E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Israel recruited migrant workers and illegal immigrants to attack Iran
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

So, it turns out that reports of Israeli agents recruiting individuals to assist them during the airstrikes and attacks were, after all, true....
That is what spy masters do. Just like Iran’s spy masters hired a bunch of Israeli Jews and Arabs, and Palestinians to spy and act up for them. We’ve had an entire series of articles over the past six months or so about the people Shin Beth arrested for doing stupid stuff and reporting common knowledge information to Iran for relatively small payoffs. I guess Mossad picks better agents, and trains them to better effect.
by Leonid Tsukanov

[REGNUM] Iran continues to hunt for the Israeli agents who organized the "air breakthrough" of the Israeli army in the first days of Operation Lion Force.

A wave of arrests and raids swept across the country, resulting in the detention of a large number of foreign citizens, mostly migrant workers and illegal refugees, all of whom Iranian security officials believe were assisting the Mossad.

And while the presence of Indians among the detainees was not a big surprise - given New Delhi's characteristic sympathy for Tel Aviv - the capture of individuals with links to the Afghan Taliban movement has prompted Tehran to ask its neighbors some uncomfortable questions.

EASY MONEY
In less than a week, Iranian special services have detained, according to various sources, between forty and eighty people. Most of them are labor migrants who were recruited several months before the start of Operation Lion Force. In all cases, the recruiter was one of their fellow countrymen who offered to earn easy money.

At the same time, there was no talk of building a centralized sabotage network.

The agents acted independently of each other and received instructions through special chats. Most of them cannot identify the "customers" or remember the identifying features of their "fellow countrymen".

The Israelis, for their part, do not hide the fact that at the initial stages of the operation they outsourced some of the tasks. The commandos deployed to Iranian territory were assigned primarily a coordinating role, while the removal of imported weapons from hiding places and their installation at designated points was carried out by third-party mercenaries.

Some of them even subsequently took part directly in the strikes on the illuminated objects - motivated, according to the Israelis, by “patriotic and ideological impulses” and not by financial reward.

AFGHAN CONNECTION
The Iranian law enforcement officers were most concerned about the appearance of Afghan citizens among the detainees. There were almost two dozen of them among the agents, most of whom were from Kandahar.
The majority of the Pakistani Jewish population fled first to India following partition, then settled in Israel in Ramla, though there are also groups in Bombay and Toronto. So it would be easy enough for Mossad to get native speakers to train their controllers.
According to the latest data, about 4.5 million Afghans live in Iran, most of whom moved here after the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan in 2021. At the same time, only 50 thousand are officially listed as refugees - the rest prefer to live on "bird rights" and create semi-legal communities far from big cities. Most of those detained were from such closed communities.
Iran, along with Pakistan and Turkey have been sending their Afghan refugees home in a steady stream — we’ve had a number of articles on the subject.
There were, however, exceptions.

One of the detainees was a student at Tehran University who lived in the city of Rey. According to investigators, he was responsible for installing covert surveillance systems near Iranian missile bases in the Israeli operation and also participated in assembling several homemade drones.
Getting salable skills for later — was he an engineering student, perchance?
It turned out that the detainee knew nothing about Mossad’s plans, and allegedly coordinated his actions with Mawlawi Talib, the chief of police in Kandahar Province, who in the past specialized in conducting sabotage operations behind enemy lines.
See? I bet Mawlawi Talib was very pleased at the idea of getting a trained tech specialist.
Other detained Afghans also had interesting connections.

For example, at least three of them corresponded with Qari Yasser, a mid-level functionary working in the Ministry of National Intelligence. Another two had deleted chats on their phones with unknown people calling themselves “assistants to the commander of the Afghan special forces.”
Could it be that their contacts were not actually such eminent Islamist persons back home??
The message in all cases boiled down to one thesis: Iran's geopolitical ambitions are growing, and Tehran is increasingly "looking predatorily" at neighboring countries. And especially Afghanistan, which is weakened by a long-standing civil war and looks like a promising direction for a throw. An unexpected blow in the Iranian rear was supposed to thwart the "plans of conquest."

