The hundred-dollar informants are the network John Kiriakou described in August 2025 when asked how Iran could plausibly have arrested twenty thousand people as spies for Israel. His answer was that the arrests were real, the number was not a measure of guilt, and the recruitment behind them had been extremely cheap.
The purge
Following the twelve-day war, Iran had, as Kiriakou put it, a major espionage problem: a great many people had been recruited online for very small sums to carry out sabotage on Israel’s behalf. The Iranians then moved into what he called full-fledged purge mode, rounding up twenty thousand people as possible spies — a figure he agreed could not possibly consist entirely of the guilty, and which he compared to grabbing everyone available and letting the sorting happen afterwards.[1]
Who was arrested
The Iranian press, he said, reported that day that most of those detained were ethnic Afghans — Afghan refugees.[2]
His account of the Israeli operation turns on why they were the target. Iran had spent the preceding two years expelling undocumented Afghan refugees back to Afghanistan, and Israeli case officers used that fact as the pitch: what loyalty should you have to the Iranians? They do not want you, they do not like you, they are trying to give you back to the Taliban. You should work for us.[3]
The price and the tasking
The offer, in Kiriakou’s telling, was about $100 a month. What was asked in return was not sophisticated: tell us where you are seeing Iranian troop movements, where the Iranian nuclear scientists live, and what the addresses are of the electrical company and the water company headquarters.[3][4] His professional verdict was two words — “that’s cheap intelligence.”[4]
When Rall observed that Afghans are not for sale but are definitely for rent, Kiriakou agreed and located the habit in the country’s history of passing occupiers.[4] He nonetheless closed with a direct appeal to any Afghan listeners considering the offer: the Iranians had extended them hospitality, generous hospitality, when not everyone wanted them — and this was no way to repay it.[5]