Suspected Israeli Online Campaign Raises Alarm in Iran and Lebanon

According to security experts, Israeli intelligence is believed to be shifting toward social media to collect information and recruit potential collaborators in Lebanon and Iran, through advertisements and appeals tailored to local audiences.

An Instagram account claiming to belong to Israel's foreign intelligence service, Mossad, has posted messages in Arabic urging users to make contact through secure channels. The verified account, operating under the handle @themossad_official, has published recruitment appeals in Lebanese Arabic dialect, including invitations for people to explore new opportunities by opening a private conversation.

The profile features pinned Arabic-language videos titled "Lebanon," accompanied by images of gunmen, as well as "Israel," "Mossad wants you!," "Protect" and "Think about your future."

In August 2025, Lebanon's General Security directorate warned the public not to interact with the Instagram account.

Fake job offers as bait

In Lebanon, where many people are struggling amid a prolonged economic crisis, security officials have warned about intelligence recruitment efforts attributed to Israel via social media.

In January 2025, Lebanon's Al Akhbar newspaper reported that Israeli intelligence agents were seeking to recruit Lebanese citizens through fake high-paying job advertisements and direct contact on WhatsApp. Retired Brigadier General Mounir Chehade told the newspaper that the recruitment efforts targeted areas with large concentrations of Hezbollah supporters, including Beirut's southern suburbs, southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.

Also in January 2025, Lebanon's General Security warned the public not to interact with a Facebook page called SAWA, suspected of being a Mossad front to recruit Lebanese citizens. By December 2025, another Lebanese newspaper, L'Orient Today, reported that security authorities had warned the public not to interact with a social media page calling itself "Unit 504," which claimed to represent the Israeli military's human intelligence unit and was seeking people to join its ranks.

These concerns have been accompanied by arrests of people accused of passing sensitive information to Israel. In October 2025, media reported that Lebanese authorities had previously arrested 32 people suspected of providing information to Israel that was used to target Hezbollah leaders.

Targeting Hezbollah's support base

Academic and political researcher Wissam Nassif Yassin told Al Jazeera that Israeli intelligence uses Lebanese Arabic on these platforms to avoid suspicion and facilitate contact. According to him, Israel focuses on all segments of society because it believes every person can be penetrated from a particular angle, given that Hezbollah in Lebanon has merged into the country's social fabric. "They target first the party's members, second the resistance environment, and third the surrounding environment," Yassin said.

Although Israel has achieved notable successes in intelligence operations in Lebanon, including gathering information that led to strikes targeting Hezbollah leaders and members, Yassin said collaborating with Israel remains widely opposed in Lebanon. He also pointed to Hezbollah's counterintelligence capabilities, with a long history of detecting and disrupting Israeli intelligence operations, and cited the case of Elhanan Tannenbaum, an alleged Israeli agent who was captured in 2000 after being lured abroad and released in 2004 in a prisoner exchange deal.

An intelligence war

The use of digital platforms to recruit collaborators is also part of the long-running intelligence war between Israel and Iran, which has escalated alongside military conflict between the two countries. Hassan Ahmadian, an associate professor of political science at the University of Tehran, described the current situation as one of the most tense periods in decades of espionage between the two sides. "This is an intelligence war. The confrontation between Iran and Israel has lasted for decades, but recent years have reached a peak," Ahmadian said. "Both sides engage in intelligence activities. It is an intense conflict that has never stopped."

According to Ahmadian, Israeli recruitment efforts in Iran are sometimes carried out through opportunities advertised publicly on social media. He recalled that while in Iran, he saw social media advertisements seeking analysts or people working in the security field, sometimes offering high pay and inviting interested people to visit a specific page. He said such public advertising may serve a psychological purpose beyond recruitment, reinforcing perceptions of Israel's intelligence reach inside Iran. "Israel uses propaganda, but this blatant method is perhaps partly aimed at amplifying Israel's presence," Ahmadian noted.

The scholar also pointed to cases of Iran conducting its own counterintelligence operations. In October 2024, Israeli authorities announced the arrest of seven Israeli citizens accused of spying for Iran by collecting information about military bases and other sensitive sites. Earlier, former Israeli Energy Minister Gonen Segev was arrested in 2018 on charges of spying for Iran, later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2019.

Severe legal consequences

Lebanese and Iranian authorities have threatened severe penalties for anyone interacting with Israeli accounts. In July 2025, Iran's Kayhan newspaper reported that the country's Ministry of Intelligence had warned about social media accounts allegedly created by Mossad to harvest information and spread disinformation after recent security operations. The ministry accused Mossad of even offering medical advice to those wounded in the US-Israeli war against Iran, with the intent of gathering sensitive intelligence.

That same month, Iran's judiciary also warned that sending images or information to networks deemed hostile could lead to prison sentences of 10 to 15 years, heavy fines and the possibility of being charged with "corruption on Earth," an offense that can carry the death penalty. In Lebanon, collaborating with Israel is also a crime punishable by imprisonment.

As the covert conflict spreads across cyberspace, Ahmadian said there are few signs the confrontation will cool. "I don't think this intelligence war will stop at any point between the two sides," he said. "It will continue and will continue to affect the entire conflict."