There was a time when foreign intelligence agencies denied involvement, hid behind euphemisms, and relied on plausible deniability. That time has passed. What accompanied the latest unrest in Iran was not merely an attempt to exploit social grievances, but something far more revealing: open signalling by Israeli intelligence and its political allies that they were present, active, and invested in the turmoil. When spies stop hiding, the objective is no longer secrecy; it is domination of perception.
This was not a covert operation gone wrong. It was a deliberate transformation of protest spaces into arenas of psychological pressure, where the mere suggestion of foreign presence was intended to shape behavior, embolden escalation, and intimidate the state. The message was simple and dangerous: the streets are no longer yours alone.
From Deniability to Declaration
The first crack in the façade came from Washington, not Tehran. Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly addressed Iranians “in the streets,” adding the now-infamous line: “and every Mossad agent walking beside them.” Intelligence officials do not make such remarks casually. Whether framed as mockery or encouragement, the statement shattered the long-standing Western insistence on “non-interference” and injected the idea of Israeli operatives embedded among demonstrators directly into public consciousness.
Israeli officials compounded the signal. An Israeli minister openly boasted that “our people are working there right now,” language that would once have been unthinkable in the intelligence world. These were not slips of the tongue; they were acts of communication. The intended audience was not only Iranian authorities, but protesters, security forces, and international media alike. The goal was not operational secrecy, but psychological leverage.
Israeli media reinforced this shift. A report in The Jerusalem Post acknowledged that Mossad no longer operates inside Iran with the level of concealment it once did, noting the participation of hundreds of Mossad personnel during the June 2025 confrontation that lasted twelve days. Shortly afterward, Mossad chief David Barnea issued a rare public statement hinting at continued Israeli activity inside Tehran, declaring that ‘Israel’ “will continue to be present there as it always has been.” For an intelligence chief, such language is not rhetorical, it is strategic.
The Streets as a Psychological Battlefield
The most striking development unfolded online. A Persian-language account widely attributed to Mossad urged Iranians to take to the streets, insisting: “We are with you—not only from afar and with words. We are with you on the ground.” Official denials followed, but they rang hollow. Intelligence services have long relied on deniable fronts, digital cutouts, and proxy messaging to conduct psychological operations. The content of the message mattered far more than the logo attached to it.
This was not intelligence gathering. It was behavioral engineering. Protesters were encouraged to believe they were backed by a powerful external actor. Security institutions were warned (implicitly) that any response would carry international consequences. Ordinary citizens were invited to doubt the state’s grip and imagine chaos as inevitable. These are the classic objectives of psychological warfare: fracture confidence, distort reality, and let perception do what force cannot.
Crucially, this framing has not remained confined to Iranian or resistance-aligned media. Al Jazeera aired a segment quoting analysis that Mossad agents were “hiding among Iranian demonstrators.” Regardless of the phrasing, the significance lies in the acknowledgment itself: the possibility of intelligence infiltration was treated as a serious analytical question, not a fringe claim. The narrative had entered the mainstream.
A Pattern, Not an Episode
Context matters. Iran is no stranger to covert action. The 2020 sabotage of the Natanz nuclear facility-initially claimed by a fictitious group and later widely attributed to Mossad-followed a familiar script of deniability and delayed admission. Iranian authorities have since announced multiple arrests of individuals accused of building Mossad-linked networks inside the country. The operational pattern is well established.
What is new is the abandonment of silence. When covert action gives way to public signalling, the mission changes. The objective is no longer to destroy a facility or eliminate a target, but to occupy the psychological space of a society under pressure. Protest becomes a tool; unrest becomes an amplifier.
Iran’s response disrupted this effort by stripping it of ambiguity. By distinguishing legitimate social demands from organized violence, presenting evidence of sabotage to foreign diplomats, and visibly mobilizing public support, Tehran denied the operation its most valuable asset: confusion. Psychological warfare loses its potency when exposed to daylight.
The implications extend far beyond Iran. If intelligence agencies normalize open interference and signalling within protest movements, then civil unrest anywhere becomes vulnerable to external capture. Demonstrations cease to be purely domestic expressions and risk becoming proxy battlegrounds in wider geopolitical conflicts.
What Iran faced was not simply unrest, but a test of whether perception could be weaponized more effectively than force. The significance of the moment lies in the abandonment of secrecy by foreign intelligence actors, whose open signalling sought to blur the boundary between internal dissent and external orchestration.
This model of interference does not aim for immediate collapse, but for sustained uncertainty; where confidence erodes quietly and legitimacy is placed under permanent strain. Iran’s experience underscores a wider reality: in an age of hybrid conflict, the most consequential battles are no longer fought over territory, but over who controls the narrative space in which societies interpret crisis itself.
Source: Al-Manar English Website