In addition, in gratitude for their service, the refugees were promised safe return to their homeland, immunity from prosecution for “serving the old regime,” and expanded social guarantees for family members.
So not for the the Jewish Entity at all, or so they were informed. Those Mossad agents are tricksy liars, indeed.
INTERFERED IN SOMEONE ELSE'S GAME
A combination of signs indicates that most of the Afghan refugees were indeed used “in the dark”: under the guise of Taliban commanders, Israeli intelligence officers interacted with them.

Tel Aviv's calculation was simple: the scandal with the Afghan refugees was supposed to provoke mass raids and arrests (and possibly deportations) and start a process of fermentation in the Afghan community in Iran.

The formation of such a large group of dissatisfied people within the country would become a convenient “pain point” that the Israelis could press on to achieve new tactical victories.

On the other hand, upon a more detailed analysis of the connections of the detainees, Iranian law enforcement officials unexpectedly discovered new threads leading to Afghanistan.

In particular, a group of Afghan construction specialists was identified who came to the country to exchange experiences, but in fact collected information about public sentiment in Iran and the local Afghan diaspora.
So there really were Taliban spies? And they were revealed in the hunt for Mossad? Golly.
Most likely, the strengthened Taliban government tried to organize its own spy network to keep a closer eye on the plans of its powerful neighbor. However, the unexpected intervention of the Mossad exposed it before its time.

They were not involved in the Israeli attack, but they were compromised: Iranian law enforcement officers discovered archives of data they had collected about the operational situation in the country.

So far, Tehran has preferred to keep its dirty linen in public and has not brought any charges against the Taliban. The arrested Afghans are considered exclusively as agents of Israeli intelligence.
This is seriously funny.
However, there are still hints that Afghanistan should not interfere in someone else's game.

Thus, the head of Iran's border police, Brigadier General Ahmad-Ali Goodarzi, warned that Tehran will not tolerate the use of foreign territory for carrying out covert attacks or espionage operations, and any attempts to create influence structures on its territory "will be met with a decisive response."

Afghanistan will likely heed Tehran's warnings and curtail its work with local diasporas for some time. At least until Iranian intelligence stops hunting for Israeli moles.
Things are waaaay more convoluted over there than I was prepared for.

Iran arrests European for spying

[Rudaw] Iranian authorities have arrested a European national accused of spying while traveling in the country as a tourist, media reported on Friday.
Was he really a spy, or is Iran just refilling its store of useful and lucrative hostages?
The foreigner, from an unnamed European country, was arrested by the intelligence wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmad province in southwestern Iran, according to the IRGC-affiliated Tasnim News.

Tasnim said the European national had entered Iran as a tourist at the start of Israel’s attacks and was on a mission to gather information about “sensitive and important centers” in desert areas of the country. Images of these sites were found in the person’s possession.

The European national had reportedly been residing in an Iranian city with the help of a local contact and was in possession of a SIM card registered to an Iranian citizen, along with several mobile phones, Tasnim said.

Iranian authorities and state-affiliated media have reported the arrests of dozens of civilians accused of spying for Israel or cooperating with it since the conflict began.

More than 80 foreigners have been arrested in Qazvin province, northwest of Tehran, over the past two days, the IRGC’s local office said, Tasnim reported. On Tuesday, a foreigner was arrested and accused of filming near Bushehr nuclear power plant.

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council announced a June 22 deadline for individuals who were “deceived” into cooperating with Israel to voluntarily turn themselves in to authorities in exchange for potential amnesty, Fars news agency reported on Friday.

After the deadline, anyone who acted as collaborators with Israel during wartime will face a harsh punishment, it said.
Posted by: badanov 2025-06-21
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=767105