Canada’s spy agency says it foiled potentially ‘lethal threats’ by Iran

OTTAWA — Canada’s domestic spy agency this year foiled potentially lethal threats by Iran directed against people whom Tehran sees as enemies, the agency’s head said in a rare speech Thursday.

Dan Rogers, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, also said his agents had blocked attempts by Russia to illegally acquire Canadian goods and technologies.

Rogers, appointed in February, spoke as he presented an annual update on security challenges facing Canada. CSIS directors seldom appear in public.

His comments were the first confirmation that the agency has intervened to protect Canada-based critics of Iran. In August, CSIS had merely said it was probing Iranian threats.

“In particularly alarming cases over the last year, we’ve had to reprioritize our operations to counter the actions of Iranian intelligence services and their proxies who have targeted individuals they perceive as threats to their regime,” Rogers said.

“In more than one case, this involved detecting, investigating, and disrupting potentially lethal threats against individuals in Canada,” he continued, without giving details.

Canada has particularly poor relations with Iran and cut off diplomatic ties in 2012. Last year, Canada listed Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, prompting condemnation from Tehran.

Canada is also a critic of Russia and its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Rogers said illicit Russian procurement networks were trying to illegally acquire Canadian goods and technologies.

“This year, CSIS took action to prevent this by informing several Canadian companies that Europe-based front companies seeking to acquire their goods were in fact connected to Russian agents,” he said, adding that the companies took immediate measures to deny the Russians.

Rogers also addressed the burgeoning issue of extremist violence in Canada, naming it as one of the security agency’s central challenges. He named several instances of plots targeting North American Jewish communities that the CSIS has managed to thwart.

“Only a few kilometers from this room, in late 2023 and early 2024, two 15-year-olds were arrested for allegedly conspiring to conduct a mass casualty attack targeting the Jewish community in Canada’s capital,” he said.

Rogers went on to say that since 2022, the CSIS has been involved in the disruption of no fewer than 24 violent extremist actions, naming one instance in which the agency arrested an individual who attempted to cross illegally into the US in order “to attack members of the Jewish community in New York.”