New in SpyWeek: Intel Chaos Over Iran War as Russia Helps Target U.S. Warplanes, Ships
Puzzle over war aims; Little hope for Iranian democracy, NIC said before strikes; CIA-Kurds plan dumped; White House buries warning on Iran-linked terror in U.S.
From Moscow With Love: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says Russia’s help is nothing new.”It’s not a secret. It has been in the past, and it’s still there, and will continue in the future,” Araghchi told NBC News’s Kristen Welker on Meet The Press. It’s “a very good partnership.” On Friday, The Washington Post, citing “three officials familiar with the intelligence,” exclusively reported that “Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East,” including “the locations of U.S. military assets, including warships and aircraft.” Trump and other administration officials brushed off the import of the report. “If you take a look at what’s happened to Iran in the last week, if they’re getting information, it’s not helping them much,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. When Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked him about it, Trump called it a “stupid question.”
Room at the Top: Iran’s democracy-minded opposition was “unlikely” to take power “following either a short or extended U.S. military campaign” against the Islamic Republic, according to a classified National Intelligence Council (NIC) report produced a week before President Trump ordered an airstrike that eliminated Iran’s leadership. “Iran’s clerical and military establishment would respond to the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by following protocols designed to preserve continuity of power,” sources told The Washington Post’s John Hudson and Warren P. Strobel. The NIC, an arm of the Office of National Intelligence, distills the views of the 18-member U.S. intelligence community. Ali’s son Mojtaba Khamenei, named Sunday to be his father’s successor, was “unacceptable,” Trump declared last week. “They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment,” he said. “Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me.”
Kurdish Way: The CIA won’t be arming and assisting Kurdish Free Life Party militants to help take down the Islamic Republic afterall. “The war is complicated enough without having ... the Kurds involved,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. Just days earlier Kurdish officials told the AP that “Kurdish-Iranian dissident groups based in northern Iraq were preparing for a potential cross-border military operation in Iran and that the U.S. had asked Iraqi Kurds to support them.” The PJAK, as it’s known, is aligned with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which has been at war with Turkey for decades. Trump officials probably got an earful from Recep Tayyip Erdoğan about that.
MI to the Rescue: The U.S. Central Command “is asking the Pentagon to send more military intelligence officers to its headquarters in Tampa, Florida, to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days but likely through September.” (Politico)
Robotic War: Artificial Intelligence is “turbocharging the war in Iran,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “AI tools are helping gather intelligence, pick targets, plan bombing missions and assess battle damage at speeds not previously possible. AI helps commanders manage supplies of everything from ammunition to spare parts and lets them choose the best weapon for each objective.”
Missing in Action: The House Intelligence Committee has basically suspended operations, Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, (D-Pa) complained the other day. “Intelligence has been completely MIA,” said the former Air Force officer. “Chairman [Rick] Crawford has declined, denied and canceled meeting after meeting after meeting in the intelligence committee and hasn’t asked for the information that must be available, or at least should be available, to intelligence committee members,” she added. Same with the Foreign Affairs Committee, she said. (Facebook)
Hear No Evil: The White House has blocked an intelligence report warning of rising terror threat in the U.S. linked to the Iran war, the U.K. Daily Mail reported. “The FBI, Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center were preparing to put out a joint intelligence statement on Friday to state and local authorities alerting them of a heightened threat due to the ongoing war in Iran, a senior DHS official said,” according to the Mail. “Top Trump officials ordered it placed on ‘hold,’” it said, and “The White House did not deny blocking the terror bulletin...” The FBI suspects the gunman who carried out a mass shooting outside a bar in Austin, Texas five days earlier may have been motivated by the war. The Senegali immigrant “wore clothing featuring an Iranian flag design and the words ‘property of Allah’ and had a Quran in his possession.” (Daily News)
DOJ, FBI Shed Iran Experts: “Mass firings leave national security ranks thinned as war raises threats,” The Washington Post headlined on Friday,citing names and cases of deeply experienced counterintelligence agents and prosecutors expelled by FBI Director Kash Patel and A.G. Pam Bondi in Trump’s continuing revenge campaign. “The FBI and Justice Department still have skilled leaders in many key national security positions,” sources told The Post’s Perry Stein (no relation), “but they warned that the bench of expertise has significantly thinned over the past year, and the number of leaders with deep expertise in handling domestic threats has diminished,” just as war-related threats and Chinese espionage were surging.
