As Israel and Iran slide deeper into war, Russia-Ukraine negotiations appear stalled, and the outlines of a broader US-Iran-Russia-China confrontation take shape, it’s worth pausing to consider a remarkable series of recent operations we might tentatively call ‘unconventional strategic strikes.’
Most recently—with many details still emerging—last week Israeli special operators and intelligence teams conducted a deep-penetration strike against Iran, just hours (or in some cases minutes) before Israeli conventional air attacks struck the country.
The preliminary strikes for Operation Rising Lion seem to have been months or years in the preparation. Israel’s foreign intelligence service, Mossad, allegedly established a covert drone base within Iran, smuggling short-range precision missiles, weapon-carrying vehicles and drones into the country and infiltrating a team of special operators close to Tehran.
The goal of the operation, launched in the early hours of 13 June, was to disable Iran’s air defences and disrupt command-and-control by targeting military and political decision-makers, headquarters and command facilities using shoulder-fired missiles and drones. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) was a particular target, along with Iran’s military forces. Iranian government sources blamed Israel for several ground assaults and five car bombings across Tehran, which Israel has denied. Mossad allegedly also carried out several covert sabotage operations deep inside Iran against air defence systems and long-range missiles.
As soon as the special operations strikes were completed, Israeli Air Force aircraft began launching conventional airstrikes on targets across Iran, including nuclear facilities, headquarters, oil and gas centres and government buildings. Several very senior Iranian officers—including the head of the IRGC’s Quds Force, Hossein Salami, Iran’s overall military chief Mohammed Bagheri, senior intelligence and operations chiefs, the head of IRGC’s intelligence branch Hassan Mohaqeq and, allegedly, the entire senior leadership of the IRGC Aerospace Force have been killed. Nuclear, military and civilian facilities have been damaged in the airstrikes that followed the unconventional strike, and several Iranian nuclear weapons scientists have been killed.
It is obviously too early to tell the ultimate effect of the overall operation, which is ongoing. But in terms of immediate tactical effect, Mossad’s infiltration of special operators, precision weapons and drones into Iran appears to have taken down Iran’s air defences around key targets minutes or seconds before the first Israeli F-35 aircraft arrived overhead, implying tight operational coordination. Israel’s ability to operate with relative impunity over Iranian airspace, including over Tehran in daylight, with Iran claiming to have shot down only three Israeli F-35s, suggests the special operation was successful in achieving its goal.
Operation Rising Lion was just one of three major special operations over the last nine months that we could consider examples of the emerging technique of unconventional strategic strike. The other two were Israel’s September 2024 electronic device attack on Hezbollah, and Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web at the start of June, when drones disabled bombers thousands of kilometres inside Russia.
Each strike was different, but they shared several common features. Each had a strategic (i.e., national-level rather than solely battlefield) purpose, employed unconventional means and methods, was directed at the highest level, incurred significant political risk, involved long-term clandestine and covert operations, was conducted by a mix of intelligence and special operations personnel, and successfully set conditions for follow-on action.
September 2024, Lebanon: Electronic Device Attacks
Over two days in mid-September 2024, thousands of Hezbollah pagers and hundreds of handheld radios in Lebanon simultaneously exploded. The explosions killed 42 people, allegedly wounded 4000 civilians and put at least 1500 Hezbollah operatives out of action due to injuries. The attack took place in two waves, the first targeting pagers while the second, the following day, hit handheld radios.
It later emerged that Mossad had placed tiny three-gram charges of the powerful explosive PETN into the devices’ rechargeable battery packs and infiltrated them into Hezbollah’s procurement system, selling up to 15,000 pagers to the group while using at least three front companies to obscure its involvement. Mossad spent seven months pre-positioning (or ‘staging’) the explosive-laced devices across Lebanon.
Israel had allegedly been planting explosive-laced communication devices across Lebanon since at least 2015 but used them only to monitor Hezbollah rather than for lethal attacks. But after the Gaza War began in October 2023, a series of Israeli missile strikes convinced Hezbollah leaders that it was no longer safe to use smartphones and Hassan Nasrallah, the organisation’s chief, ordered the switch to pagers.
Israeli intelligence, through commercial front companies created for the purpose, offered explosive-laced pagers and walkie-talkies for sale at an attractive price, designing them to meet Hezbollah’s stated requirement for pagers with long-endurance rechargeable batteries. Mossad made fake marketing videos to help close the sale.
Allegedly manufactured by Mossad in its own workshops, the pagers mimicked an advanced Taiwanese design, were sold through a trading company based in Budapest, and were imported into Lebanon via Turkey. The amount of explosive was small enough, and sufficiently integrated into the devices’ battery packs, to be undetectable on airport security scanners.
