Iran faces real espionage threats but is also using them to justify a wider crackdown on political opponents, analysts have told Al Jazeera.
Saeid Golkar, a political scientist at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, said the killing of senior figures, including former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the start of the US and Israeli assault on 28 February showed genuine intelligence weaknesses. But he said the authorities had long used real or perceived threats to expand repression, and the current wave of arrests and executions reflected both motives.
Former Mossad director David Barnea said this month that dozens of agents had been sent into Iran before the 12-day war in June 2025, and that Israel had tried to increase arrests of ordinary Iranians to shield its real operatives.
Source: Al Jazeera
