It was 1965 when disgruntled intelligence officer Alec Leamas, from the 1965 film The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, used the choicest profanities to describe his profession: “What the hell do you think spies are?… They’re just a bunch of seedy, squalid b****s like me […].”
Over 50 years later, as countries flex their muscles in the game of global one-upmanship, very few would agree with Leamas’ assessment. In 2024, spies are slick, sophisticated and burrowing right under your nose with the latest gadgets and gizmos — making and breaking global wars.
Spying, espionage, surveillance, and intelligence-gathering — the dictionary may list these as synonyms but the cloak-and-dagger specialists would flinch if you used them interchangeably.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock [has to be a sound-proof one], you must be aware of how the world around you is at one another’s throats. In this era of warmongering, the role of spies — and double agents — is incontestable.
Let’s delve deeper into the Israel-Iran conflict to understand the spy world.
A BLOODY YEAR
The origins of the latest chaos can be traced back to October 7, 2023, when hundreds of Palestine-based Hamas militants launched a surprise attack, breaching the heavily fortified Gaza border to enter the Jewish towns and cities and killing hundreds of people.
The coordinated assault, which took place on Shemini Atzeret, a Jewish holiday, began at about 6.30am as a barrage of at least 2,200 rockets were launched into Israel in just 20 minutes. As Israel, caught by surprise, rushed to contain the damage, at least 1,500 militants from Hamas and the PIJ breached the border using explosives and bulldozers and infiltrated Israel.
Militants killed about 1,200 people, including families attacked inside their homes in kibbutzim and attendees of an outdoor music festival. According to a March 2024 United Nations report, some victims were also sexually assaulted before they were killed. Apart from this, several were taken into the Gaza Strip as hostages.
Caught off-guard, a humiliated Israel vowed revenge, with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling his country that it is “at war”. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) retaliated, bombarding Gaza with airstrikes and promising to end Hamas, the terrorist organisation that runs Gaza and is believed to have the backing of Iran.
After weeks of fighting, a ceasefire was announced in November 2023 as both Israel and Hamas put fighting on hold for four days to exchange women and child hostages and let in more aid. The truce, however, was short-lived and war resumed on December 1.
Cut to April 2024 and simmering tensions between Israel and Iran finally boiled over. April was also when the world woke up to the dexterity — and lethality — of the spy-verse.
THE WEB OF ESPIONAGE
A fuming Israel began plotting its revenge and finally hit the sweet spot in July this year as Ismail Haniyeh, the political face behind Hamas, was killed in a missile attack in Tehran when he was bathing at home. According to many reports, this was a coordinated attack after months of patient Intel collection by Israel and its agencies.
While Israel neither confirmed nor denied its role, Mossad — one of the most popular intelligence agencies in the world — is reported to have been tracking Haniyeh for months at his residence in Qatar’s Doha. According to the Economic Times, Shin Bet — Israel’s internal security service — discovered the Hamas leader’s exact room and a precision-guided missile did the job. A stunned Iran threatened revenge, with its new president terming the killing a “cowardly attack”.
Five months later, Mossad marked its comeback with deadly pager blasts in Lebanon as Israel pulled out all stops to pound Iran-backed Hezbollah, whose militants have traded cross-border fire with Israeli forces throughout the Gaza war in support of Palestinian ally Hamas.
In September, hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded across Lebanon in unprecedented attacks, killing 37 people and wounding more than 2,900. The blasts spanning two days began as hundreds of pagers carried by Hezbollah operatives exploded at almost the same time in the group’s strongholds in south Beirut, south Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa valley. A day later, a second wave of explosions, this time involving walkie-talkies, swept through areas controlled by Hezbollah, killing 25 people and wounding 608.
Part of the effectiveness of the attacks stemmed from their unusual nature, which saw Hezbollah’s own communication devices turn into weapons. Analysts said explosives had likely been planted in the pagers before they were delivered to Hezbollah, with the preliminary findings of a Lebanese investigation revealing that the pagers had been booby-trapped, a security official said.
The New York Times reported that the pagers that exploded were produced by the Hungary-based BAC Consulting on behalf of Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo. It cited intelligence officers as saying BAC was part of an Israeli front — revealing Israel’s picture-perfect plan to exact revenge.
John Hannah of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America described the pager attack as “another stunning display of Israeli intelligence prowess”. Hannah said Mossad has demonstrated “a repeated ability not only to deeply penetrate its worst adversaries’ most sensitive networks, but then execute operations of exquisite precision and lethality whenever it chooses to do so”.
Mossad was formed in 1949, but it was the deadly attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics that gave birth to the modus operandi now most associated with the spy agency: deploying operatives abroad to assassinate enemies.
News agency AFP reports that in 1972, Palestinian gunmen from the Black September militant group stormed the Olympic village, entering the quarters of the Israeli delegation and killing 11 in the hostage drama. This prompted a clandestine revenge operation, codenamed ‘Wrath of God’, which witnessed the heads of Black September and their allies from the Palestine Liberation Organisation die in mysterious circumstances.
