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For years, Washington and Tel Aviv sold the world a simple story: Iran is the master of covert destabilization, the shadowy hand behind infiltration, sabotage, and political manipulation across the region. But as bombs now fall openly and leaders in both capitals openly call for regime change, that narrative is cracking under the weight of its own hypocrisy. Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain’s latest reporting reveals something less surprising than uncomfortable: Iran, too, has spent years probing for weakness inside Israel, recruiting small-time assets, spreading messages, and attempting its own low-grade influence operations inside a society already fractured by war, occupation, and internal political crisis.
None of this erases the overwhelming asymmetry. Israel’s intelligence apparatus has assassinated scientists, penetrated Iranian infrastructure, and operated for years with the tacit or direct backing of the United States, while Washington’s sanctions helped produce the very desperation later cited as proof of Iranian instability. What the new details expose is not some shocking revelation that states spy on one another, but how every side in this conflict wraps covert warfare in moral language while pretending its own hand is clean.
Now that covert struggle has burst into open war. Netanyahu speaks of liberation while missiles tear through Iranian cities; Trump talks of freedom while hinting he would accept almost any ruler so long as Tehran bends. Behind every speech about democracy sits the same old calculation: weaken the adversary, fracture society, and hope power falls in the right direction. The shadow war did not disappear when the bombing began—it merely moved into plain sight.
Drop Site News has reviewed internal Iranian intelligence briefing summaries, photographs, and operational materials detailing covert influence efforts aimed at Israeli citizens. The documents suggest that over the past three years Iranian intelligence has pursued a limited but deliberate campaign designed to deepen existing political fractures inside Israel while cultivating direct contacts with individual Israelis.
The reporting also draws on interviews with two Iranian officials, including one intelligence operative who said he worked directly on the program. Both were granted anonymity because they are not authorized to publicly acknowledge or deny the existence of the operations.
“A shadow war has been underway for years between Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other,” one of the officials told Drop Site. “Regarding operations of this nature, no responsibility has ever been officially claimed, nor is it likely to be. No country openly speaks about them.”
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