(Washington Post) Souad Mekhennet - Israeli security officials knew that to do more than fleeting damage to Iran's sprawling nuclear program, they had to decimate the "brain trust," a generation of Iranian engineers and physicists who U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials believed were working on turning fissile nuclear material into an atomic bomb. On June 13, in the opening minutes of Israel's 12-day war with Iran, Operation Narnia, the campaign against Iran's top nuclear scientists, got underway. Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, a theoretical physicist and explosives expert under U.S. sanctions for his nuclear weapons work, was killed in his Tehran apartment. Fereydoun Abbasi, a nuclear physicist who once led Iran's atomic energy organization and was under U.S. and UN sanctions, died in another strike in Tehran two hours later. In all, Israel said it assassinated 11 senior Iranian nuclear scientists. Iran's nuclear work probably has been set back years, officials from Israel, the U.S. and the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency said. In mid-April, President Trump gave Iran 60 days to agree to a nuclear deal. The deadline expired on June 12. He and Netanyahu maneuvered to keep the Iranians unprepared for what would happen next. Trump told reporters on June 12 that he preferred a negotiated solution. Israeli officials leaked word that top Netanyahu adviser Ron Dermer and Mossad chief David Barnea would soon meet U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff. A new round of U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks was scheduled for June 15. Israel had decided to strike, as the U.S. well knew. The planned diplomacy was a ruse, and officials from both countries encouraged media reports of a U.S.-Israeli rift. "All the reports that were written about Bibi not being on the same page with Witkoff or Trump were not true," a person familiar with the matter said. "But it was good that this was the general perception." Even after the Israeli bombing, the Trump administration made a final diplomatic push on June 15 and secretly transmitted a proposal to Iran to resolve the standoff over its nuclear program. The terms of the proposed deal included Tehran ending support for proxies such as Hizbullah and Hamas, as well as "replacing" the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant and "any other functioning facility" with alternative facilities that do not allow enrichment. In return, the U.S. would lift "all sanctions placed on Iran." Shortly after the U.S. transmitted the proposal to Iran via Qatari diplomats, Tehran rejected it, and Trump authorized U.S. strikes.