Produced by The Kirsch Group

https://kirschgroup.com/the-enemy-in-the-blanket-are-iranian-sleeper-agents-the-real-problem-here/

• Both the premier of Ontario and US media have made assertions that Iranian “sleeper cells” are present and active in Canada. This is difficult to verify.
• Iran and its proxies have proven their ability to carry out terrorist acts far beyond the Middle East, and there has been an Iranian and “Iran-adjacent” presence in Canada for decades.
• The threat of violence related to the conflict in Iran probably emanates mainly from sympathizers and “useful idiots” rather than true Iranian agents.
• This threat is real and cannot be ignored.
• For Iran, Canada is also “strategic space”: a place where it has access to efficient banks and opportunities for both fundraising and influence operations. Canada is probably of more value in this regard than as a terrorist target.
• The invocation of sleeper cells sows paranoia and xenophobia and goes to confirm a longstanding American narrative that Canada is a terrorist haven.

Sleeper Agents: Fiction?

It is Ontario premier Doug Ford’s “personal opinion” that Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “sleeper cells” are present and active in Canada. In a recent press conference, he stated that these sleeper cells may have been behind a series of March 2026 Toronto synagogue shootings, as well as a handgun attack on the US Consulate in downtown Toronto. Premier Ford added that police and intelligence agencies must “weed these people out and hold them accountable.” A few days later, American media echoed Ford, alleging that up to 1,000 Iranian sleeper agents are “embedded” in Canada, where they pose “an urgent security threat” to the United States. 

In old-time espionage parlance, sleeper agents refer to people who are infiltrated by a hostile power into a target country without diplomatic or official cover. Often, they are native speakers of the target country’s language, with extraordinary cultural knowledge and sensitivity. Once in place, they go dormant, building a life for themselves that makes them largely indistinguishable from most other citizens or residents of that country, until they are activated.

Sleeper Agents: Fact

Given the expense and complexity involved in infiltrating, supporting and activating them, sleeper agents and sleeper cells are exceptional components of espionage, or terrorist, tradecraft. The 9/11 hijackers were not “sleepers,” despite being characterized that way. They were operatives with a specific and limited assignment who entered the United States on their own passports. Rudolf Abel, born and raised in England before relocating to the Soviet Union, was smuggled into the United States by Soviet Intelligence in 1948. He lived and worked as an artist and photographer in Brooklyn, New York while coordinating and managing Soviet espionage operations against the United States.  At the time of Abel’s arrest in 1957, then CIA Director Allen Dulles said that he wished that he had at least three people as thorough, and as competent, as Rudolf Abel working for him in Moscow. 

In the aftermath of Premier Ford’s comments, senior RCMP officials said that the Force did not “have any information to provide…on any sleeper cells that may or may not exist in Canada.” CSIS, meanwhile, assesses the threat from Iran and its proxies as “medium.” This means that a violent extremist attack related to Iran remains a “realistic possibility.” However, the attack is most likely to come from a lone actor, “inspired by conflict in the Middle East.”

Iran’s Long Reach

In many respects, this does not seem to square with Iran’s status as one of the world’s most prolific sponsors of terrorism. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Yemen-based Houthi movement, and various Shi’ite militia groups in Iraq, are all part of Iran’s extensive proxy network. Historically, Iran is highly adept at using this network to spread mayhem across the region and, in some cases, around the world. In 2024, Argentina’s highest criminal court ruled that Iran was directly responsible for the “political and strategic design” of a Hezbollah bombing, 30 years earlier, of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that left 85 people dead, and 300 injured. 

More recently, both Europe and the United States have dealt with the outcomes of Iranian use of local criminal networks to target journalists, politicians, and Jewish, Iranian and Kurdish activists. In 2023, a member of a local Hells Angels chapter assisted the Iranian government in recruiting the attacker of a synagogue in Bochum, Germany. And two years later, Iran recruited two Russian organized crime figures to kill an Iranian journalist and human rights activist in New York. In Canada, where Iran features on a list of countries believed to be involved in foreign interference activities, authorities uncovered an alleged plot to assassinate human rights activist and former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler.  

