Iran International
Foreign intelligence penetration of Iran is hardly a secret. But Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has now suggested the operation goes beyond locating officials or stealing information and seeks to influence decision-making inside the Islamic Republic itself.
The remark marked a subtle but significant shift. Iranian officials have long acknowledged espionage and intelligence breaches, particularly after the precision with which senior commanders, nuclear scientists and political leaders have been located and targeted exposed profound vulnerabilities within Iran's security establishment.
Speaking in the first part of a nearly 90-minute podcast interview, Araghchi suggested foreign intelligence activity inside Iran may be something more ambitious than gathering intelligence: shaping the decisions of the state itself.
He made the remarks when asked by establishment podcaster Javad Mogoei about the opening hours of the war, when coordinated strikes killed Iran's supreme leader along with several senior military, security and political figures.
"I believe this security breach is not limited merely to infiltration and obtaining information," Araghchi said.
"Sometimes it also exists in influencing the decision-making process itself. And even more importantly, it extends to shaping our psychological environment and public perception."
Araghchi did not identify any foreign intelligence service or explain how such influence might operate, although Israel appeared to be the implied actor in the discussion.
To Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, that distinction was the most revealing part of the interview.
"The job of these assets isn't just to leak the location of leaders in a certain place to be killed," Vatanka told Iran International. "It is to influence decision-making. It's to influence the policy process."
Vatanka believes Araghchi's remarks were directed as much at Iran's internal political debate as at foreign intelligence operations.
"He's hinting that elements inside the regime are openly arguing for policies that the enemy—the United States and Israel—prefer," he said. "Is he talking about the pro-war hawks? Is this part of scoring points against one another? Could well be."
"These things are obviously not accidental," he added. "This is very much messaging at a moment of war."
Mogoei nevertheless raised another possibility, invoking Masoud Kashmiri, the alleged infiltrator who rose through the ranks of the Islamic Republic before the 1981 bombing that killed President Mohammad Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar.
"Perhaps we have another Kashmiri," he suggested.
Araghchi did not endorse the comparison, saying Iran's adversaries had become familiar with the supreme leader's routine and that the Intelligence Ministry meeting may simply have coincided by chance.
Whether Araghchi was describing a sophisticated foreign influence operation or speaking more broadly about the effect of outside pressure on Iran's internal politics is where analysts begin to diverge.
Omid Memarian, an Iran analyst at DAWN, said one possible manifestation of the kind of influence Araghchi described would be officials advocating policies that prolong the war despite the damage continued conflict causes to the Islamic Republic's own interests.
"Some of the decisions they are making are exactly the things that Israelis might wish for," Memarian told Iran International.
"When it comes to Iran's national security and national interests, they don't make sense,” he added. "We see the smoke. We don't see the fire."
Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Araghchi's comments should also be viewed through the lens of Iran's internal political rivalries.
"That doesn't mean these guys are doves by any measure," Taleblu told Iran International. "But it does mean that they have different views about how best to preserve, protect and defend the Islamic Republic."
Taleblu said public acknowledgments of security failures are often aimed less at the Iranian public than at rival political factions or security institutions, with officials defending their own approach while criticizing competing strategies.
He said Araghchi's comments also highlighted a less discussed aspect of intelligence operations: their ability to shape leaders' perceptions rather than merely gather information.
"Influence is to shape their decision-making, perhaps by lulling the Supreme Leader's office into a false sense of security and back into the routines that existed before," he said.
On the ground in Hormozgan province, the damage has fallen heavily on the civilian road network, and the tally has grown by the day.
On Friday the provincial governor's office said six bridges had been struck in Khamir county alone, cutting the Bandar Abbas to Lar highway; its list ran from the Gariveh bridge to spans near the villages of Latidan and Maru, with residents told to keep off the routes and leave them clear for rescue teams.
Within a day, officials were adding to it. The Shahid Mirzaei road tunnel was reported damaged in both directions, the Roudkhaneh Shour bridge was hit on the Bandar Abbas to Sirjan route, and two more bridges were damaged on the road from the Minab junction toward Roudan. With attacks continuing nightly, no official list has stayed final for long.
The attacks have also reached utilities. Iranian media reported missile strikes on power facilities and desalination pumps in the coastal city of Jask, leaving some 10,000 people in 20 villages without water, according to the Tasnim news agency. The maritime control tower at Chabahar, which the Tehran daily Etemad described as civilian infrastructure that guides shipping and coordinates sea rescues, was hit for the third time in a week.
A port city going quiet
The cumulative effect is visible in Bandar Abbas, the provincial capital and Iran's main commercial gateway on the strait. Iran International has learned that the city has gone semi-dormant under the naval blockade and the severing of its road links, with activity at Shahid Rajaee, the country's largest container port, reduced to a minimum.
Half of the port's workforce has been laid off in recent weeks, according to the information received, and those still employed are working for minimum pay. More than 4,000 containers are stranded in the port's yards. The blockade closed the sea route weeks ago; the strikes on bridges are now closing the roads.
The Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries a fifth of the world's oil, has been shut to Iranian exports and contested for a week, with US Marines boarding a tanker, the Revolutionary Guards saying they stopped four vessels with missile and drone fire, and Washington enforcing what it calls a naval blockade. The Guards say that until US attacks end, not a drop of oil or gas will leave the region.
Talk of a ground campaign
Trump has made no secret of the targeting. He told Fox News this week that the United States would knock out Iran's power plants and bridges unless Tehran returned to negotiations, and said the strikes would continue "until I say it's enough."
Asked in the same interview about sending ground troops, the president declined to rule it out. "Sometimes you need a ground campaign," he said, adding, "we have other people who will do the ground campaign for us." He said American forces had already struck Kharg Island, the hub of Iran's oil exports, two or three times, with instructions to spare the oil terminals themselves.
Vice President JD Vance has said the United States does not intend to send ground troops to Iran, leaving the administration's position less than settled. US officials, for their part, have said the attacks on southern Iran are designed in part to give Trump options.
In Tehran, some of the loudest voices in the Islamic Republic's establishment are reading the map the same way. Amir-Hossein Sabeti, a hardline lawmaker from Tehran, wrote on social media that the destruction of the south's transport links was most likely the prelude to a ground attack, arguing that damaged roads and bridges would hamper the movement of Iranian forces ahead of any attempt to seize islands or key points on the coast.
Sabeti reserved part of his message for his own government, demanding that President Masoud Pezeshkian and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf either deliver on their promise that the agreement with Washington would end the war or admit their judgment had failed.
The swipe pointed to a widening argument inside the establishment over who bears responsibility for the ceasefire's collapse.
Mohsen Rezaei, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader and a former Revolutionary Guards commander, warned that if US strikes continue for several more days, Iran will move into what he called full-scale offensive operations.
Analysts note that a week of air strikes has not reopened the strait, and that controlling it durably may ultimately require forces on the coast or islands that command it, a step no amount of bombing substitutes for.
The targeting of bridges, power stations and water plants, on both sides, has drawn warnings beyond the region.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was concerned by attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran and across the Persian Gulf, where Kuwait's desalination plants have been hit twice in two days by Iranian strikes.
The 1949 Geneva Conventions prohibit attacks on sites essential to civilian survival, and American legal scholars warned earlier this year, after Trump first threatened Iran's infrastructure, that such strikes could amount to war crimes.
Oil prices climbed more than 4 percent on Friday to their highest level in over a month, a third straight weekly gain that adds pressure on Trump ahead of November's congressional elections.
