Spy vs. Spy: The espionage factor that no one is talking about ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, June 23, 2025

Spy vs. Spy: The espionage factor that no one is talking about

Israeli media occasionally reports on the arrests of citizens of Israel who are suspected Iranian spies.

These stories are concerning and important. Why would an Israeli citizen choose to spy for Iran?

No doubt, some are motivated by money, or the sense of self-importance, or simply the thought that what they are doing is pretty much public information anyway, so there is not much moral hazard in doing so. It seems unlikely that too many Israeli citizens either hate Israel or love Iran so much to have an ideology where they want to see an Islamist state destroy Israel.

But part of the reason Israel's airstrikes in Tehran and elsewhere are so effective is because their intelligence is superb. A major reason for that is that there are plenty of Iranians who want to see their regime replaced.

Even this morning Israel is pounding specific sites in Tehran. Even today Israel is assassinating major IRGC figures, people who know they are targets and are no doubt taking precautions or hiding - and still being targeted successfully.

Some of this is because Israel has excellent signals intelligence, following cell phones around; part of it is because Israel has great artificial intelligence capabilities that allow it to take millions of data points that by themselves are of little value but in the aggregate indicate with a high degree of certainty where specific people are. Also Israel has done an incredible job integrating all aspects of its security apparatus so that new intelligence information becomes actionable within seconds or minutes, not weeks.

But a great deal comes from ordinary Iranians on the ground who are feeding these data points to Israel, who see several people enter an apartment who look unfamiliar, who recognize unusual activity where they live, or even those who are integral parts of the Iranian security establishment who have direct knowledge of what is going on.

Iran has a competent spy agency. No doubt they have hacked into some Israeli systems and almost certainly they have access to street and doorbell cameras. But human intelligence is the most important, especially during wartime when decisions must be made quickly, and Israel's advantage in human intelligence is in no small part because Iranians do not want to live under their current regime.