Canadian intelligence is doing more work to counter activities by the Iranian government inside Canada, according to The Globe and Mail. The reason: the threat has grown more complicated since the U.S. and Israel started direct military conflict with Iran.

Canada's security service, CSIS, handles four main types of threats: spying and sabotage, interference from foreign governments, terrorism, and extremism. When Iranian activity happens here, it often involves more than one of these at the same time, according to CSIS's 2024 public report. That makes Iranian operations harder to track — a single network might be collecting secrets, threatening people in the Iranian-Canadian community, and planning attacks all at once.

One major change is how Iran operates. According to Global News in June 2025, instead of doing the work itself, Iran has been hiring criminal groups to intimidate and threaten Iranians living in Canada who oppose the government. These crime groups do the dirty work while the Iranian government stays out of sight. It is harder to catch and proves difficult to link back to Tehran.

This approach forces CSIS to change how it works. The RCMP and provincial police handle organized crime investigations in Canada. CSIS now has to team up with them to follow the money, track the gangs, and prove the Iranian government connection. It also needs to work with Five Eyes partners — the U.S., UK, Australia, and New Zealand — who are watching the same criminal networks cross borders. This is more complicated than catching a spy at an embassy.

At the same time, politicians and media have been talking more about Iranian "sleeper cells" in Canada — agents supposedly waiting to attack. According to CBC's investigative unit in March 2026, this talk has spread on social media too. Intelligence experts say the worry is real, but also that public fear sometimes pushes agencies to be seen acting rather than truly solving the problem.

There is a real tension here. CSIS can only start investigating someone if it has good reason to believe they are a threat. If it investigates entire communities instead of specific people, it can face legal trouble and lose the trust of Iranian-Canadian communities — and that trust is itself valuable for getting information. The Globe's reporting suggests CSIS is staying focused on actual suspects, not casting a wider net.

Canadian lawmakers are paying attention. Parliament has two bodies that oversee CSIS — the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians and the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. Both have been watching Iranian-linked threats. Over the next few months, their public reports may show whether CSIS thinks this threat is as serious as the current talk suggests.

For Iranian-Canadians, what matters most is this: threats like intimidation campaigns are meant to silence people — to make them scared to speak up or join in political life. If CSIS can stop those campaigns before anyone gets hurt, it protects both national security and the basic freedoms Canadians expect to have — freedom to speak and take part in democracy. Those two goals actually point the same direction here.