CSIS has increased its operational tempo against Iranian state-directed activity in Canada, according to The Globe and Mail, as the service contends with a threat picture that has grown more complex since the onset of direct U.S.-Israel military engagement with Iran.

The service's mandate covers espionage and sabotage, foreign interference, terrorism and violent extremism, and subversion — four broad threat categories that Iranian activity can touch simultaneously, according to CSIS's own public reporting. That breadth makes Iran a particularly resource-intensive target: a single network may combine intelligence collection, intimidation of diaspora communities, and contingency planning for direct-action operations under one operational umbrella.

A feature of the current Iranian threat model, flagged in CSIS's 2024 public report and amplified by Global News in June 2025, is the deliberate outsourcing of transnational repression to organized crime. Foreign regimes — Iran prominently among them — are contracting underworld syndicates to surveil, harass, and in some cases physically threaten diaspora members and dissidents on Canadian soil. The arrangement insulates the directing state from direct attribution while giving it operational reach it would struggle to project through conventional intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover.

That outsourcing model is not new in the abstract, but the degree to which Iran has systematized it in Canada places unusual demands on CSIS. Countering it requires liaison with the RCMP and provincial police services that have jurisdiction over organized crime, as well as close coordination with the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre and allied Five Eyes partners tracking the same networks across borders. It is, structurally, a harder investigative problem than running a straightforward counter-espionage case against a declared intelligence officer.

The operational expansion also unfolds against a shift in public and political rhetoric. Since direct conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran began in earnest, CBC's investigative unit reported in March 2026 that talk of Iranian "sleeper cells" inside Canada has intensified — among politicians, in media commentary, and on social platforms. Intelligence professionals quoted in that reporting were measured about the risk: the concern is real, but the rhetorical environment inflates public anxiety in ways that can complicate sober threat assessment and, occasionally, generate pressure on the service to be seen to act rather than simply to act.

The distinction matters operationally. CSIS works under a reasonable-grounds-to-believe standard before opening or escalating an investigation, and any kinetic disruption requires either a judicial warrant or referral to law enforcement. Surge resourcing directed at a broad community rather than specific threat actors would expose the service to legal challenge and erode the diaspora trust that is itself an intelligence asset. The Globe and Mail's reporting does not suggest that line is being crossed; the expansion appears to be targeted rather than community-wide.

Parliament has this file in view. The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency both have standing mandates to scrutinize CSIS operations, and Iranian-linked threat activity has featured in public reporting from both oversight bodies in recent cycles. Whether the increased operational tempo surfaces in the next NSICOP annual report — or in a classified annex that Parliamentarians see but the public does not — will be one measure of how seriously the service rates the current threat level.

For the Iranian-Canadian diaspora, the practical stakes are immediate. Transnational repression campaigns are designed to produce a chilling effect: self-censorship, withdrawal from political activity, and reluctance to engage with Canadian authorities. CSIS's ability to disrupt those campaigns before they escalate to physical violence is as much about protecting expressive freedom as about national security in the conventional sense. The two are not competing priorities here. They point in the same direction.