Leaked audio of a call shows how, on June 13, as Israel began bombing Iran’s nuclear sites and assassinating key officials, its intelligence agents embarked on a campaign to threaten lower-level Iranian military leaders.

In the recording, published Monday by the Washington Post, an anonymous intelligence operative can be heard telling an Iranian general in Persian that he has 12 hours to flee with his family before Israel kills him.

“I can advise you now, you have 12 hours to escape with your wife and child,” says the intelligence operative, whose voice has been altered in the recording. “Otherwise, you’re on our list right now.”

The Post did not identify the Iranian general, who it said is believed to still be alive, and muted his voice on the call. It reported that the call was one of a number made to senior Iranian officials at the outset of Israel’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear program and military infrastructure, with the aim of destabilizing the country’s regime and threatening second- and third-tier officials who would replace the assassinated leaders.

At the beginning of the call, the operative identifies himself as coming from a country that “sent Salami, Bagheri and Shamkhani to hell,” referring to three senior Iranian leaders Israel killed at the beginning of the campaign. They are Hossein Salami, chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, Iran’s military chief; and Ali Shamkhani, a top adviser to Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.

The call, which the Post said only that it had received from an “Israeli individual who obtained the material,” appeared to have been part of the vast Israeli intelligence operation that accompanied the strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

The intelligence effort saw groups of agents and weapons covertly embedded in Iran. Along with assassinating military leaders, Israel also killed many of Iran’s top nuclear scientists. On Monday, a semi-official Iranian news agency said the country had executed someone arrested in 2023 for collaborating with Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.

The Prime Minister’s Office told The Times of Israel that it had no comment on the Washington Post report.

Later in the call, the operative tells the general to make a video denouncing the regime in Tehran, “saying we have walked away from this government, and we are unwilling to sacrifice our lives for people who destroyed our country for 46 years.”

The operative told the general to send the video via the encrypted messaging platform Telegram. The general asks where to send the video, though it is unclear whether he made one or sent it.

In the call, the operative says that Israel could kill the general on a moment’s notice.

“We’re closer to you than your own neck vein,” he said. “Put this in your head. May God protect you.”