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June 14, 2025 1 min
Operation Rising Lion is the untold story of one of history's most audacious intelligence campaigns, narrated by the man who lived it.Marcus Cole spent twenty years coordinating Mossad's most sensitive operations. Now, at 52, he's ready to tell the story that's haunted him for seven years—how a midnight heist in Tehran sparked a shadow war that prevented nuclear catastrophe and cost him everything he had left to lose.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
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, missions that changed history while the
world slept. I was good at it because I could
see people as numbers in an equation, variables to be calculated,
not lives to be mourned. My brother Daniel was supposed

(00:22):
to be the hero. He died in Jennin in two
thousand and two, and I've been carrying his dog tags
ever since. Three months after his funeral, I walked into
MASAD headquarters and volunteered to become someone I never wanted
to be. January twenty eighteen, we had six hours to
steal a RAN's nuclear secrets from a warehouse in Tehran.

(00:44):
That heist was just the beginning of seven years. I
can't forget seven years of impossible decisions, seven years of
trading lives like chess pieces. June thirteenth, twenty twenty five,
Operation Rising Lion, ulmination of everything we built, everyone we'd sacrificed,
every line we'd crossed to prevent nuclear war. I keep

(01:07):
a private file of everyone who died because of operations.
I coordinated their names, their families, their dreams I help destroy.
This is their story and mine and maybe yours if
you can stomach the math of saving the world. Operation
Rising Lion available wherever you get your podcasts.
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