Then in September, the doctored electronic devices simultaneously exploded. After emitting a beeping sound and showing an error message, they detonated when the user pressed a button to clear the error, ensuring many hand and eye injuries (including the blinding of Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon) since users were holding and looking at the devices when they exploded.
The operation massively disrupted Hezbollah command-and-control. Israel, which initially denied any role in the attacks, immediately followed them with ten days of conventional airstrikes across Lebanon, killing Hassan Nasrallah along with many members of Hezbollah’s senior leadership team and almost all their IRGC advisers.
With Hezbollah ‘decapitated’ and airstrikes ongoing, Israeli troops then launched a ground offensive into southern Lebanon, seizing key terrain and forcing a ceasefire with Hezbollah by late November. Hezbollah’s military power and political influence in Lebanon was severely damaged. Israel eventually, in mid-November, acknowledged its role in the attacks.
In essence, this was a multi-phase covert operation involving a conventional setup (the strikes that convinced Hezbollah to switch to pagers) followed by a long-range unconventional strategic strike, facilitated by clandestine infiltration of Hezbollah’s supply chain, then ten days of conventional airstrikes to decapitate Hezbollah’s leadership while its command-and-control system was disrupted, and finally a six-week conventional ground invasion that neutralised Hezbollah as a regional actor.
Days after Hezbollah adopted its ceasefire with Israel, Syrian rebels exploited Hezbollah’s disarray, Iran’s distraction after its October 2024 missile exchanges with Israel, and Russia’s focus on its autumn offensive in Ukraine, to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. Hezbollah—one of Assad’s three key allies, alongside Russia and Iran—would certainly have moved to support Syria’s regime, if not for the chaos and casualties it had just suffered.
Ukraine/Russia, June 2025: Operation Spider’s Web
On 1 June 2025 the security service of Ukraine, SBU, carried out a covert long-range strike against airbases across Russia. Drones hidden in shipping containers and cargo trucks, pre-positioned close to their targets, emerged and struck long-range aircraft including the Tu-95 and Tu-22 bombers that Russia uses to launch its highly destructive glide bombs into Ukraine and to carry its strategic nuclear deterrent, which forms the airborne leg of Moscow’s nuclear ‘triad.’
The SBU claimed 40 aircraft hit and 20 destroyed, while US and independent analysts were able to confirm that at least 20 aircraft were struck, more than half of which were damaged or destroyed. Ukraine also claimed a successful strike on one of Russia’s few A-50 ‘Mainstay’ airborne early warning and control aircraft, a critical national asset.
The drones struck aircraft in the open at five Russian airbases, several of which were thousands of kilometres from Ukraine. These included Olenya Airbase near Murmansk, well above the arctic circle, and Belaya Airbase in eastern Siberia, fully 4300 kilometres from Ukraine. Both for ambition and geographical reach, spanning five time zones, the operation was unprecedented.
Like Israel’s pager attacks or last week’s strikes in Iran, Operation Spider’s Web involved long-term planning and careful staging, with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky stating that it had been in preparation for more than 18 months. Also, like both the Israeli attacks, the operation was conducted by an integrated team of civilian intelligence personnel and military special operators and directed at the highest level: it was supervised by Zelensky himself, according to Ukraine, and controlled personally by Vasyl Malyuk, chief of the SBU.
The drones used were Ukrainian-made Wasp first-person-view (FPV) quadcopters, each of which carried a payload of about 3 kilograms. A total of around 120 were used. Manufactured in Ukraine, these were smuggled into Russia in parts, where SBU infiltration teams assembled and checked them, embedded them into truck and container roofs, then inserted them into Russia’s supply-chain system. Ukraine’s special operators seem to have established their own freight-handling company for the purpose in Chelyabinsk, near Russia’s southern border with Kazakhstan, as one hub for the operation. Kyiv claims that it safely evacuated all its infiltration teams from Russia before the operation began, a claim that cannot be independently verified.
The drone-carrying trucks and containers were driven by unwitting Russian contract drivers to cargo handling areas, petrol stations, truck stops, or other drop-off points close to the targeted airbases. Drivers received messages by mobile phone telling them where to drop off their containers. Shortly after arriving, or in at least one case while still on the move, the roof of each container opened and drones began launching, catching drivers and bystanders by surprise.
