(Ken Silva, Headline USA) ABC News reported Monday that Iran is broadcasting an encrypted transmission that may serve as “an operational trigger” for “sleeper assets” outside the country. However, shortwave radio experts are reporting the opposite—that U.S./Israeli agencies may be contacting agents within Iran.
Citing a federal government alert sent to law enforcement around the country, ABC reported that encoded transmissions, which was intercepted, appeared to be destined for “clandestine recipients.”
According to ABC, the transmissions could “be intended to activate or provide instructions to prepositioned sleeper assets operating outside the originating country.”
“While the exact contents of these transmissions cannot currently be determined, the sudden appearance of a new station with international rebroadcast characteristics warrants heightened situational awareness,” the alert reportedly said.
However, the opposite may also be true. The Atlantic ran a story Monday about a shortwave-radio frequency, broadcasted in Farsi, that starts with “Tavajjoh! Tavajjoh!” (Attention! Attention!) before listing a string of seemingly random numbers.
This ABC News story about Iran activating sleeper cells sure sounds like what I reported about a Persian-language numbers station today. But if so, there's something off. 🧵
— Shane Harris (@shaneharris) March 9, 2026
“But we don’t know where the broadcast originates,” reported The Atlantic, which talked to amateur shortwave trackers for its story.
“We do have indications that Iran’s government is jamming the signal, using techniques that the trackers have documented in the past. That suggests an even more intriguing potential twist: Perhaps Iran isn’t sending messages to agents abroad, but an adversary is sending messages to agents in Iran,” The Atlantic added.
The broadcast reportedly stopped late last week.
Warnings of “sleeper cells” come on the heels of a Pakistani man being convicted Friday of attempting to hire two undercover FBI agents as “hitmen” to assassinate U.S. politicians, including possibly Trump. However, Merchant’s actions can hardly be called an assassination attempt. Rather, the available evidence suggests that Merchant was the target of a highly controlled FBI sting operation, and that he never posed a threat to Trump.
U.S. intelligence also determined that the defendant in that case, Asif Merchant, does not have any known Iranian intelligence contacts in the U.S.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
