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Former spy Michael Ross was on Mossad’s very first pathfinding mission into Iran in 1993.

As a combatant in the Israeli intelligence service, he knows any covert operation — such as the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist this week by a hitman on a motorcycle — is the culmination of a finely honed plan.

“There would have been a huge mosaic of activity going on around [the targeted killing],” said Mr. Ross, who is no longer in the field but still uses a pseudonym.

“How did the assassin know what car he was in? What street he was on? What time he’d be there?”

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