Canada: Strategic Space

If not true sleeper agents, what constitutes the threat from Iran? At least two Iranian terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, raise funds in Canada. This goes back to at least the 1990s, when the RCMP uncovered highly lucrative Hezbollah-controlled tobacco smuggling networks between the United States and Canada. By 2025, both groups were involved in money-laundering and drug trafficking networks, and the theft and export of high-end automobiles. There are also indications that IRGC officials are present in Canada, and that they are involved in active intimidation and harassment of anti-regime activists in Iranian diaspora communities.  

For Iran and its proxies, Canada is strategic space. It is close to, but not part of, “the Great Satan;” it offers all of the conveniences of the modern world, including an efficient financial system connected to international networks; opportunities for various forms of high profit crime; freedom of movement and expression; and a large Iranian diaspora community, with everything that means in terms of fundraising, influence, and leverage through intimidation or deception. The Iranian regime is nothing if not pragmatic, and Iranian operatives and proxy players in Canada are likely to be focussed on those kinds of opportunities. Right now, Canada as the “peaceable kingdom” is probably more valuable to Iran than it is as a terrorist target.

Why Do We Care?

Ill-advised statements about sinister Iranian “sleeper cells,” presumably awaiting the signal to “wake up” and wreak havoc in Canada, do very little except stoke paranoia and a peculiar kind of xenophobia. In the post 9/11 period, anti-Muslim rhetoric placed an unequal onus on ordinary Muslims, even those who were Canadian citizens and permanent residents, to “prove” their loyalty to Canada and to “Western values,” and to repudiate what were euphemistically referred to as “barbaric cultural practices.” A generation before, in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution and the US embassy hostage crisis, Islam and Muslims became synonymous with terrorism and militancy, at least in the popular imagination. Even prominent political and media figures took sophomoric delight in the obvious mispronunciation of Shi’ite. So, the invocation of sleeper cells achieves nothing but linking an entire diaspora community to the possibility of terrorist violence, even though many, if not most, members of that community are opposed to the current Iranian regime. Rooted in suspicion and distrust, this kind of societal discord plays directly into that regime’s psyops and foreign interference strategies.

As above, American media and American political figures have been quick to seize on the Iranian sleeper cell narrative. This too is highly reminiscent of the decade and more after 9/11, when received American wisdom stated that the hijackers had entered the United States from Canada, exploiting fundamental weaknesses in Canadian immigration and intelligence protocols. This was by no limited to the realm of conspiracy theory: Hilary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, and John McCain were among the respected American political figures who insisted that this was true. Given this history, there is a high likelihood that the 1,000 Iranian sleeper agents supposedly “embedded” here will become a massive stick with which to beat Canada, which is still reeling from the aftershocks of the US administration’s assertions about fentanyl and the porous Canadian border. 

None of this diminishes the actual threat of violence associated with the current conflict in Iran. But just as relatively few of the “ISIS-inspired” terrorist attacks in Canada and the United States involved actual ISIS fighters, Iranian-, Hamas-, or Hezbollah-inspired attacks are more likely to be carried out, not by actual operatives, but by contractors, sympathizers, or people inspired or swayed by ideological messaging without necessarily understanding it – what Vladimir Lenin is said to have characterized as “useful idiots.” 

In 1989, for example, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (Islamic religious ruling) condemning Indian-British novelist Salman Rushdie to death for his “blasphemous” portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in his novel, The Satanic Verses. The fatwa was carried out in 2022, not by an Iranian agent, but by a disgruntled Lebanese-American at an event in Chautauqua, New York. Rushdie survived. On the other hand, Ayman Ghazali, who drove a makeshift truck bomb into a Michigan synagogue and Jewish day school in early March, was acting under the “direction and control” of Hezbollah, according to the US Justice Department. Intelligence indicates that his brother was a Hezbollah commander who had recently been killed in an Israeli airstrike. 

Whether carried out by an agent of the Iranian state, a proxy, a sympathizer, or a useful idiot, terrorist violence is still terrorist violence and the CSIS “realistic possibility” assessment must be taken seriously. Likely targets include anti-regime activists, including Canadian political figures and elected officials, as well as American targets of opportunity. 