Mossad’s name has since been tied to numerous daring operations and, in recent years, the targeted killings of Iranian nuclear scientists and officials.
However, Israel was not done yet.
On September 28, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an airstrike in Beirut after intelligence provided by an Iranian spy. According to French newspaper Le Parisien, the spy disclosed Nasrallah’s location to Israeli forces, leading to the precision strike that has now sent shockwaves through the Middle East. The report, which cited a source in Lebanon, said the spy told Israel that the Hezbollah chief would be present at the group’s secret headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs following a meeting with top leaders.
Retired Colonel Miri Eisen, a senior fellow at Israel’s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University, told AFP that the strike was the product of extensive work. “Israel’s capabilities when it comes to Hezbollah show the depth of the intelligence infiltration into Hezbollah lines,” she said, adding these were “not things that were invented in the last 11 months” after Hezbollah began striking the north.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel spent months planning how to use “a series of timed explosions” in the bunker beneath residential buildings where Nasrallah would be, “with each blast paving the way for the next one”. But the paper also cited Israeli officials as saying the strike’s timing “was opportunistic, coming after Israeli intelligence learned about the meeting hours before it occurred”.
But if you thought this is where the spy story ends, you’ve barely skimmed the surface.
In a revelation that seems straight out of a spy thriller, Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, exposing a staggering intelligence failure within the country’s secret service, said a unit specifically tasked with targeting Mossad agents operating in Iran was itself compromised. If you thought that was the revelation, there’s more. Turns out the head of the unit was a Mossad operative who, along with 20 other agents, infiltrated the very institution that was supposed to thwart their activities.
THE ‘MOSSAD’ TOUCH
One of the most formidable spy organisations in the world, Mossad is known for its covert operations that combine subterfuge and deception. According to an article in Medium, the fact that Mossad operatives managed to not only infiltrate Iran’s intelligence community but also lead a unit responsible for targeting Israeli spies is a catastrophic security failure for Tehran.
If the reports of infiltration are true, the success of its operatives infiltrating Iran’s secret service signals that Mossad’s intelligence capabilities remain unmatched in the region.
The revelation also throws up the complex role of double agents. The concept, which has been part of espionage and counter-intelligence operations for centuries, begs the question — who can we really trust?
MASTERS OF DECEPTION
One of the earliest documented uses of double agents dates back to the military strategies employed in Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. The use of double agents became more sophisticated during World War I and II and increased during the Cold War.
The ability of double agents to mislead and disseminate disinformation can not only subvert threats but also aid national security. However, given that their true loyalties are always under question, their actions may backfire, causing harm to their employers or allies.
While there’s no set criteria as to why someone may choose to become a double agent, the motivations are complex. History lecturer Chris Smith writes for The Conversation that change in political beliefs or disillusionment with one’s own country, coercion i.e. individuals facing blackmail or threats into spying can force people to change their loyalties.
Western intelligence experts say a defector who arrives unexpectedly, who “walks in”, is often regarded with suspicion. In the Cold War, Western spies preferred a defector they had “targeted themselves, worked on for a long time and who comes reluctantly, preferably kicking and screaming”, said espionage expert Phillip Knightley. “The rationale is simple and cynical: If he can be “turned” once, he can be “turned” again.”
BACK TO ISRAEL & THE 2024 WAR
According to an article in Newsweek, a core element of Israel’s spy power has always been the element of surprise. “Israeli spies have also managed to nab former Nazis, intercept war plans and identify nuclear sites for eventual strikes in Iraq and Syria, among other feats in decades past,” it said.
Several security officials believe the quality and depth of Intel that Israel has been able to gather — and use against its enemies — made strides in July and August after one of Nasrallah’s right-hand men was assassinated. What further helped the country was rapid technological advancement as spy satellites, drones, and cyber-hacking paraphernalia aided the war against the enemy.
Consider this: an article in the Financial Times reveals that Israel collects so much data “that it has a dedicated group, Unit 9900, which writes algorithms that sift through terabytes of visual images to find the slightest changes, hoping to identify an improvised explosive device by a roadside, a vent over a tunnel or the sudden addition of a concrete reinforcement, hinting at a bunker”.
According to Chip Usher, a former top CIA Middle East analyst who has worked extensively with Israeli intelligence, “The secrets of their [Israel’s] success come down to a couple of factors. They have a fairly defined target deck that makes it easier for them to bring a tremendous amount of focus to what they do. They’re in a shadow war with Hezbollah and Iran. And they’re extraordinarily patient.”
Speaking to the Financial Times, Eisin said it had taken 40 years for Israel to get an upper hand after it decided to study the Iran-backed militia with the same eyes as it had the likes of the Syrian army. An Israeli official, in conversation with Iran International, said Israel is now working fast before the intervention of the US can stand in the way of its blitzing the group.
For Netanyahu, Israel’s campaign is not over yet. Nasrallah’s assassination, which came after three failed attempts in 2006, may have bolstered Israel but the security and Intel agencies are not ready to rest on their laurels.
As dear old Alec Leamas once said: “Intelligence work has one moral law — it is justified by results.”
(With inputs from AFP, AP & Reuters)
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