
Iran, the Nuclear Program, and Trump 2.0
As the second Trump Administration took office, it found a Middle East landscape that had been transformed dramatically in the last year alone. Nowhere is […] More
OPINION — Iran’s intelligence services, particularly its Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS), must have been awestruck by Israel’s late-September airstrike on Hezbollah’s underground Beirut headquarters. The Israeli intelligence coup that identified a gathering of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other senior Hezbollah commanders – and then turned it into a successful bombing target – was just one of multiple victories in an ongoing shadow war with Iran and its Axis of Resistance partners. The bombing also cost Iran the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] Deputy Commander for Operations, Brigadier General Abbas Nilforushan, who was killed alongside Nasrallah. With the prospect of wider war growing, Iran’s intelligence services may soon be compelled to try to reverse years of being overmatched by Israel’s intelligence capabilities.
Hezbollah, of course, bears the blame for the security failures that allowed Israel’s reported detonation of thousands of modified pagers and hand-held radios last month, which were followed by Israeli attacks on other senior Hezbollah leaders and Hezbollah positions that have killed hundreds of fighters and damaged or destroyed thousands of rockets and missiles. In July, however, it was Iran’s intelligence services that were embarrassed when Ismail Haniyeh, the chairman of the Hamas political bureau, was assassinated in an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) guesthouse in Tehran – in an attack that was also almost certainly carried out by Israel. Three months before that, Israel identified and bombed a meeting in Damascus of IRGC Qods Force (IRGC-QF) officers pursuing their service’s mission of supporting anti-Israel operations by Palestinian militants and Hezbollah. Major General Mohammed Reza Zahedi, the Qods Force’s top commander in Syria and Lebanon, died in that attack. After his death, Nilforushan was described by Iran’s Press TV as playing a crucial role in coordinating operations among the various resistance forces.
Israel’s advantage
Israeli intelligence has consistently excelled in its shadow conflict with Iran due to a combination of superior organization, advanced technology, and a focused, adaptive, and creative approach to its operations. The structure of Israel’s intelligence community, which includes the Mossad (foreign intelligence), Shin Bet (internal security), Aman (military intelligence) and Unit 8200, the signals and cyber intelligence agency, is efficient and specialized. Israeli intelligence excellence has also been spurred by external threats perceived as existential risks that concentrate efforts against Iran and its axis partners. Even when details are sparse, the services’ overt successes indicate significant cooperation in the execution of intelligence gathering, covert, and security operations. After thwarting several Iranian plots in the advanced stages of planning, the Shin Bet announced at the end of September that Iran had significantly increased its efforts to conduct assassinations in Israel.
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In contrast, while formidable in many respects, Iran’s intelligence services focus on internal security and monitoring dissidents, which diverts resources from external intelligence and counterintelligence work. Iranian intelligence is primarily made up of the MOIS, established in 1984, the IRGC Intelligence Organization (IRGC-IO), and the better known Qods Force. The IRGC-IO was set up after the anti-government 2009 Green Revolution protests and has an internal security focus, while the IRGC-QF has been active for decades, handling external operations and covert actions. Despite their strengths, these organizations face overlapping responsibilities, internal competition, and weak coordination. The internal focus of the MOIS and IRGC-IO, meanwhile, has fostered a culture of paranoia, making them more inward-looking. Even the external-oriented IRGC-QF, reliant on ties with non-state actors and the Syrian regime, faces limitations due to Iran’s regional isolation, making it harder to recruit assets and build networks beyond its existing resistance partners.
In recent years, Esmail Khatib, Iran’s intelligence minister since 2021, has repeatedly boasted about growing MOIS effectiveness, particularly in countering Israeli operations, to downplay this perception of Iranian intelligence. Indeed, his ministry has credibly claimed a series of intelligence victories in the past few years involving the dismantling of networks allegedly directed by Israel. However, the assassination of Haniyeh and other security failures highlight the limitations of Iran’s counterintelligence efforts. Meanwhile, the demonstration of Israel’s sophisticated intelligence and military capabilities to decapitate Hamas and Hezbollah creates an unfavorable contrast to the weakness of Iran’s external operations. In recent years, most of these operations have entailed failed attempts to target Iranian dissidents in Europe and the United States. Despite the Israeli threat, such Iranian efforts seem to take priority over foreign intelligence collection operations.
