as
software consultants visiting Iranian technology companies meticulously crafted to with
stand scrutiny. At exactly ten fifteen pm Tehran time, our
(09:29):
surveillance confirmed the guards completing their evening rounds, two men
in their fifties, following the same routine they'd maintained for months.
They locked the facility and departed in their small sedan,
unaware that twenty two shadows were converging on their warehouse
archive control. This is blackbird, Sarah's voice, crackled through my headset.
(09:49):
Perimeter is clear beginning approach. I watched through night vision
cameras as our team moved through the Tehran darkness. Sarah
and her entry specialists, Eli with his electronic warfare equipment,
David coordinating multiple extraction routes, and twenty others whose names
I won't mention, whose faces I can't forget. The warehouse
(10:12):
looked innocent enough under the winter moon, concrete walls weathered
by decades of Tehran pollution, a small sign in Farsi
identifying it as document storage Facility seven. Nothing to suggest
it hows the most dangerous secrets in the Middle East
Blackbird to archive control, Sarah reported electronic countermeasures deployed alarm
(10:34):
systems are dark. ELI had spent months studying the warehouse's
security set up standard Iranian government installation, motion sensors, door contacts,
basic surveillance cameras, sophisticated enough to deter common criminals, primitive
enough that our electronic warfare capabilities could neutralize them without
triggering backup alerts. Entry Team, you are clear to breach,
(10:57):
I transmitted. The cutting began at twelve oh one am.
Sarah and her team used specialized Israeli designed torch equipment
that could slice through reinforced steel while maintaining precise temperature
control to avoid heat signatures detectable by satellite surveillance. The
main door yielded in six minutes and forty three seconds.
(11:20):
I know because I was timing everything, calculating every variable
that might mean the difference between success and catastrophe. Archive
control were inside, Sarah whispered, confirming thirty two containers as
briefed beginning selective extraction. The interior matched our intelligence exactly.
(11:42):
Thirty two safes arranged in precise rows, each containing fragments
of Iran's nuclear weapons program. Our technical team had practiced
on identical safes for months in a facility outside Tel Aviv,
but practice and reality are different mathematical equations. The cutting resumed.
Each safe required approximately forty minutes to breach, careful work
(12:04):
that couldn't be rushed without damaging the contents or triggering
vibration sensors we might have missed. As the first safe open,
revealing meticulously organized filing systems and digital storage devices, I
felt the weight of what we were attempting. These weren't
just classified documents, they were the architectural blueprints for nuclear
war in the Middle East. Archive control David's voice carried
(12:28):
unusual tension. We have a problem. My blood temperature dropped
five degrees. Report. Safe number four contains more material than anticipated.
The volume. We're going to need additional transport capacity. This
was a contingency we'd planned for, but planning and execution
are different kinds of mathematics. Each operative carried specialized equipment
(12:52):
designed to compress and protect document storage, but the sheer
quantity of material was overwhelming our capacity. Safe number four
alone contained what appeared to be fifty thousand pages of documentation,
engineering specifications for nuclear weapon components, test data from explosive
lens experiments, video recordings of senior Iranian officials discussing warhead
(13:17):
delivery systems, and photographs. Dozens of photographs showing construction at
military facilities that officially didn't exist. Implement backup protocol. I
ordered photograph everything we can't physically extract. High resolution photography
began immediately. Military grade cameras captured every page, every diagram,
(13:40):
every handwritten note with forensic precision, but the physical documents
remained our priority. These were the evidence that would prove
Iran's deception to the world. Hours passed, the Tehran night
remained quiet, but tension mounted with each passing minute. At
three thirty am, AUR perimeters Security reported increased police activity
(14:03):
six blocks away routine patrol adjustments, but concerning nonetheless archive control,
Sarah reported Safes one through six are fully compromised. We've
extracted approximately fifty thousand pages of hard copy documentation and
one hundred and sixty three digital storage devices, ready to
begin cleanup and withdraw. The cleanup process was as critical
(14:27):
as the extraction itself. Our team carefully arranged the open
safes to obscure the extent of what had been taken.
Random papers were scattered to suggest a hurried search rather
than methodical intelligence gathering. Electronic countermeasures were withdrawn, allowing security
systems to come back online without indicating they'd ever been compromised.
