Iran, Israel, the Jinn, and Other ‘Occult Forces’

Humiliated by the devastation wrought by tiny Israel on Iran during their twelve-day war in June, Iranians have sought other explanations for Israel’s victory. They have found the real explanation for Israel’s victory: it had working for it mysterious non-humans who appear in the Qur’an, and are known as the jinn.

Robert Spencer has written about this here and here, and more on this Iranian explanation for Israel’s victory can be found here: “Iranian official claims Israel used ‘the occult and supernatural spirits’ during 12-day war,” Jerusalem Post, July 13, 2025:

A senior Iranian official claims that Israel deployed “the occult and supernatural spirits” during its war with Iran, Iran International reported on Friday.

Abdollah Ganji, former editor of the IRGC-linked newspaper Javan, told his 150,000 followers on X/Twitter on Wednesday that a “strange phenomenon” had taken place during the 12-day war.

“After the recent war, a few sheets of paper were found on the streets of Tehran containing talismans with Jewish symbols,” he wrote. “In the first year of the Gaza war, news had also leaked about Netanyahu meeting with occult specialists.

“A few years ago, the Supreme Leader had stated that hostile countries and Western and Hebrew intelligence services use occult sciences and jinn entities for espionage.”

How can Iran be expected to prevail when those diabolical Israelis use “occult sciences and jinn entities” for espionage? It’s the jinn who gave away to Mossad the whereabouts of Iran’s senior military leaders and senior nuclear scientists, who were then assassinated. It’s the jinn, and those in the IDF who are skilled in the “occult sciences,” who led Israeli fighter jets to hit exactly the right targets, both nuclear facilities and ballistic missile warehouses and manufacturing plants all over Iran. Against such supernatural forces, how can Iran prevail? It isn’t a fair fight.

The Mossad’s official X account in Farsi responded to Ganji’s post on Tuesday.

“Using drugs and talking to the jinn are not desirable traits for someone leading a country,” they wrote.

Waleed Gadban, Israel’s Political Advisor to the Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, reposted the Mossad’s X post, with the caption in Farsi, “Jinn, jinn are everywhere,” with a ghost emoji at the end….

Waleed Gadban is an Arab Israeli and diplomat who serves as a political advisor to Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN. Aware of the comical aspects of the Iranian claims about the jinns’ supposed intervention in the Iran-Israel war, he reposted the original post on X/Twitter from the Mossad, mocking the claim made by Abdollah Ganji about the jinn and the occult forces that helped the Zionists. Ganji is no fringe lunatic — he’s the former editor of the IRGC newpaper Javan, and has 150,000 followers on Facebook. Or rather, he is a mainstream lunatic, of which the Iranian regime has so many.

It is unacceptable for the Iranians to concede that the IDF soldiers crushed their own armed forces in the space of twelve days. So there must be some other explanation. And it’s right there in the Qur’an: those strange creatures called the jinn. Those “occult forces” that somehow the IDF managed to enroll as their indispensable allies. It’s the jinn and other “occult forces” that found out exactly where Iran’s secret nuclear facilities and ballistic missile warehouses and production plants were located, and transmitted that information to the IDF so its fighter jets could destroy them.

Abdollah Ganji’s charge is absurd, but he needed to provide an explanation for Iran’s defeat that will not concede the victory to the IDF. So he brings in the jinn and other “occult forces.” The episode puts one in mind of what Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser did midway through the Six-Day War, when he claimed that American and British planes had attacked Egyptian and Syrian targets. After all, he couldn’t let his people know that in the early hours of June 4, the Israeli Air Force had all by itself destroyed 338 Egyptian aircraft while losing only 19 of its own planes. Of course, the Americans and the British must have been responsible.

Before Ganji’s piece there have been other absurd charges by Iranians, claiming Israel makes use of animal spies. In 2007, the Iranians charged that Israel had sent “14 squirrels” to seek out nuclear facilities; the squirrels were promptly arrested. What then happened to them is unknown. A year later, the Iranians claimed that “it is entirely possible that pigeons were used to spy on the nuclear facility in Natanz.” In 2013, Iran’s ally Hezbollah claimed at its Al-Manar website that it had captured an eagle in southern Lebanon that carried an Israel-labeled transmission device on its back and claimed the bird was an Israeli spy.” In 2018, Iran accused Israel of using lizards, whose skin “attracted atomic waves,” to help the Zionists locate sites that were part of its nuclear program.

And now, with this accusation about Israel using the jinn and “occult forces,” the Iranians are again making themselves look both silly and sinister. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what they are.