Are Iranian ‘sleeper cells’ dangerous to Canadians? Here’s what intelligence experts say
The US-Israeli war with Iran has raised fears that Tehran may be employing secret agents abroad to carry out terrorist plots.
“I believe there are sleeper cells all over the world,” said Ontario Premier Doug Ford at a press conference on March 10. “As we know, they are in the US and Canada.”
According to US media reports, US officials intercepted encrypted communications believed to be from Iran that may have served as an “active motive” to open the “sleeper facility.”
Days after the start of the war, Qatari authorities announced the arrest of 10 suspects who were allegedly assigned to be spies in “important and military locations” in the Gulf state of the Iranian regime.
But counterterrorism experts say the threat from Iran’s sleeper cells is vastly overstated.
Dan Stanton, director of the national security program at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute who also worked for more than 30 years at CSIS, says the Iranian regime does not use ‘sleeper cells’ but rather ‘criminal lawyers’ in Canada.
Sleeper cells are understood as groups of secret agents who sit among the population until they are ordered to act – a concept that “often conjures up an image of a Russian spy or terrorist living nearby, lying on the ground, meeting and waiting to be called into action,” writes Shannon Nash, a counterterrorism expert who has studied the topic extensively.
“This mentality, along with the fear of an enemy operating within, is ironic and plays into the way society views security.”
Concerns surrounding sleeper cells often arise whenever tensions escalate between the US and Iran. But one Canadian security expert says their deployment is not the way the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operates in Canada.
“They’re not using them,” said Dan Stanton, director of the national security program at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute.
Stanton, who has worked with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) for more than 30 years, says the real threat lies in Tehran’s use of local criminal networks to target terror and violence.
“They don’t use sleeper cells in such a way that they use what we can call criminal proxies. These are people who monitor, torture people or try to kill people.”
Critics of the regime, targeted activists
Public figures, both in government positions and abroad, who criticize the Iranian regime are often the subject of targeted campaigns or plots against their lives.
Among them is former Canadian justice minister and outspoken critic of the Iranian regime Irwin Cotler. In 2024, the RCMP inform Cotler that they have foiled a plot by Iranian agents to kill him.
In a statement to CBC, CSIS wrote that the intelligence agency is working closely with “our foreign and domestic law enforcement partners” to address Iranian intelligence activities and their proxies.
“In more than one case this involves detecting, investigating and disrupting threats that pose a threat to Canadians,” he wrote.
Former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler tells CBC reporter Adrienne Arsenault about the Iranian spy plot that put him under 24/7 police protection and why he thinks more needs to be done to stop the regime’s international repression.
In the US, two Russians were sentenced to 25 years in prison last October in connection with a conspiracy to assassinate Masih Alinejad, an Iranian American journalist and activist, on behalf of the Iranian government.
A few years earlier, the US Department of Justice announced charges against an Iranian for attempting to arrange the assassination of former national security adviser John Bolton on American soil.
“All of us who were targeted by Iran should be worried, but we should be worried about other people as this attack has begun,” said Bolton, whose security clearance was cleared in January 2025.
“Obviously it was wrong for Trump to take away the immunity that was being offered — not just to me but to other senior officials — because the threat came from what we did as part of our official duties,” Bolton told CBC News in an interview.
Thomas Juneau, who teaches at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, says the IRGC targets the families of Iranian dissidents as a way to punish or silence them.
“There have been many documented cases … parents, siblings, close friends, other family members who are still in Iran to be questioned by the intelligence community,” Juneau said.
“And in the worst cases, [they] will be physically beaten, abused or [suffer] other types of negative consequences, such as frozen financial assets, suspended operations, job losses.”
Lone wolf attacks more
Intelligence experts have emphasized that lone wolves with multiple possible motives and associated organizations are more likely to be responsible for acts of violence in Canada than deep-cover Iranian agents.
“The Iranian regime, we must also remember, is part of a political ideology,” said political violence and terrorism researcher Broderick McDonald. “Some of the younger members of the extremist wings of the Iranian IRGC think, in some cases, that they have taken action.”
CSIS also told CBC the most likely scenario of a “violent attack” involves “a single actor whose intent to mobilize officials is unknown to authorities” and who “may be motivated by conflict in the Middle East.”
There have been many violent incidents in the US since the war began in Feb. 28, including an attack on a synagogue in Michigan and a shooting in Austin, Texas, in which a gunman dressed in clothing emblazoned with the Iranian flag killed two and wounded 14 others.
In Canada, an Iranian Canadian activist gym in Thornhill, Ont., which displayed pre-revolutionary Iranian flags was shot 17 times after a large anti-regime protest.
Separately, the US embassy in Toronto was targeted for shooting in what police called a “national security incident.”
“I think the terrorist threat is global, but especially in North America and Europe,” Bolton said.
“The whole point of terrorists is to attack people who are not directly involved as enemies, to show that the consequences of not being kind to terrorist forces can be dangerous. So terrorism does not have to be directed only at the regime’s opponents in Tehran.”
Juneau cautions against jumping to conclusions about specific motives and actors behind these incidents.
“In some of the recent cases, there is not enough information publicly available to draw a definitive conclusion.”
Risk of being heard
McDonald says the amount of false or misleading information about online warfare is causing confusion and harm in the real world.
“It’s one of the most polluted information sites I’ve ever seen during a conflict,” he said. “I think we have to look at war and sleeper cells in that context.”
Political violence and terrorism researcher Broderick McDonald says that while it is important not to ignore legitimate intelligence threats from the Iranian government, ‘scare’ and panic reporting is dangerous and plays into the ‘growing narrative’ of war.
McDonald says it’s important to strike a balance of admitting serious threats while remaining “aware of the broader landscape of information.” He also advised caution when talking about scaremongering that could create “Hollywood-style fear mongering,” which could be used by “hawks” in the US and Israel to escalate the war.
“It’s a powerful tool to cultivate fear in the United States. And I think, we should avoid your disappointment.”
Are Canadians safe?
McDonald says Canada has a huge strategic advantage when it comes to identifying potential threats.
“We have the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, so it’s not just the United States that shares intelligence with us, but also our partners in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and that really helps us detect threats before they reach our shores.”
Additionally, McDonald says Canada’s historic commitment to stay out of “wars of choice” protects the country from foreign retaliation.
“Both governments, Conservative and Liberal, have followed this type of decision. And I think that protects us from Iran’s threats to Canada.”
Iran has threatened to target American and Israeli officials at tourist sites and public places around the world. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump suggested that the war could end soon. He also called NATO allies cowards for not helping to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
CSIS said it is “focused on ensuring continued vigilance to ensure the safety and security of Canada and all Canadians” and increased its efforts regarding “possible activity directed at the Iranian regime and terrorism.”
Stanton says it’s important to remember that Canada is “not a hotbed of espionage,” and it won’t be a priority for a government struggling to survive.
Even if Iranian sleeper cells are active in Canada, the regime’s efforts to target and threaten Iranian Canadians are “very real,” Juneau said.
Middle East analyst Thomas Juneau explains that Iran intimidates and oppresses Iranian Canadians with the aim of instilling fear among them that they may be targeted, thereby suppressing dissent in other countries.
The IRGC does not have the resources to track every member of the diaspora, but Juneau says “the simple fact that it could happen — and that they know it could happen — sows fear.”
“This is how international oppression works,” he said. “If anything, the problem is not the exaggeration of it. The problem is the neglect of the Canadian government that is not doing enough to protect the Iranian people.”
