January 12, 2026
Every two years or so the CIA and Mossad are instigating regime change riots in Iran. These attempts inevitably fail.
Currently a few thousand young men are during nighttime burning cars, mosques, shops and police offices in various cities of Iran. Armed agents are firing at and killing policemen. All these cells are coordinated via Internet connections.
It usually takes a week or two until Iranian government forces find the connections, trace down the ring leaders and shut them down. That process may take a little longer this time because some of the terror cells have been equipped with Starlink terminals.
As the unofficial CIA spokesman David Ignatius at the Washington Post writes ( writes):
A harder question for Washington is whether to smuggle in Starlink terminals to reverse the internet blackout that Tehran imposed Friday. The Biden administration weighed that strategy during the "Woman, Life, Freedom" protests in 2022 and 2023 but decided against it - fearing it would put at risk crucial smuggling routes used by the CIA and Israeli intelligence. Perhaps this time, the benefit outweighs the cost.
That pretty much confirms that those terminals are already there.
Meanwhile Russia has developed equipment that allows to detect Active Starling terminals from the air. Iran has already received copies and will soon produces enough of its own to cover its cities.
Ignatius also claims that the riots are different this time because they are aimed to install a U.S./Israel sponsored puppet:
This year's revolt is driven more by anger over Iran's economic failures than the mullah's repressive Islamic rules. Iran's annual inflation rate rose to 42 percent in December, and its currency lost more than half its value last year. Another difference this year is that many protesters are supporting Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah of Iran toppled in the 1979 revolution. That gives this rebellion a more conservative, Persian nationalist tone - and a perhaps backward-facing perspective. Maybe this is Iran's "MIGA" moment.
That Reza Pahlavi is as irrelevant to Iran as a person can be. His current campaign to get a more active, i.e. violent, regime change support from the Trump administration is sponsored by Israel.
As Haaretz provided ( archived) in October 2025:
In early 2023, Reza Pahlavi made his first official visit to Israel. He's the son of the last shah of Iran, who was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution and was replaced by the ayatollah regime.
...
When asked about the responses he was getting to his visit to Israel, Iran's archenemy, he said reactions had been largely positive. He also referred reporters to his social media accounts.
"Don't take my word for it, search on social media... on Twitter, Instagram, any platform," he said. "If you do the research yourself, you don't need to ask me the question. The answer is right before your eyes."
Pahlavi's answer is particularly noteworthy in light of the findings by Haaretz and TheMarker, Haaretz's business newspaper. It turns out that a large-scale digital influence campaign in Persian was underway, operated out of Israel and funded by a private entity that receives government support.
The campaign promotes Pahlavi's public image and amplifies calls for restoring the monarchy. The campaign relies on "avatars," fake online personas posing as Iranian citizens on social media. They were first discovered by social media researchers in Israel and abroad.
The campaign uses the now typical tools of social engineering:
According to the sources who spoke with TheMarker and Haaretz, since the outbreak of the war in Gaza and after Pahlavi's visit, an online operation began operating as part of an even broader Israeli campaign to influence the social media discourse, which also includes campaigns in English and German.
According to five sources with direct knowledge of the project, native Persian speakers were recruited for the operation. Three of the sources confirmed the connection between the project and this specific campaign, and said they witnessed the network advancing pro-Pahlavi messaging.
According to the sources, the campaign included fake accounts on platforms such as X and Instagram and used artificial intelligence tools to help disseminate key narratives, craft its messages and generate content.
AI is also used to create pictures and videos of riots in places in Iran where none have happened.
Iran has more than 90 million inhabitants. Many of them support its government system. A few thousand rioting teenagers will not take it down.
Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.