(14:48):
All teams I transmitted initiate extraction protocol. The withdrawal was
a masterpiece of coordination. Twenty two operatives carrying half a
ton of stolen intelligence melting into the Tehran Knight using
six different routes. Some posed as early morning laborers heading
to construction sites. Others adopted the personas of medical workers
(15:09):
finishing night shifts. Two operatives used motorcycle courier services, their
document containers disguised as delivery packages. But the real genius
was in the decoy operation. As our primary extraction teams
moved through the city, additional MASAD operatives, who had no
knowledge of the true mission, conducted highly visible surveillance activities
(15:31):
in completely different parts of Tehran. These decoy operations were
designed to be detected, drawing Iranian counterintelligence attention away from
Shoabad Blackbird clear of the objective. Sarah reported at four
forty seven am all teams report clear, David confirmed twenty
three minutes later. By six am, every operative had reached
(15:52):
predetermined safehouses or extraction points. The stolen intelligence was being
transmitted digitally to Tel Aviv, and his physical documents were
smuggled out of Iran through roots that remained classified. At
seven point fifteen am, Iranian security guards arrived at the
Shabad warehouse for their morning shift. They discovered the breach immediately,
(16:14):
but the full extent of what had been stolen wouldn't
become clear for hours. By then, MASSAD operatives were boarding
flights from three different countries, carrying diplomatic pouches that would
never be inspected. I remained in my Tel Aviv control
center for thirty six straight hours, monitoring extraction routes and
coordinating with field teams until every operative was confirmed safe.
(16:38):
The intelligence windfall was extraordinary, one hundred thousand pages of
documentation proving that Iran's nuclear weapons program had never truly ended.
But as I sat in that windowless room, surrounded by
the evidence of our success, I found myself thinking about
doctor Ahmad Tarani. We'd identified him in the stolen documents,
(16:59):
a brilliant run nuclear physicist who'd spent years working on
what he believed was peaceful atomic research. His handwritten notes
filled dozens of pages, meticulous calculations for uranium enrichment processes
that had obvious weapons applications. In the margins, he'd drawn
sketches of his daughter, a medical student in London who
(17:20):
dreamed of returning to Iran to help build hospitals. Doctor
Tehrani had no idea his peaceful research was feeding a
weapons program. He was just a scientist trying to serve
his country while supporting his daughter's education abroad. But the
documents we'd stolen would eventually make him a target, would
force him to choose between his homeland and his conscience.
(17:41):
Another name for my private file, another human cost in
the equation of preventing nuclear war. Three months later, Prime
Minister Weiss would stand before the world in a dramatic
(18:02):
presentation revealing Iran's deception, using the very documents we'd stolen
from that warehouse in Shoabad. Within weeks, President Mitchell would
withdraw the United States from the Iranian Nuclear Agreement, citing
evidence that the regime had violated the spirit of the accord.
But that night in January, as snow fell over Tehran,
and Iranian security forces began their frantic investigation. I knew
(18:26):
we'd crossed the line we could never uncross. We'd reached
into the heart of our enemies most protected secrets and
emerged with proof of their lives. The archive heist was complete.
Project Ahmad's secrets belonged to Israel. But sitting here now,
seven years later, with Daniel's dog tags warm in my
palm and that private file of names growing thicker every year,
(18:50):
I have to ask the question that haunts every equation
I've ever calculated. Was it worth it? The documents we
stole that night would eventually lead to the operation the
world knows as Rising Lion. They would provide the intelligence
for precision strikes that prevented Iran from building fifteen nuclear weapons.
They would save millions of lives that would have been
(19:12):
lost to nuclear war. But they would also cost us
everything we had left to lose. Doctor Ahmad TEHRANI never
made it home to see his daughter graduate medical school.
Captain Reza Amiri, the Iranian intelligence officer who began hunting
us after that warehouse heist, would die defending Tehran from
our final assault, and somewhere in the shadows of a
(19:33):
seven year shadow war, Marcus Cole would discover that preventing
the apocalypse requires becoming something monstrous. That's the real mathematics
of modern espionage. Every operation saves some lives by destroying others.
Every success carries the weight of those who didn't survive
your calculations. I've spent seven years asking myself if the
(19:55):
equation balanced, if the nuclear war we prevented was worth
a shadow we fought, if the lives we saved justified
the lives we sacrificed. I still don't know the answer,
but I know the story deserves to be told, all
of it, the brilliance and the brutality, the impossible decisions
in their human costs, the seven years that began with
(20:17):
twenty two shadows in a Tehran warehouse and ended with
the operation that changed everything. Next time, I'll tell you
about Colonel Darius Karimi, the Iranian intelligence officer tasked with
finding the operatives who robbed that warehouse. What we didn't
know then was that Colonel Karimi had been working for
US all along, and doctor Ahmad Tarani was about to
(20:40):
discover that his peaceful research had been feeding a weapons
program designed to incinerate cities. Some equations take years to balance,
some prices take decades to pay. Welcome to Operation Rising Lion.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
This episode is a production of Caloroga Shark MAE executive
producers Mark Francis and John McDermott. For more shows like
this based on real world events, please go to callaoga
dot com. The link is in the show notes. AI
production assistance may have been used in this series.
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