Per Washington post:
Iran had good intelligence about these various hotels, they were right on the mark. gotta say they have been unusually good with their choices of targets this time.
Oof! That kind of precise time sensitive targeting is
usually only achievable if:
- The Iranians had assets on the ground in Bahrain conducting around the clock physical surveillance of USG personnel; or
- The Iranians compromised a selector (i.e. cell phone, laptop, tablet, etc. that can be precisely geolocated) belonging to someone targeted; or
- A third party — and there aren't exactly many of them with the technical means to compromise telecom infrastructure at the national level — fed the Iranians the targeting data.
Granted, there is also the possibility the Iranians have real time feeds of check-ins from multiple GCC hotels — if not hotel chains — popular with USG personnel, and cross referenced recent check-ins with known names and aliases of USG personnel.