Since the events of October 7, 2023, antisemitic violence and the deliberate targeting of Jewish people, businesses and institutions has proliferated, internationally and here in Canada. With the ramping up of Iranian eliminationist rhetoric vis-à-vis Israel, the threat to Jewish, Israeli and so-called “Zionist” targets should be considered extreme.

Sleeper Agents: Fiction?

It is Ontario premier Doug Ford’s “personal opinion” that Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “sleeper cells” are present and active in Canada. In a recent press conference, he stated that these sleeper cells may have been behind a series of March 2026 Toronto synagogue shootings, as well as a handgun attack on the US Consulate in downtown Toronto. Premier Ford added that police and intelligence agencies must “weed these people out and hold them accountable.” A few days later, American media echoed Ford, alleging that up to 1,000 Iranian sleeper agents are “embedded” in Canada, where they pose “an urgent security threat” to the United States. 

In old-time espionage parlance, sleeper agents refer to people who are infiltrated by a hostile power into a target country without diplomatic or official cover. Often, they are native speakers of the target country’s language, with extraordinary cultural knowledge and sensitivity. Once in place, they go dormant, building a life for themselves that makes them largely indistinguishable from most other citizens or residents of that country, until they are activated.

Sleeper Agents: Fact

Given the expense and complexity involved in infiltrating, supporting and activating them, sleeper agents and sleeper cells are exceptional components of espionage, or terrorist, tradecraft. The 9/11 hijackers were not “sleepers,” despite being characterized that way. They were operatives with a specific and limited assignment who entered the United States on their own passports. Rudolf Abel, born and raised in England before relocating to the Soviet Union, was smuggled into the United States by Soviet Intelligence in 1948. He lived and worked as an artist and photographer in Brooklyn, New York while coordinating and managing Soviet espionage operations against the United States.  At the time of Abel’s arrest in 1957, then CIA Director Allen Dulles said that he wished that he had at least three people as thorough, and as competent, as Rudolf Abel working for him in Moscow. 

In the aftermath of Premier Ford’s comments, senior RCMP officials said that the Force did not “have any information to provide…on any sleeper cells that may or may not exist in Canada.” CSIS, meanwhile, assesses the threat from Iran and its proxies as “medium.” This means that a violent extremist attack related to Iran remains a “realistic possibility.” However, the attack is most likely to come from a lone actor, “inspired by conflict in the Middle East.”

Iran’s Long Reach

In many respects, this does not seem to square with Iran’s status as one of the world’s most prolific sponsors of terrorism. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Yemen-based Houthi movement, and various Shi’ite militia groups in Iraq, are all part of Iran’s extensive proxy network. Historically, Iran is highly adept at using this network to spread mayhem across the region and, in some cases, around the world. In 2024, Argentina’s highest criminal court ruled that Iran was directly responsible for the “political and strategic design” of a Hezbollah bombing, 30 years earlier, of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that left 85 people dead, and 300 injured. 

More recently, both Europe and the United States have dealt with the outcomes of Iranian use of local criminal networks to target journalists, politicians, and Jewish, Iranian and Kurdish activists. In 2023, a member of a local Hells Angels chapter assisted the Iranian government in recruiting the attacker of a synagogue in Bochum, Germany. And two years later, Iran recruited two Russian organized crime figures to kill an Iranian journalist and human rights activist in New York. In Canada, where Iran features on a list of countries believed to be involved in foreign interference activities, authorities uncovered an alleged plot to assassinate human rights activist and former Justice Minister Irwin Cotler.  

Canada: Strategic Space

If not true sleeper agents, what constitutes the threat from Iran? At least two Iranian terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, raise funds in Canada. This goes back to at least the 1990s, when the RCMP uncovered highly lucrative Hezbollah-controlled tobacco smuggling networks between the United States and Canada. By 2025, both groups were involved in money-laundering and drug trafficking networks, and the theft and export of high-end automobiles. There are also indications that IRGC officials are present in Canada, and that they are involved in active intimidation and harassment of anti-regime activists in Iranian diaspora communities.  

