--- title: "“Mossad Wants You”: Israel’s Spies Said to Recruit Online in Lebanon and Iran" description: "A verified Instagram account writes in Lebanese dialect. Beirut and Tehran answer with warnings, prison terms and the threat of execution" author: "Jan Sokol" published: 2026-10-14T16:51:12Z modified: 2026-10-15T04:17:17Z url: https://rews.cc/a/mossad-wants-you-israel-s-spies-said-to-recruit-online-in-le-a98770 language: en tags: ["mossad", "iran", "lebanon", "recruitment", "hezbollah", "mideast", "asia"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # “Mossad Wants You”: Israel’s Spies Said to Recruit Online in Lebanon and Iran *A verified Instagram account writes in Lebanese dialect. Beirut and Tehran answer with warnings, prison terms and the threat of execution* By Jan Sokol · October 14, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/mossad-wants-you-israel-s-spies-said-to-recruit-online-in-le-a98770 ## In brief - Security experts say Israeli intelligence is believed to use social-media ads to recruit informants in Lebanon and Iran - A verified Instagram account, @themossad\_official, posts appeals in colloquial Lebanese Arabic; Lebanon warned against it in Aug 2025 - Lebanese authorities also flagged the SAWA Facebook page, WhatsApp approaches, fake job ads and a page called “Unit 504” - A Persian-language Mossad Telegram channel urged Iranians in March to send intelligence from inside Iran, AFP reported - Iran’s judiciary warned in July that sharing information with hostile networks could bring 10–15 years in prison or the death penalty Recruiting a spy used to take a meeting: a stranger who had to be sized up, a trip abroad, a debt or a grievance worked on for months. Security experts quoted by [Mohammad Mansour in *Al Jazeera*](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/14/suspected-israeli-online-operations-cause-alarm-in-iran-and-lebanon) say Israel’s intelligence services are now believed to start with a screen. They use online advertisements and appeals written for local audiences to gather information and to find informants in Lebanon and Iran. The offer comes to the reader. All the reader has to do is answer it. ## The account On Instagram, a verified account under the handle @themossad\_official presents itself as belonging to Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency. It writes in Arabic. This is the everyday spoken Arabic of Lebanon, not the formal language of newspapers and ministries, and it asks readers to make contact through confidential channels. The pinned highlights have Arabic titles: “Lebanon”, over a photograph of fighters; “Israel”; “Mossad wants you!”; “Protection”; “Think about your future.” Protection. A future. A reader may notice that a foreign service is offering two things a citizen would normally expect from his own state. That is a reflection, not a finding, but the titles were chosen by someone who knew what his audience lacked. ![A paper umbrella with a red fishhook handle extends from a smartphone toward an outstretched hand against a textured teal background.](https://rews.cc/img/671a10e2277c554231b24e4ad21a8576bbe817b2.webp) In August 2025, Lebanon’s General Security Directorate warned residents to stay away from the account. It was not the first warning. In January 2025 the same directorate flagged a Facebook page called SAWA, which it suspected was a Mossad front. That month the Beirut daily Al Akhbar reported that operatives were contacting Lebanese citizens directly on WhatsApp and through fake job ads promising high salaries. In December 2025, L’Orient Today reported a warning about a page calling itself “Unit 504”. The page claimed to be the Israeli military’s human intelligence unit and was looking for recruits. ## The map of need Hardship makes people listen, and Lebanon’s economic crisis has left many residents open to such approaches. Retired Brigadier General Mounir Chehade said the campaign was aimed at the areas where Hezbollah’s support is strongest: Beirut’s southern suburbs, south Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. In October 2025 it was reported that Lebanese authorities had arrested 32 people suspected of passing Israel information that was used to target Hezbollah leaders. ![A giant needle threaded with red string connects windows across weathered apartment buildings in a torn-paper collage against a teal background.](https://rews.cc/img/d04bbe69aa5a4b78f2438f98c87f831e95a79d6c.webp) The researcher Wissam Nassif Yassin said the dialect is there to avoid suspicion. Israel’s working assumption, he said, is that “every person can be penetrated from their own angle.” He described a ranking of targets: Hezbollah members first, what he called the “resistance environment” second, and the wider surroundings third. He also said that, despite Israel’s successes, collaboration is still widely rejected, and that Hezbollah’s counterintelligence is strong. As an example he cited Elhanan Tannenbaum, an alleged Israeli spy who was lured abroad and captured in 2000, then released in a prisoner exchange in 2004. Lures work in both directions. In Lebanon, collaborating with Israel is punishable by imprisonment. ## Tehran Hassan Ahmadian of the University of Tehran calls it “an intelligence war”. He says it has peaked in recent years and “has never stopped.” Israel “certainly uses online advertising to recruit people,” he said, and he remembered seeing ads in Iran that offered high salaries to analysts or security staff. In his view the openness has a purpose of its own, “to amplify the Israeli presence”. That is a psychological aim that goes beyond finding recruits. The Persian-language outreach makes no effort to hide. As [AFP reported in March](https://www.spacewar.com/afp/260318152021.vwsjuzbv.html), a Persian-language Mossad channel appeared on Telegram on December 24, weeks before the war began, and a link on the agency’s official website confirmed it was genuine. The channel had around 48,000 subscribers. On March 6 it posted a message urging Iranians to send intelligence from inside the country. ![A weathered megaphone projects torn photographic fragments of Iranian mountains, buildings, farmland, and a winding road against a textured teal background with a red circle.](https://rews.cc/img/e24a349b5255f3a5e5559d9b0b3ba264b7f78066.webp) Tehran replied in July. The newspaper Kayhan reported that Iran’s Intelligence Ministry had warned of Mossad-linked accounts that extract information and spread fake news. The ministry claimed Mossad had even offered medical advice to people wounded in the US-Israeli war as a way of gathering intelligence. The same month, the judiciary warned that sending images or information to hostile networks could bring 10 to 15 years in prison, heavy fines and possible charges of “corruption on Earth”, which carry the death penalty. So the person at the end of the chain is caught between two governments. One sends an invitation. The other threatens the gallows for answering it. Here is a reflection on rulers and the ruled: when two states fight through people’s telephones, the people holding the telephones carry most of the risk, while the spymasters on both sides carry very little. ## The mirror Ahmadian pointed out that Iran runs its own operations. In October 2024, Israel arrested seven Israelis accused of spying on military and sensitive sites for Iran. Gonen Segev, a former Israeli energy minister, was arrested in 2018, pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2019 to 11 years in prison. Ahmadian expects the intelligence war to continue and to keep shaping the wider conflict. Meanwhile, according to the Al Jazeera report, the pinned circle on the Instagram profile still reads “Think about your future” in Lebanese Arabic. In Beirut and Tehran, the state’s reply to that line is a prison sentence.