Iranian authorities have been increasingly clear that they believe foreign countries are behind the unrest sweeping the country – and are involved in fomenting unrest on the ground.

On Monday, President Masoud Pezeshkian shifted focus away from Iran’s stuttering economy and suppression of dissent and towards his country’s longstanding geopolitical adversaries, Israel and the United States.

Speaking on state broadcaster IRIB, Pezeshkian claimed that “the same people that struck this country” during Israel’s 12-day war last June were now “trying to escalate these unrests with regard to the economic discussion”.

“They have trained some people inside and outside the country; they have brought in some terrorists from outside,” he said, alleging that those responsible had attacked a bazaar in the northern city of Rasht and set “mosques on fire”.

The prospect of direct foreign intervention in support of Iran’s protesters appears to be growing daily, with US President Donald Trump repeatedly signalling a readiness to attack.

In Israel, far-right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu told Army Radio last week, “When we attacked in Iran during ‘Rising Lion’ [Israel’s June attack on Iran], we were on its soil and knew how to lay the groundwork for a strike. I can assure you that we have some of our people operating there right now,” stopping short of claiming that Israeli agents were seeking regime change.

Writing on social media earlier this month, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is also a former director of the CIA, did acknowledge the presence of Israeli agents operating on the ground in Iran, wishing “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.”

Israel’s enemy

Despite its wars with Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and the genocide it has unleashed on Gaza, it is Iran that looms largest in the minds of many Israelis as the most deadly of the many enemies they face.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly claimed that Tehran stands on the brink of developing nuclear weapons and is responsible for backing Israel’s opponents across the region.

“I don’t know if it’s Netanyahu pushing it or the whole of society,” Israeli political scientist Ori Goldberg said. “Israelis are desperate for any sign of a … masterplan in which they … will unite against any foe threatening their destruction.”

Israel has a history of covert operations in Iran.

Previous Israeli operations have targeted Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes and embedded agents and weapons systems inside Iranian territory.

Israeli intelligence has also exploited its presence within Iran to conduct a series of high-profile assassinations of nuclear scientists and politicians, including the Palestinian group Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed while attending Pezeshkian’s inauguration ceremony in July 2024.

Israel is also widely acknowledged to have infiltrated deep into Iran and its security networks in the weeks before the June war. At that time, Israel was not only able to target scientists and officials involved in the country’s nuclear programme for assassination, but also to assemble and launch drones from within Iranian territory.

“My assumption is that the Mossad is active in Tehran behind the scenes,” said Ahron Bregman, who teaches at King’s College London and has written extensively on Israeli intelligence operations. “Israeli officials are unusually quiet. [There are] clear instructions not to talk [and] not to be seen to be involved in any way.”

“I assume there are Israeli agents on the ground, reporting back on the situation from the streets, particularly now that the internet in Iran is down,” he continued. “Operationally, it is easier to do things on the ground as it is so chaotic now.”

In the eyes of many analysts, Iran’s internal cohesion has been fundamentally undermined by the long-running series of protests and unrest, which has allowed for the infiltration of foreign security services.

Exacerbating those fissures has been the toxic mixture of crippling sanctions, corruption and the deaths of protesters.

“I’d be very surprised if Israeli agents were not active within Iran right now,” defence analyst Hamze Attar said. “They’re going to be doing everything they can to make sure these protests continue and escalate.”

“Principally, they’re going to try to provide the demonstrators with what they need most: exposure,” Attar continued. “People have come to expect violence from the Iranian regime. What [the protesters] need is to know it’s not for nothing. That’s what Israel and the US will be focusing on: providing the internet access that will allow people to share footage of what’s happening to them. The protesters will know where [what countries that support] is coming from, but right now – in the midst of the chaos – they’re very unlikely to care.”

Donald Trump is the only world leader capable of stopping Vladimir Putin from threatening Europe, according to Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki.

In an interview with Radio 4’s Today programme he said the Russian leader was not to be trusted, but that Europe needed to do everything it could to support President Trump in his efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

President Nawrocki was already well-known as a firm supporter of Donald Trump even before he landed in Britain for meetings with PM Sir Keir Starmer and others.

Now, he says that with Vladimir Putin’s Russia threatening his country as well as central and eastern Europe, the US president was the only person who could, as he put it, “solve this problem” – as well as ending the war in Ukraine.

Referring to last September’s mass incursion by Russian drones, when more than 20 uncrewed aircraft crossed into Poland from Belarus and Ukraine, President Nawrocki called it “an extraordinary situation”, adding that “until that time, no Nato member state had experienced a drone attack on that scale”. Russia, he said, was testing Poland’s defences and testing Nato’s solidarity.

The Polish president then thanked Britain for sending over RAF Typhoon jets to help defend his borders. He said Poland had been in a state of hybrid war with Russia since 2021, as it dealt with drones and disinformation.

This Russian grey zone activity showed “we are living in dangerous times”, he added.

He was asked about his friendship with Donald Trump, particularly in the light of the US president’s threats to take over “by any means” the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland, something which has rattled Europe and which threatens to rupture the 77-year old Nato alliance.

The US, he insisted, despite recent statements by US officials to the contrary, was still the guarantor of security in Europe. What Donald Trump was doing on behalf of the Europeans, he said, “deserved support and great respect”. President Nawrocki said he could see Europe “detaching” itself from the United States and said this was good neither for the economic security nor the military security of the European Union.

That still left the awkward question of Greenland. This discussion, he said, should remain a matter between the Danish prime minister and President Trump. Karol Nawrocki was convinced that this question would be resolved through Nato and through dialogue between Denmark and the US.