Since 2013, Iran has endured rather than found effective ways to counter Israel’s “campaign between the wars,” the series of operations that aimed at neutralizing Iranian threats in and arms flow through Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. For many years, most of these Israeli efforts focused on disrupting Iranian operations in Lebanon and Syria. In 2020, however, the high-profile assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a leading member of Iran’s nuclear program, in Tehran was followed by an explosion at the Natanz nuclear facility in 2021.
Criticism in Iran
Israel’s ability to penetrate Iranian security has prompted serious criticism within Iran about the failures but resulted in few meaningful changes. For example, in June 2022, Iran removed Hossein Taeb from command of the IRGC-IO, which he had led since its founding. Some attributed his removal to his organization’s repeated failures to prevent or exact revenge for Israeli operations inside Iran. This explanation, however, seems unlikely because Taeb’s replacement, IRGC Protection Organization chief Brigadier General Mohammad Kazemi, had as much or more responsibility for countering Israeli sabotage and assassinations.
The shadow war had intensified that year with Israel’s adoption of the so-called “Octopus Doctrine” introduced by then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. This strategy involved expanding operations against more targets in Iran. In February, Israel allegedly damaged an Iranian drone base in Kermanshah with its own drone strike, prompting the IRGC to retaliate in March by firing missiles at suspected Israeli intelligence bases in Erbil, Iraq. In May, IRGC-QF Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodai was assassinated in Tehran, a killing which was followed by the suspicious deaths of two Iranian scientists and another IRGC officer. Shortly after, quadcopter drones attacked Iran’s Parchin military complex and a centrifuge facility in Karaj.
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In a February 2022 speech following the Octopus Doctrine announcement, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei urged his government to counter Iran’s enemies with similar hybrid warfare across intelligence, security, media, and economic fronts. In response, the MOIS disrupted a suspected Mossad-linked cell in April 2022 for allegedly plotting to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, and arrested alleged Mossad agents in a restive province dominated by ethnic Baluch. By late July, the MOIS claimed to have foiled a major terrorist bombing near Isfahan, seizing bombs hidden in furniture, pistols with silencers, and tools for disrupting control systems that were allegedly carried by operatives entering from Iraqi Kurdistan. The cyber domain also became a key battleground, with MOIS-related actors launching cyberattacks that targeted Israeli organizations in manufacturing, defense, and information technology. These actions prompted Israel to label Iran a top rival in cyberspace.
The October 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel caught Iranian officials off guard, despite IRGC and MOIS links to the Palestinian group. Since then, the conflict between Iran and Israel has shifted. Iran has cautiously sought to support its axis partners and coordinate efforts across multiple fronts. Israel, however, had clearly been preparing for the next phase of the intelligence battle, which it has unleashed to devastating effect over the past months. With no sign of de-escalation, Iran’s intelligence services must now contend with the reality that Israel’s intelligence superiority will continue to define the terms of this shadow war well into the future.
A shift in priorities?
These recent setbacks may now spur the Iranians to reduce the priority its intelligence services give to suppressing political and social dissent at home and abroad, to improve their performance against foreign intelligence services. It is unlikely the regime in Tehran will stop its repressive activities, but the MOIS in the past has occasionally sought to temper its domestic operations to enlist the support of the Iranian people in combatting foreign espionage activities. The IRGC, meanwhile, seems likely to maintain its domestic focus on conducting operations against ethnic separatist groups, such as Iranian Kurds and Baluch, which have a history of cooperating with the Israelis. The Qods Force faces the daunting prospect of rebuilding Hezbollah and restoring its partners’ inventories, while salvaging what it can from the remains of Hamas or its successor.
Iran responded to the deaths of Nilforushan and Nasrallah by firing two waves of ballistic missiles against Israel on October 1. Still, Tehran appears committed, for now, to avoiding actions that could escalate into a direct conflict involving the Iranian homeland. The Israel-Hamas war has taken a toll on Tehran’s allies, weakening Iran’s deterrent against direct Israeli attack. The cautious Iranians likely want to move the conflict back to the shadows. Given Israel’s intelligence superiority, however, pressure to intensify and improve external operations will be the highest since the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Whether the MOIS and IRGC-IO can overcome their historical inertia in collecting critical foreign intelligence and conducting effective external operations to counter Israel—or even better, support Iran’s missile, irregular warfare, and terrorism threats—remains to be seen. Their actions bear watching to determine if the regime learns from these recent failures to make itself a more formidable adversary to Israel and the West in the realms of espionage and covert action.
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