The confrontation that reshaped the intelligence and military balance in the Middle East unfolded between June 3 and June 15, 2025, when Israel and the United States launched a coordinated campaign against Iran that combined external strikes with what Tehran later described as a deeply embedded internal operation. It was not merely a clash of aircraft, missiles, and naval deployments. Iranian officials and regional analysts argued that it was a war prepared from within, built on years of covert penetration by Mossad, Israel’s world-renowned intelligence service. According to these accounts, networks of cultivated insiders had facilitated the smuggling of drones, communications equipment, and light weapons into Iranian territory.

The aftermath, now firmly in the past, triggered what Tehran called the largest counter-intelligence operation in its modern history, marked by mass arrests, the exposure of alleged cells, the seizure of weapons depots, and the dismantling of clandestine communication networks. By mid-June, the guns fell silent, but the intelligence war had merely shifted into a deeper and more complex phase.

That next phase began after the Davos meetings concluded on January 23, when President Donald Trump ordered the movement of a U.S. armada and flotilla of warships toward the Persian Gulf, positioning them to encircle Iran. The global media and defense circles immediately framed the deployment as the prelude to an imminent strike. Aircraft carriers, submarines, and long-range bombers dominated headlines. Markets trembled. Regional capitals braced. Yet, at the moment when an attack was most widely anticipated, it did not come.

Instead, Washington paused. According to defense analysts, this postponement was not hesitation, but calculation. The delay itself became a strategic instrument designed to induce nervousness and anxiety within Iran’s defense and political leadership, compelling them to move, displace, and conceal what they valued most—missile units, nuclear materials, command centers, and senior civilian, religious, and military figures.

As these movements unfolded, analysts argued, they created precisely what intelligence services seek: patterns. Satellites tracked convoys. Signals intelligence monitored encrypted communications. Human networks reported shifts in routines and locations.

In this reading, the attack was deliberately deferred so that Iran’s own efforts to protect its assets would expose them. Each relocation became a data point. Each new “safe place” became a coordinate. When the moment came, these analysts claimed, targets would already be locked—ready for B-2 bombers, F-35 squadrons, or Tomahawk missiles launched from submarines hundreds of miles away.

Tehran, however, rejected the notion that it was merely a subject of this strategic chess game. Iranian officials emphasized that, in the wake of June and throughout the tense weeks that followed the January naval deployment, the country had dramatically expanded its counter-intelligence posture. With technical and advisory support from Russia and China, Iran claimed to have shifted its focus beyond human networks to the digital and satellite-based systems allegedly used to coordinate covert activity and unrest inside the country.

One of the most striking claims to emerge from this period involved the discovery of large numbers of Starlinked satellite based communication devices, often described in regional reporting as “starlink kits.” These systems were designed to bypass Iran’s domestic telecommunications infrastructure and link operatives directly to external command centers. Through these channels, real-time instructions could be transmitted—where to assemble, which facilities to target, how to provoke security forces, and how to frame events for international audiences once clashes occurred.

The method, as it was later described, followed a tightly engineered pattern. Small groups would initiate acts of vandalism or violence in public spaces. When security forces intervened, they would be fired at by sophisticated automatic weapons to trigger confrontations. Images and reports of these clashes would then be rapidly amplified across global media platforms as evidence of state repression. The objective was not simply to destabilize Iran internally, but to construct a moral and political narrative that could justify renewed external pressure or even direct military action.

Iranian authorities claimed that, working with Russian and Chinese technical expertise, they eventually traced the signal pathways behind these systems. Uplinks and downlinks were identified. Devices were seized. The digital bridge between alleged external coordinators and internal operatives was disrupted. As a result, Tehran argued, the momentum of street-level unrest declined, and the information battlefield tilted back in favor of the state.

Overlaying these tactical maneuvers was a deeper ideological framing articulated by Iran’s leadership. In speeches delivered by the country’s supreme authority portrayed the confrontation not merely as a geopolitical struggle, but as a test of spiritual endurance. When the world turns against the Muslim community, he told followers, divine support alone is sufficient. This religious narrative provided a form of resilience that could not be neutralized by satellites, sanctions, or surveillance.

At the strategic level, another current shaped Western and regional calculations: Iran’s steadily advancing missile and nuclear capabilities, whether acknowledged, denied, or deliberately left ambiguous. The June 2025 exchange also exposed the limits of Israel’s and America’s ability to achieve decisive results without risking serious retaliation.

Iran was not an isolated state on the periphery of global politics. It stood at the intersection of major power interests. Russia and China openly opposed a war that could redraw the strategic map of the region. Turkey publicly accused Israel of pushing the United States toward a conflict that would destabilize the entire Middle East. Within NATO, enthusiasm for opening another major front appeared limited.

Meanwhile, Washington faced pressures far beyond the Persian Gulf. From the Caribbean to South America, shifting alliances and growing resistance to U.S. influence demanded diplomatic and strategic attention. The prospect of managing simultaneous crises across multiple theaters introduced caution into decision-making circles, as military assets and political capital were stretched across competing priorities.

Hovering over all these calculations was the narrow corridor of the Strait of Hormuz. Any disruption there would send shockwaves through global energy markets and supply chains, with consequences reaching far beyond the region.

Iran’s post-June and post-January campaign to loosen Mossad’s alleged grip—through mass arrests, technological countermeasures, and strategic partnerships—which signaled Iran’s determination to contest every layer of the intelligence battlefield, from the streets of its cities to the orbits above its skies.

The United Nations, often dismissed as powerless, remained, in principle, the only forum capable of conferring collective legitimacy on any lasting settlement. Its strength lay not in its bureaucracy, but in the willingness of member states to honor its resolutions and arbitration. If that willingness continued to erode, the world risked sliding from a rules-based order into a raw contest of power.

For now, June’s firestorm belonged to history, and January’s naval chessboard defined the present. Beneath the visible movements of fleets and leaders, the silent war of spies, signals, and counter-signals continued to shape the future—reminding the world that in the modern age, the most decisive battles are often fought far from the front lines, in the hidden spaces between information, perception, and power.

The writer is Press Secretary to the President (Rtd),Former Press Minister, Embassy of Pakistan to France,Former Press Attaché to Malaysia and Former MD SRBC.He is living in  Macomb, Michigan