January 5, 2026, 9:22 pm
Author – Séamus Malekafzali
For more than a week now, protests over the cost of living and skyrocketing inflation have rocked the streets of Iran. While the protests are the largest such movement against the government since protests over the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in 2022, they’ve been smaller so far, despite reports of demonstrations in at least 78 cities already. While protests over the dire state of the economy are not unusual, these protests have begun amid a new push by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for another war with Iran over its ballistic missile program. The explosion of attention has been emanating almost entirely from Washington and Tel Aviv, where powerful interests were hoping from nearly the first day of the protests that the overthrow of the Islamic Republic was finally at hand.
Israeli opposition leader Naftali Bennett, who has oftentimes encouraged Netanyahu to be even more confrontational on the regional stage, sent out a video, spoken in English but subtitled in Farsi, encouraging “each and every” Iranian to go out and create a “better Middle East,” and saying “all the nations of the free world” stand with them. Both the Israeli science minister and U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham donned black “Make Iran Great Again” hats for the cameras in their respective countries. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir also lent his support, posting to X what appears to be an AI image of a statue of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei crumbling before a hangman’s noose.
Despite the assessment of Israel’s own intelligence services that the current protests do not currently threaten the Iranian government’s existence, some American media outlets are eager to embrace Israel’s narrative that the end is nigh. The New York Times claimed the Islamic Republic is in “survival mode,” and that Khamenei is already planning to escape to Moscow, as Bashar al-Assad did in 2024. Similar rumors abounded in Iranian opposition press in 2022 that officials were looking to create an escape route to Venezuela and were leaving in droves in anticipation of the fall of the regime.
Israel had previously attempted to directly instigate a rebellion during its war against Iran in June, with Netanyahu making a speech encouraging the Iranian people to “stand up and let your voices be heard,” framing its military bombardment as a means to “[clear] the path for you to achieve your freedom,” and cravenly invoking the phrase “Women, Life, Freedom” from the Amini protests.
Numerous Iranian opposition figures who had previously insisted they would never back foreign military intervention, such as the son of the late Shah Reza Pahlavi, suddenly echoed similar statements, and called for the Iranian people to rise up at the Islamic Republic’s weakest point. No protests materialized whatsoever — let alone a rebellion that would take down the state — but the taboo of supporting Israel’s project in the region by the Iranian opposition abroad had been broken at the highest levels. Now all that remained was to somehow get the people being bombed on board with supporting the people doing the bombing.
While the actual level of Israeli intelligence penetration into the protests is unclear (Iranian police claim to have arrested a Mossad agent who was being directed from abroad), it’s clear the Israeli state and its allies fully intend to portray a significant level of involvement. Whatever concerns that may have existed in years past among Western governments about discrediting protests by supporting them too publicly, such as with Barack Obama and the Green Movement protests in 2009, have been thrown entirely to the wayside.
After previously insisting he would refrain from speaking about the protests to not give “the Islamic Republic an excuse to target Israel,” Netanyahu decided only days later to offer his total support: “The government of Israel, the State of Israel, and my policy: We identify with the struggle of the Iranian people, with their aspirations for freedom, liberty and justice.” Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli further called on Israel to “back [the protesters] up” and said the “support of the State of Israel is also important” to guarantee the success of the movement. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who forged a close relationship with Netanyahu, went even further, posting on X, “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.”
The Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, for its part, publicly claimed it was already operating within the protests, stating the day after protests began on December 29, “Let’s come out to the streets together. The time has come. We are with you. Not just from afar and verbally. We are with you in the field as well.”
The intent of these moves is undeniably coercive, rather than the selfless assistance it portrays itself as: If we are already claiming you as Israeli agents, it would be no small step if you collaborated for real. Such collaboration need not happen in darkened alleys or via clandestine networks; during the war in June, the Israel Defense Forces’s Farsi-language account directed Iranians who “want to improve [their] situation” to simply contact the Mossad on its website (while using a VPN for safety, of course).
Although far away from Iran’s borders, the recent abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has also sent an explicit message to the Iranian government as the protests continue, with Trump personally promising military intervention if Iranian protesters are shot dead (as of this writing, at least 19 demonstrators have been killed, along with two members of security services). To double down on the threat, the State Department’s Farsi-language social media posted a black-and-white image of Trump overseeing the Maduro raid, with the caption emblazoned in red: “Do not play with President Trump.” If such a thing can happen with the president of Venezuela, surely such a thing can happen to the Ayatollahs or any other official in Tehran.
While certain personalities in the Iranian opposition abroad have welcomed this message, observers both inside and outside the country should take careful note of what has happened in the aftermath of Maduro’s ouster. Opposition figures hoping to take power in Caracas have suddenly been sidelined, and America has instead promised a regime of explicit coercion and outright resource extraction. When journalists pressed Trump about free elections, Trump responded plainly, “Well, it depends… We’re going to have to have big investments by the oil companies…and the oil companies are ready to go.” This worldview isn’t limited to what is happening on Venezuela’s shores—the implication is that they could come to Iran’s just as quickly.
The post Israel Is Cynically Capitalizing on the Iranian Protests for Its Own Ends appeared first on The Intercept.
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Author: Séamus Malekafzali