Active Measures: The FBI is investigating “suspicious activities” on an internal system that “the bureau says contains sensitive information related to surveillance operations and investigations,” the AP reported. “Neither the FBI statement nor the notification identified who might be responsible for the incident, but the bureau and other federal agencies have long been targets of foreign hackers seeking to spy on sensitive operations and decision-making.”
Zeroed Out: The shooting assault on two National Guard soldiers by an Afghan refugee in Washington, D.C. in November 2025 drew passing attention to the man’s service in the CIA’s hunter-killer squads during the war. Now, in a New York Times Magazine cover story on Sunday, reporters Matthieu Aikins and Wesley Morgan take a riveting deep dive into the often sordid history of the Zero Units that the gunman, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, served in.
Havana Syndrome: Expert Russia tracker Michael Weiss is out with a stunner: “The biggest cover-up of my adult life.” Subtitle: “Inside the CIA’s attempt to make Havana Syndrome disappear,” published Sunday in The Insider. Former CIA officer John Thorn (not his real name) told Weiss that the CIA’s investigation “was driven not by rigorous fact-gathering and dispassionate analysis but by an agenda not to uncover the truth or even take its own remit seriously.” Thoirn said, “You had about 50 percent of the building that believed [AHI] was true. The other 50 percent believed that it was a fake issue. And it became very divisive. And it created a lot of infighting in the headquarters and within the intelligence community.” A must-read.
Assassins: Prosecutors in a trial that opened in New York this week say Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard was “entangled in a foiled 2024 assassination plot that “eyed then-candidate Donald Trump as a possible target,” the A.P. reported. “Merchant didn’t name a target but searched online for Trump rally locations, according to prosecutors, who introduced evidence Tuesday that Merchant’s laptop contained photos of both Trump and then-President Joe Biden at a time when they were rivals for the presidency.” Meanwhile, an Iranian man indicted in 2024 for involvement in a plot to kill Trump was “hunted down and killed” during attacks on Iran this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced. News reports said Hegseth was probably referring to Farhad Shakeri, an IRGC asset based in Tehran who immigrated to the US as a child, was deported in 2008 following a 14-year robbery sentence, and later got involved in drug smuggling.
War is Hell: Former MMA fighter and freshman Senator Markwayne Kelly (R-Okla), President Trump’s nominee to replace Kristi Noem is drawing guffaw over his bittersweet take on the personal costs of war. “War is ugly,” he said recently, “smells bad, and if anybody’s ever been there, and been able to smell the war that’s happened around you and taste it and feel it in your nostrils and hear it, it’s something that you’ll never forget, and it’s ugly.” Problem is, he’s never been in the military, much less in combat—or even in law enforcement as he marches toward DHS—although he did try to enter Afghanistan in 2021 in a failed bid to rescue Americans. He has certainly earned stripes from Trump, though, for introducing resolutions in 2022 to remove the president’s first and second impeachments from the Congressional Record.
Ice Barbie Meltdown: Erstwhile DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s alleged lover Corey Lewandowski, “is no longer a senior adviser at DHS, closing the chapter as what some insiders branded a ‘reign of terror.’” (Radar)
Spotted: Former Secretary of State and Iraq WMD peddler Condoleezza Rice at the White House, on Friday. The day before, Rice was on Fox News “urging Trump to take care of Iran once and for all.“ (Daily Beast)
Coming Attraction: Inside the CIA: Secrets & Spies. (The Trailer)
has trump finally realize that Russia and China both are helping Iran to target American position, assets and naval units. wake up trump or anyone in the white house who should give a damn!