Debunked: how nationals of Afghanistan are labelled as Mossad agents
Written: Qais Alamdar
Over the past few days, several Iranian outlets and social media channels circulated reports of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Basij forces arresting alleged Mossad-linked operatives inside Iran. Among them, nationals of Afghanistan have been repeatedly highlighted—yet much of this narrative appears to be based on misinformation, exaggeration, and recycled images.
One of the earliest claims came from the Khorasan Diary, a Pakistan-based conflict monitoring outlet focused on the broader Khorasan region. On 18 June, it reported that 18 Afghan nationals had been arrested in Mahshad over a drone plot allegedly linked to Mossad, citing unnamed IRGC-affiliated channels but provided no links, documentation such as any screenshot, or verifiable source.
Figure: Screenshot from The Khorasan Diary’s post on 18 June.
A Tasnim News Agency post on X/Twitter, an IRGC-affiliated outlet did mention the arrest of one Afghan national in Rey city near Tehran, claiming the individual possessed materials related to bombs and drones on his mobile phone. This was the only concrete case linking an Afghan national to alleged espionage activity during this wave.
Figure: Screenshot of Tasnim’s post on X from 18 June.
However, within hours of the Khorasan Diary post, the claim spread rapidly across X/Twitter via accounts with a record of disinformation, particularly those aligned with Pakistani intelligence narratives. One such account shared the claim while posting a photo of three arrested men with their faces blurred. A simple reverse image search, however, confirmed that the photo was from 2023, showing three Iranian nationals arrested by the Taliban in Nimroz in a joint Iran-Taliban operation targeting Mossad operatives. The individuals had no Afghan nationality, and the image was clearly recycled and misrepresented.
Figure: X post with a recycled image from 2023.
By 19 June, the narrative took another turn. Tasnim News Agency publicly contradicted earlier social media reports by issuing a statement from the Deputy Security Officer of Khorasan Razavi Province, stating:
“The arrest of 18 illegal Afghan citizens in Mashhad had nothing to do with drone construction or Mossad. They were arrested due to illegal residence in Iran and were deported.”
This was a clear and official rebuttal to the entire Mossad-linked Afghan drone plot claim.
Still, the disinformation campaign did not stop. That same day, another claim surfaced alleging that Iran’s Basij forces had discovered an underground base near an IRGC command HQ, where over 400 Afghan nationals were allegedly found inside tunnels, supposedly linked to Mossad operations. The post showed two separate videos, one with a group of detained young men (many appearing to be minors) and another showing a narrow tunnel staircase. Most of these posts received hundreds of thousands of views and thousands of reposts.
Figure: Dissemination of misinformation by various accounts with hundreds of thousands of views.
Both videos were inaudible—no evidence of drone making or weapons within those clips. However, the clips bore the logo of Raja News, a known Telegram channel with over 124K followers.
Yet, upon review, these videos do not appear on Raja News' Telegram channel, at least not since the start of the Iran–Israel escalation. Their origin remains unverifiable, and no independent or Iranian state-affiliated media has reported the discovery of such a facility. Moreover, Iran has been routinely deporting Afghans without legal status, and such detentions, especially in group housing or construction zones, are not uncommon. The footage could plausibly be from one of these sweeps.
Analysis
This wave of disinformation follows a familiar script, vague intelligence claims, recycled or unverified footage, and a sudden escalation in narrative targeting a vulnerable group. In this case, Afghan nationals in Iran. While Iran continues to struggle with internal security threats, these claims serve political and propaganda objectives, diverting attention from more sensitive failures and stoking public fear.
Several prolific pro-Pakistan X/Twitter accounts latched onto the Iranian “Afghan Mossad cell” narrative because it dovetails neatly with Islamabad’s own information goals, it paints Afghan refugees as a regional security menace, thereby legitimising Pakistan’s increasingly restrictive border controls; it signals solidarity with Tehran against a shared adversary, Israel, without directly risking diplomatic fallout; and it diverts attention from Pakistan’s internal economic woes by rallying followers around a sensational external threat. The speed with which these accounts recycled unverifiable claims, coupled with their history of pushing state-aligned narratives, suggests coordinated amplification rather than organic curiosity—a classic indicator, in OSINT terms, of strategically motivated disinformation.
