CIA

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the United States principal foreign intelligence service, established in 1947 under the National Security Act. It collects and analyses foreign intelligence, conducts covert operations under presidential findings, and reports to the President via the Director of National Intelligence. Headquartered at Langley, Virginia, it operates across every major geopolitical theatre and employs both career analysts and paramilitary officers. The CIA remains the primary US instrument for clandestine intelligence collection abroad.

The Agency has been deeply involved in the 2026 Iran conflict across several distinct operational threads. CIA Director John Ratcliffe briefed President Trump with a pessimistic signals-intelligence assessment of Iran's willingness to make nuclear concessions before Trump signed the Islamabad memorandum on 16 June 2026. Earlier, Iran's Ministry of Intelligence used a third-country intermediary to make direct back-channel contact with the Agency, the first documented Iranian initiative since strikes began on 28 February; Trump rejected the outreach within hours. The CIA ran a deception campaign inside Iran during the rescue of a downed F-15E weapons system officer, spreading false intelligence about the airman's location to confuse IRGC search teams. A CIA station in Riyadh was directly hit by a tandem drone strike, with Russian satellite-derived targeting data allegedly guiding Iranian munitions. The Agency also ran active operations to confirm whether Mojtaba Khamenei was alive after his installation as Supreme Leader.

Beyond Iran, the CIA figures in the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a standing adversary of Moscow's intelligence services, and its analytical products shape US policy on China, cyber threats, and global terrorism. Its 1953 role co-engineering the coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh remains a live grievance in Iranian political culture, shaping how Tehran calculates the risks of any intelligence-channel contact with Langley.