For Iran and its proxies, Canada is strategic space. It is close to, but not part of, “the Great Satan;” it offers all of the conveniences of the modern world, including an efficient financial system connected to international networks; opportunities for various forms of high profit crime; freedom of movement and expression; and a large Iranian diaspora community, with everything that means in terms of fundraising, influence, and leverage through intimidation or deception. The Iranian regime is nothing if not pragmatic, and Iranian operatives and proxy players in Canada are likely to be focussed on those kinds of opportunities. Right now, Canada as the “peaceable kingdom” is probably more valuable to Iran than it is as a terrorist target.

Why Do We Care?

Ill-advised statements about sinister Iranian “sleeper cells,” presumably awaiting the signal to “wake up” and wreak havoc in Canada, do very little except stoke paranoia and a peculiar kind of xenophobia. In the post 9/11 period, anti-Muslim rhetoric placed an unequal onus on ordinary Muslims, even those who were Canadian citizens and permanent residents, to “prove” their loyalty to Canada and to “Western values,” and to repudiate what were euphemistically referred to as “barbaric cultural practices.” A generation before, in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution and the US embassy hostage crisis, Islam and Muslims became synonymous with terrorism and militancy, at least in the popular imagination. Even prominent political and media figures took sophomoric delight in the obvious mispronunciation of Shi’ite. So, the invocation of sleeper cells achieves nothing but linking an entire diaspora community to the possibility of terrorist violence, even though many, if not most, members of that community are opposed to the current Iranian regime. Rooted in suspicion and distrust, this kind of societal discord plays directly into that regime’s psyops and foreign interference strategies.

As above, American media and American political figures have been quick to seize on the Iranian sleeper cell narrative. This too is highly reminiscent of the decade and more after 9/11, when received American wisdom stated that the hijackers had entered the United States from Canada, exploiting fundamental weaknesses in Canadian immigration and intelligence protocols. This was by no limited to the realm of conspiracy theory: Hilary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, and John McCain were among the respected American political figures who insisted that this was true. Given this history, there is a high likelihood that the 1,000 Iranian sleeper agents supposedly “embedded” here will become a massive stick with which to beat Canada, which is still reeling from the aftershocks of the US administration’s assertions about fentanyl and the porous Canadian border. 

None of this diminishes the actual threat of violence associated with the current conflict in Iran. But just as relatively few of the “ISIS-inspired” terrorist attacks in Canada and the United States involved actual ISIS fighters, Iranian-, Hamas-, or Hezbollah-inspired attacks are more likely to be carried out, not by actual operatives, but by contractors, sympathizers, or people inspired or swayed by ideological messaging without necessarily understanding it – what Vladimir Lenin is said to have characterized as “useful idiots.” 

In 1989, for example, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (Islamic religious ruling) condemning Indian-British novelist Salman Rushdie to death for his “blasphemous” portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in his novel, The Satanic Verses. The fatwa was carried out in 2022, not by an Iranian agent, but by a disgruntled Lebanese-American at an event in Chautauqua, New York. Rushdie survived. On the other hand, Ayman Ghazali, who drove a makeshift truck bomb into a Michigan synagogue and Jewish day school in early March, was acting under the “direction and control” of Hezbollah, according to the US Justice Department. Intelligence indicates that his brother was a Hezbollah commander who had recently been killed in an Israeli airstrike. 

Whether carried out by an agent of the Iranian state, a proxy, a sympathizer, or a useful idiot, terrorist violence is still terrorist violence and the CSIS “realistic possibility” assessment must be taken seriously. Likely targets include anti-regime activists, including Canadian political figures and elected officials, as well as American targets of opportunity. 

Since the events of October 7, 2023, antisemitic violence and the deliberate targeting of Jewish people, businesses and institutions has proliferated, internationally and here in Canada. With the ramping up of Iranian eliminationist rhetoric vis-à-vis Israel, the threat to Jewish, Israeli and so-called “Zionist” targets should be considered extreme.