Catherine Shakdam, a French-British journalist who once had direct access to key Iranian media platforms and contributed to the official website of Iran’s Supreme Leader, has denied explosive allegations that she worked as a spy for Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad.
The controversy erupted after Shakdam published an article in The Times of Israel in which she reflected on her experiences in Iran. The article triggered a firestorm in Iranian media, with hardliners accusing her of infiltrating the country’s political, military, and even domestic spheres under the guise of a Muslim convert and pro-Iran writer.
Shakdam, who was previously published 18 times on Khamenei.ir between 2015 and 2017, was alleged to have accessed sensitive information not only from Iranian officials but also by gaining the trust of their wives in private women’s gatherings. Iranian sources claimed that her knowledge of personal routines, movements, and conversations may have been used in targeted assassinations of military officials and scientists.
According to the Iranian outlets, she was not an ordinary journalist — but a covert agent who manipulated her religious identity and political stance to infiltrate elite circles, even reportedly meeting President Ebrahim Raisi and members of the IRGC.
However, in a nearly hour-long televised interview with Iran International, Shakdam strongly refuted the espionage claims.
“I had no direct line to Khamenei’s office and no professional or personal relationship with any official,” she said.
She admitted that she had been invited to contribute to Iranian media by an editor who contacted her by phone and later through email. Shakdam acknowledged publishing an article in Citizen Truth in 2020, in which she cited an “exclusive” statement from within Khamenei’s office about the Iranian missile attack on U.S. forces in Iraq after Qassem Soleimani’s assassination. When asked who gave her the document, she declined to identify the individual for their safety.
The Iranian government has since scrubbed all of her writings from official websites. Shakdam says this was not due to national security but because of her Jewish ancestry, which she later revealed publicly.
“Once I reclaimed my identity, they had a problem with me,” she said. “It’s not about espionage — it’s antisemitism. I was used and then discarded.”
Shakdam also addressed her previous support for the Iranian regime, saying she was drawn to its opposition to Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy, particularly in Yemen. Over time, she said, she realized she had been misled.
“I was naive and unaware of the geopolitical complexities. But that doesn’t make me a spy. It makes me a pawn in a much larger propaganda war.”
Some hardline Iranian outlets, such as Kayhan, have defended her, saying the espionage narrative is baseless. But the scandal remains a stark reminder of how media, identity, and influence intersect in today’s covert battlegrounds.
As of now, there is no concrete evidence linking Shakdam to Israeli intelligence, but the episode has become a potent symbol of Iran’s internal paranoia and the vulnerabilities of its information security.
