Israel’s Spies, Iran’s Counter-Spies

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After Israel’s twelve-day war with Iran, the Iranians — humiliated by the amount of information the Israelis had acquired about their country that allowed them to assassinate leading military men and nuclear scientists, and to attack nuclear sites that had been kept top secret, such as the facility at Parchin, the Iranians began to flail about. In a fury, they rounded up hundreds of those they called Israeli spies, but there is reason to believe that their hysteria misled them, and the real spies are still methodically plying their trade inside Iran, while those picked up, the Iranians to their chagrin will discover, turn out to be innocent after all.

More on some of the comical episodes of Iranian counterespionage, and on the remarkable achievements of Israel’s spies, can be found here: “Iran’s Crazy Search for Spies,” by A.J. Caschetta, IPT News, July 3, 2025:

As Iranian officials flail about, arresting hundreds of innocent people and executing “dozens” of alleged spies, now is a good time to recall that among all the things the Islamic Republic is terrible at, its feeble attempts at counter-espionage stand out as especially inept. While IRGC and other regime goons search frantically in the most bizarre places for foreign and domestic enemies, an intricate espionage network has been growing right under their noses.

Israeli intelligence officers have been smuggling weapons, drones, communication gear, and even vehicles into Iran for years using “suitcases, trucks and tankers.” They and their Iranian agents have been spreading equipment throughout the Islamic Republic.

And what have Iran’s “crazy state” counterespionage professionals been doing?

In 2007, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported that “in recent weeks intelligence operatives have arrested 14 squirrels within Iran’s borders … The squirrels were carrying spy gear of foreign agencies, and were stopped before they could act, thanks to the alertness of our intelligence agencies.” While the “alert” intelligence agents were preoccupied with spy squirrels, real spies were busy downloading the Stuxnet supervirus into Iran’s enrichment facilities, causing their centrifuges to spin out of control.

Think of that. Squirrels, four of them, the Sciurine Spies who came in from the cold, carrying spy gear — they must have been very strong, those squirrels, but fortunately, the brilliant Iranian counter-spies managed to stop them before they could turn over that spy gear to agents inside Iran. A major threat, a close call, but the Iranians were there to foil the furry-tailed malefactors

In October 2008, Iranian authorities detained two pigeons caught “spying” near the Natanz nuclear facility. Oddly enough, it was not the first case of suspected avian eavesdropping around Natanz. The Etemad Melli newspaper quoted Commander Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moqadam who confirmed the arrests and added that weeks earlier, “a black pigeon was caught bearing a blue-coated metal ring with invisible strings.” As Iranian authorities investigated birds, nearby, undetected Mossad agents photographed the reactor site, mapped entrances and ventilation shafts, and took GPS coordinates.

Pigeons, yet, spying on the nuclear facility at Natanz, but discovered by alert Iranians such as Commander Moqadam. How did he know about the ”invisible strings”? The pigeons, of course, were arrested. I assume they were given a brief trial, then executed.

During the drought of 2017-18, Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali accused Israel of “working to ensure clouds entering Iranian skies are unable to release rain.” Jalali, then the head of Iran’s Civil Defense Organization, claimed that “Joint teams from Israel and one of the neighboring countries make the clouds entering Iran barren. Moreover, we are faced with the cases of cloud theft and snow theft.” While Iranian generals looked to the clouds, down on earth, Israeli spies catalogued the regime’s “safe houses.”

Those diabolical Israelis, making sure that all the clouds entering the skies of Iran would not be able to release any rain. And what’s more, Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali has insisted that there was “cloud theft and snow theft,” which must have been one more dirty trick by those preternaturally wicked Israelis. Quaere: How exactly do you steal clouds? Or snow?

In February 2018, Hassan Firuzabadi, a senior military advisor to Khamenei, boasted about Iran’s success in detecting Western spies with an anecdote about a group of people who had infiltrated Iran with “a variety of reptile desert species like lizards, chameleons … We found out that their skin attracts atomic waves and that they were nuclear spies who wanted to find out where inside the Islamic Republic of Iran we have uranium mines and where we are engaged in atomic activities.”

General Firuzabadi, the former chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, couldn’t resist a taking a parting shot, boisterously claiming that Western spy agencies “failed every time.”

Think of all those lizards and chameleons who were smuggled into Iran by Mossad, because the reptiles’ skin “attracts atomic waves.” Amazing, but true. Say, what is an “atomic wave”? Anyway, they were like the wands of the rhabdomancers, their skin changing texture, or color, or something, when the reptiles were brought close to an uranium mine or an uranium enrichment plant. Amazing, but true. How did the Iranians manage to ferret out those reptiles and their handlers? Try as the Israelis might, it’s obvious they are outmatched, foiled at every turn by Iranian counter-spies.