Continuing along this same road, drivers heading for Abdanan would pass through the Kabir Kooh Gorge, land that had been a trail through this section of the Zagros mountains for centuries. At the highest point of the gorge, as you drive along the eastern slope of the Kabir Kooh peak, you would be forgiven if you failed to notice a non-descript road about four meters wide that ran off to the east. The turnoff for this road was only seven miles driving distance from the fountains of Sarab-e Derrah Shahr.
The road has no markings to identify it, but if the curious turned onto it they would be soon met by ominous signs, written in Farsi, Arabic and English, that identified the road as Iranian military property, warning any vehicle that the use of deadly force was authorized if they continued any further. A single swinging metal pole — the type that guards the driveways of isolated farms the world over — acts as the sole barrier to progress. It is only twenty meters or so further past the sign and has no lock, just a simple latch.
Those who are authorized — or the foolhardy — need drive only one mile and four hairpin turns further to arrive at the site of the Dehloran early warning radar, an indigenous Iranian-built Ghadir radar system installed in the summer of 2012. Perched on a small knob at an altitude of 6,068 feet, the radar can pick up aircraft flying at a range of up to 450 kilometers from the installation, depending upon atmospheric conditions. The site is so strategically located that the Iraqi army had set its capture as one of its early objectives during the opening weeks of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980. The Iraqis failed in their attempt, stopped by the sacrifice and determined fighting of Iranian army and air force units.
The Ghadir radar is a new system built by Iran and based on the Russian Nebo UE “Tall Rack” radar system. The long wavelength of the system helps it to identify and track smaller targets such as drones, cruise missiles and — according to the Iranians — stealth aircraft. The system was a meaningful upgrade from the prior Russian built P-14 Tall King that had been inside the radar dome for many years prior to 2012.
But for the planners at Mount Olympus, the capabilities of the radar itself were not important. What was important was the integrated air defense network to which the radar was connected. The Iranians had learned the lessons of the preceding years well and they had spent handsomely to separate their radar network from the internet or any other network connected to the outside world. However, they also knew that a modern air defense network had to be connected across as many radars as possible to be effective and survive an intensive air assault.
Not only was the exchange of information across the network essential, but the ability to turn radars on and off intermittently — one radar tracking a target for a few seconds and then shutting down and handing the tracking off to another radar — has become a key tactic to survive the wave of incoming radar-homing missiles that is the standard opening air assault tactic of the U.S. or Israeli Air Force. Next to the nuclear program itself, there had been no higher defense priority in the Islamic Republic of Iran than the creation of a modern integrated radar network that was isolated from the outside world. The senior officers of the Olympus planning team were counting on the success of the Iranians in this effort.
After almost ten hours of hard and winding mountain driving to cover only 342 miles of roadway, Hamak Arsadian turned his MAN tractor-trailer unit right as it entered the town of Derrah Shahr. He then drove another five and a half miles before turning into the large parking area of Sarab-e Derrah Shahr. Arsadian found a spot to turn around and then parked his rig. He and Yoni Ben Zeev — still in his guise as Younis Mohammed, the helper — stepped out of the tractor, each man stretching in the way that is automatic after a long road trip. They spent the next forty minutes walking around the grounds of the facility, enjoying the garden and the fountains, as everyone was doing that was there on this beautiful spring day. They stopped in front of a cart vendor as the sun settled lower into the western horizon and purchased a Kurdish meal of lamb strips and tea.
Both men walked to a nearby masonry wall that was about a meter tall and capped with a granite cornice. They sat down to enjoy their meal and the spring sunshine. Yoni Ben Zeev thought about the beauty of this location and the coming storm that would engulf both Iran and Israel. He desperately tried to get the thought out of his mind, turning to Hamak to engage in small talk in Farsi. As he started to ask a question about the weather, a small trembler shook the ground and the wall the two men were sitting on. It successfully jolted Ben Zeev’s mind out of his prior thoughts. “What was that?”
Arsadian smiled. “Earthquake. Not used to them?” The fact was that Ben Zeev was not used to feeling earthquakes. But in the Zagros mountains, which were formed by the subduction of the Arabian sub-continental plate beneath the main Eurasian continental plate, they were a very common experience. The Israeli commando didn’t respond. “You feel them all the time here in the Zagros.”
The Israeli shivered. “Odd feeling,” was all he added. He checked his watch. It was almost six in the evening Iranian time. The sun had set only minutes earlier. “Let’s finish and get out of here.”
Inside the trailer, the men of Task Force Camel opened their trap door and let the cool mountain air ventilate their temporary prison. They knew they still had six hours to wait. Some men continued to sleep, but others checked their weapons. Manu checked the status of several ruggedized laptop computers the team was carrying and the satellite communications gear they had available. One man read a novel he had sneaked into his backpack against orders. It was in English. When he pulled it out, he argued that it did not violate the rule against carrying anything Israeli. As he had correctly calculated, no one cared at this point.
Arsadian and Ben Zeev returned to the truck and started up the engine. The Armenian driver pulled back onto the Derrah Shahr-Abdanan road, now heading back toward the town of Derrah Shahr. He drove only about 300 meters — just enough to navigate a bend in the road. He pulled over onto a flat sandy section of runoff. Arsadian shut down the engine and reached back to pull down the bed that ran behind the rear of the cab. “You are welcome to it,” he said to Ben Zeev.
“No. I am wide awake. Please.” Ben Zeev motioned toward the bunk, officially ceding it to the Armenian. Hamak Arsadian slipped off his shoes and crawled into the small bunk rack. The Israeli captain entered the simple “3-2-1” code into the truck’s SatNav unit, informing Mount Olympus that they were in position for the evening.
As darkness settled over the Folded Zagros mountains on October 4, Captain Yoni Ben Zeev of the Israeli Defense Force leaned his head back against the passenger seat head rest and closed his eyes, searching for any way to make the time go by faster.
43 — The Climb to Dehloran
A little before 11 p.m., Captain Ben Zeev exited the tractor cab and walked back a few meters to slip underneath the trailer and up and through the trap door. He lifted himself into the trailer compartment. “Ready to do what we came here for?” asked the captain to his team as he closed the hatch underneath his feet.
He was greeted by a soft chorus of affirmative responses. He spent ten minutes changing into the uniform of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the same uniform now worn by his team. He lifted up his new backpack and reached in to pull out a checklist. He spent the next fifteen minutes reviewing with each man the equipment in their possession to make sure that they departed this trailer with everything they would need.
When the captain was done, he returned the paper to his pack and grabbed the last M-4 carbine. Like all the others, it had a long suppressor on the muzzle threads in lieu of the standard issue flash hider. He then spent a half hour reviewing each step of the mission with his men, making absolutely sure that each man knew his role in the upcoming operation. When the time came, everyone would need to act as instinctively as possible.