SBU operators in Ukraine flew the drones the short distance to their targets using open-source UAV piloting software that allows for dead-reckoning navigation, avoiding the need for GPS, which might have been jammed. SIM cards were allegedly embedded in each drone, letting them access local mobile phone networks and thus be controlled by cellphone; AI was used to resolve the millisecond time-delay inherent in such long-range control via phone. The AI was trained, using Soviet-era aircraft in Ukraine, to recognise specific aircraft types and vulnerable points, often fuel tanks, allowing operators to set large aircraft on fire despite small warheads.
Unlike Israel’s attacks on Lebanon or Iran, Operation Spider’s Web was not immediately followed by conventional attacks. Instead, in the lead-up to the latest round of Russo-Ukrainian peace talks, it seems to have had the strategic political goal of convincing President Putin (and perhaps President Trump) that Ukraine retains leverage and can inflict damage deep inside Russia. For the same reason, unlike Israel which initially denied its involvement in the Lebanon attacks, Ukraine immediately acknowledged its role and released key details. The operation seems to have caught the United States by surprise, although other allies may have known or assisted in it.
More immediately, the Russian air force was compelled to disperse its remaining strategic bombers even further east and north across the country, to avoid potential follow-on attacks. At the operational level, this means that the bombers Russia uses for glide-bomb attacks on Ukrainian cities and soldiers must now fly further, expend more fuel, stay in the air longer and be more easily detected, reducing their impact. It also forces Russia to commit more resources to guarding bases thousands of kilometres from the front lines, in a classic ‘diversionary’ use of special warfare.
Implications
These three attacks point to the emergence—through a combination of advanced technologies, inventive tactics and innovative organisational structures—of unconventional strategic strike. We might define an ‘unconventional strategic strike’ as a strike against a target of strategic importance, using a combination of non-military and unconventional military means, to achieve or enable a national-level objective.
Each operation was conducted by a combined team of civilian intelligence personnel and military special operators, over an extended period, at high operational and political risk, under close supervision from senior political and military leaders, by small teams that conducted long-duration infiltration and penetration of enemy supply chains, businesses and territory. Each seems to have comprised a small insertion team operating deep in enemy territory, with a larger ‘virtual overwatch’ group, located at a secure base area, giving over-the-shoulder support.
It is unclear whether local indigenous networks, proxy forces or local partners participated in the operations—but there is some circumstantial evidence for this, in two out of the three cases.
In Australian special operations parlance, we might term this a form of special warfare, with a combined civil-military special warfare team establishing an area complex through long-duration deep penetration, thereby enabling a strategic strike asset using non-conventional means to achieve a political outcome or ensure the success of follow-on military operations. In effect, it’s a kind of operation we already know how to do, but with the conventional strike asset (ships, missiles, warplanes, submarines) replaced by a non-conventional one.
From a defensive standpoint, the implications are stark. How secure are our procurement and supply-chain systems? Can we validate the contents of shipping containers, cargo trucks and railway systems close to airfields or critical infrastructure? Can we recognise an adversary’s front companies, in Australia or in the region, when we see them being set up? Are we confident that we could detect, in container handling facilities or airport security systems, the infiltration of small-scale explosive components as in Lebanon or drone parts as in Russia? Can we reliably jam and defeat small FPV drones that might swarm a military target or attack a political leader? What ‘staging’ actions might adversaries already be conducting in cyberspace? Could agricultural, energy or mining infrastructure be at risk in a future conflict? Are adversary infiltration teams already present? Have adversaries purchased real estate close to critical infrastructure that might facilitate this kind of attack? All these questions are almost certainly now being pondered in detail, in Australia as in every other country.
At the same time, from a purely professional military point of view, the opportunities are equally noteworthy. In each case, a middle power with a relatively modest defence budget—Israel’s official defence budget is about $37 billion, compared to around $56 billion for Australia and $144 billion for Ukraine—used large numbers of small, smart, stealthy systems, operated by small specialist teams dispersed over a wide area, to achieve a combined strategic strike on a distant, larger adversary, at a cost literally billions of dollars cheaper than would have been required for conventional assets such as submarines, surface ships, fighter aircraft or conventional land forces.
Though all these operations were delicate, requiring willingness to accept risk by political and military leaders, they enabled conventional forces to operate with far greater chance of success and at significantly lower cost than would otherwise have been the case. From a cost-benefit standpoint, the advantages seem clear.
For Israel’s most recent strikes on Iran, it is far too early to draw conclusions or make firm judgements on this approach. The legal and ethical aspects of all three operations are also highly contested, and in need of further study. But what we can say tonight, as bombs and missiles continue to drop on Tel Aviv, Tehran and Kyiv, is that we may be seeing the emergence of a new technique for unconventional strategic strike—something to which anyone concerned about national resilience or defence should be paying close attention.