For Iranians, the nationwide anti-government protests that shook the country in January 2026 already feel like a distant, traumatic memory. What began as popular unrest has since been overshadowed by weeks of relentless cross-border strikes from the United States and Israel, and the growing threat of a full-scale ground invasion. But for many Iranians who witnessed the demonstrations firsthand, bizarre, unaccountable incidents that unfolded during the uprising continue to nag at their collective memory.
The protests first erupted at the turn of the year, sparked by soaring inflation that pushed already strained household budgets to breaking point. What started as localized anger over rising prices at Tehran’s Grand Bazaar quickly ballooned into a nationwide movement channeling broad public discontent with the Islamic Republic’s decades of rule. As the demonstrations gained momentum, senior foreign figures made extraordinary claims about their involvement: former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo openly noted that Mossad agents were marching alongside protesters, while Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu publicly confirmed Israeli operatives were active on the ground inside Iran. In late March, The New York Times further revealed that Mossad’s director had briefed senior Israeli and U.S. officials ahead of the regional outbreak of war, asserting that his agents embedded within Iran were capable of triggering a new uprising and toppling the government from within.
Middle East Eye, the outlet reporting this investigation, has not been able to independently verify these claims. But a review of eyewitness testimony, official statements, and established patterns of Israeli covert activity inside Iran points to the strong possibility of some form of external meddling during the unrest. Mossad has maintained a network of operatives inside Iran for years, carrying out high-profile sabotage operations and targeted assassinations of nuclear scientists, military commanders, and even senior Palestinian political leaders including Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh. During the 12-day Israeli war on Iran in June 2026, Israeli intelligence also demonstrated its ability to infiltrate the highest ranks of Iran’s armed forces, with multiple agents operating openly on the ground. Since the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran launched on February 28, Iranian authorities say they have arrested at least 45 people across multiple cities, charging all detainees with espionage and collaboration with hostile foreign states.
After days of escalating unrest, Iranian security forces moved to crush the demonstrations with brute force on January 8. Official government figures put the total death toll at 3,117, including protesters, security personnel, and innocent bystanders. But opposition groups say the real number of fatalities is far higher: the U.S.-based human rights monitor HRANA estimates that at least 7,015 people were killed during the crackdown. Iran’s police, security services, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and Basij paramilitary have a well-documented history of responding to popular protests with deadly violence, most infamously during the 2022 Mahsa Amini-led uprising. Even by that brutal standard, the death toll from January’s unrest is exceptionally high.
Iran’s ruling establishment has directly blamed Mossad-linked operatives for many of the civilian deaths that occurred during the unrest. Mehdi Kharatian, an unofficial security advisor closely aligned with Iran’s central leadership, drew a parallel to Israel’s widely condemned 2024 pager attack in Lebanon, when Israeli intelligence remotely detonated thousands of Hezbollah communication devices, killing 37 people and wounding more than 2,900. That coordinated attack served as the opening salvo of a devastating bombing and ground campaign against the Lebanese armed movement. Kharatian argued a similar strategic provocation was at play in Iran: “A shock had to come to Iran, like the Lebanese pager attack. Blood had to be shed in Iran to influence world public opinion and prepare the ground for a military attack.”
Multiple protest participants who spoke to MEE described incidents that had no precedent in past Iranian uprisings or government crackdowns. One eyewitness on the outskirts of Tehran reported encountering a group of non-local protesters blocking a major highway. The organizer of the blockade could not even give directions to a nearby residential side street, confirming he had no ties to the local area. Another protester who attended a January 8 demonstration in east Tehran described a small, coordinated group of masked protesters dressed all in black who led the crowd in chants—an organized “black bloc” tactic common in Western protests but virtually unknown in Iran. “They moved together, and when clashes with security forces began, they disappeared immediately,” the source recalled.
Witnesses also shared multiple accounts of unclaimed attacks on bystanders far from protest zones, carried out by unknown assailants using weapons not standard for Iranian security forces. One eyewitness, watching unrest from their rooftop in a northern Iranian city near the Caspian Sea, described seeing a street sweeper draw a concealed revolver and shoot two young girls who were walking through a residential alley far from the center of protests. A separate account from an IRGC source in Qazvin, 150 kilometers west of Tehran, documented the killing of a mother and her young son on a quiet street with no protest activity, shot with a weapon that did not match any issued to Iranian security, intelligence, or Basij units.
While there is no definitive confirmation of why foreign operatives would target random civilians, multiple public statements confirm that foreign powers openly signaled their on-the-ground presence before and during the protests. A Persian-language X account widely believed to be linked to Mossad posted on December 29: “Let us come out to the streets together. The time has come. We are with you. Not just from afar and in words. We are with you in the field as well.” Eliyahu echoed this days later, telling reporters, “I can assure you that our people are working there right now.” Pompeo went even further, posting on X: “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them…”
Despite Iranian officials’ repeated claims of Mossad involvement in the violence, most protesters who spoke to MEE rejected these assertions. A veteran Tehran-based political science professor, who requested anonymity for his own safety, explained that deep public distrust of the ruling regime means even credible claims of foreign meddling fall on deaf ears. “We’re dealing with a society carrying a deep and painful wound of the protests and now the war,” he said. “The regime has taken the cycle of violence so far that even if such incidents were true, people wouldn’t believe it. At this point, anything the government says is automatically dismissed as a lie by a population that has been suppressed for too long.”
Having lived through every major wave of anti-establishment protest since 1999, the professor noted that the level of violence during the January crackdown is unlike anything the country has seen before. “When I was a student during the 1999 movement, we were calling for reform. But every wave of protest since then has been crushed with greater violence. We’ve reached a point where you can’t talk logic with young people who want nothing short of revenge.”