But President Nawrocki also used this interview to criticise European leaders for, as he put it, being “involved in not so important things, in ideological issues such as green deal for instance, climate policy, migration issues”. Europe, he said, was not building its resilience and security over the years, whereas Poland was now allocating close to 5% of its GDP to defence.

For Britain, though, he had some warm words. Relations between Poland and the UK were “extremely important” and today around one million Poles lived in the UK.

“I would like to express my very deep appreciation for the British soldiers who are stationed in Poland… taking responsibility for Nato’s Eastern flank,” he said. He expressed his hope that, with Poland’s economy growing rapidly, Britain as host of next year’s G20 summit would invite Poland to participate.

The announcement contradicts claims from local rights groups that no more than 70 prisoners have been freed in recent days.

Venezuela’s top lawmaker says more than 400 people have been freed from prison, contradicting claims from rights groups that only between 60 to 70 prisoners have been released in recent days, amid calls for freeing those imprisoned for political reasons.

Jorge Rodriguez, the president of the National Assembly, made the announcement during a parliamentary session on Tuesday.

“The decision to release some prisoners, not political prisoners, but some politicians who had broken the law and violated the Constitution, people who called for invasion, was granted,” Rodriguez told parliament.

He said more than 400 prisoners had been released, but did not provide a specific timeline.

Both Rodriguez and United States President Donald Trump have said that large numbers of prisoners would be freed as a peace gesture following the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on January 3 by US forces.

The release of political prisoners in Venezuela has been a long-running call of rights groups, international bodies and opposition figures.

The Venezuelan government has always denied that it holds people for political reasons and has said it has already released most of the 2,000 people detained after protests over the contested 2024 presidential election.

Human rights groups estimated there are 800 to 1,200 political prisoners in Venezuela and have said that the number of prisoners freed since last week ranges between 60 and 70, and have denounced the slow pace and lack of information surrounding the releases.

Bloomberg News has reported that at least one US citizen was released from prison on Tuesday.

Venezuela’s Ministry of Penitentiary Services said that at least 116 prisoners were released on Monday.

US to control Venezuela’s oil resources

Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado has been one of the leading voices demanding the release of prisoners, some of whom are her close allies.

She is expected to meet with Trump on Thursday in Washington, DC. On the same day, acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez plans to send an envoy to the US capital to meet with senior officials, Bloomberg News reported.

Meanwhile, the US is continuing to take control of oil shipments in and out of Venezuela following its abduction of Maduro.

The US government has filed for court warrants to seize dozens more tanker vessels linked to the Venezuelan oil trade, according to a Reuters report.

The US military and coastguard have already seized five vessels in recent weeks in international waters, which were either carrying Venezuelan oil or had done so in the past.

Trump imposed a naval blockade on Venezuela to prevent US-sanctioned tankers from shipping Venezuelan oil in December, a move that brought the country’s oil exports close to a standstill.

Shipments have now resumed under US supervision, and, as the Trump administration says, it plans to control Venezuela’s oil resources indefinitely.

Greenland’s prime minister has said his people would choose Denmark over the US if they were asked to make such a choice “here and now”.

Jens-Frederik Nielsen’s remark at a joint news conference with Denmark’s prime minister is the strongest by a representative of the semi-autonomous Danish territory since US President Donald Trump renewed his plan to annex it.

Trump says the US needs to “own” Greenland to defend against Russia and China. The White House has suggested buying the island, but not ruled out the use of force to annex it.

Denmark is a fellow Nato member and Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that military force would spell the end of the trans-Atlantic defence alliance.

Asked later on Tuesday what he made of Nielsen’s comments, Trump said: “That’s their problem, I disagree with him… That’s going to be a big problem for him.”

Despite being the most sparsely populated territory, Greenland’s location between North America and the Arctic makes it well placed for early warning systems in the event of missile attacks, and for monitoring vessels in the region.

Trump has repeatedly said that Greenland is vital to US national security, claiming without evidence that it was “covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place”.

The US already has more than 100 military personnel permanently stationed at its Pituffik base in Greenland’s north-western tip – a facility that has been operated by the US since World War Two.

Under existing agreements with Denmark, the US has the power to bring as many troops as it wants to Greenland.

But Trump told reporters in Washington last week that a lease agreement was not good enough – the US “had to have ownership” and “Nato’s got to understand that”.

At the news conference in the Danish capital Copenhagen, Frederiksen did not mince her words as she condemned the “completely unacceptable pressure from our closest ally”.

She warned that “there are many indications that the most challenging part is ahead of us”.

The Greenlandic prime minister said they were “facing a geopolitical crisis”, but the island’s position was clear:

“If we have to choose between the United States and Denmark here and now, we choose Denmark,” he said.

“One thing must be clear to everyone. Greenland does not want to be owned by the United States. Greenland does not want to be governed by the United States. Greenland does not want to be part of the United States.”

The Copenhagen news conference comes a day before the Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and his Greenlandic counterpart Vivian Motzfeldt are due to travel to the US to meet Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Denmark’s Nato allies – major European countries as well as Canada – have rallied to its support this week with statements reaffirming that “only Denmark and Greenland can decide on matters concerning their relations”.

Stressing they were as keen as the US on Arctic security, they have said this must be achieved by allies, including the US, “collectively”.

They also called for “upholding the principles of the UN Charter, including sovereignty, territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders”.

Concerns over the future of the territory resurfaced after Trump’s use of military force against Venezuela on Saturday to seize its president, Nicolás Maduro.

Trump previously made an offer to buy the island in 2019, during his first presidential term, only to be told it was not for sale.

In recent years, there has been increased interest in Greenland’s natural resources – including rare earth minerals, uranium and iron – which are becoming easier to access as its ice melts due to climate change. Scientists think it could also have significant oil and gas reserves.