Saeed Hajjarian's narrative of "infiltration," "the hole," and "the spy."

Saeed Hajjarian, a reformist theorist, wrote in a note in "Mashgh-e No":

Recently, terms like "infiltration," "breach," "hole," and "spy" have cast a shadow over political discourse. This atmosphere has created a sense of "spyphobia" among the people and preoccupied the minds of policymakers, while a healthy society is based more on trust and mutual acceptance than suspicion and rejection of the other.

The crucial question is: how can we find a way out for political life in a situation where infiltration is believed to be widespread?

First, we must acknowledge the existence of the phenomenon of infiltration. In the modern world, sabotage and assassination are often attributed to technological factors, but there is always a role for the human factor. In abnormal economic conditions and chronic poverty, the grounds for the human factor's errors become more prevalent. I consider actions such as identifying targets for assassinations to be "agent-centered" and attribute a greater share to human factors than to technology.

After the revolution, counter-intelligence institutions faced serious disruption. The late figures Chamran, Bazargan, and Yazdi had a different perspective, viewing counter-intelligence as a national and specialized matter. The distinguishing feature of the revolutionary era, however, was the eruption of public trust, which to some extent compensated for the lack of institutions. Today, the current situation cannot be compared to that era.

When the issue of infiltration becomes prominent, the political structure retreats into its shell, and mobility in governance becomes an exception. We must avoid being trapped in the triangle of "spy-suspicion - exclusionary vetting - inefficiency." In this cycle, all different elements are suspected of being spies, then unregulated vetting begins, leading to inefficiency being imposed on governance, to the point where the system's input and output tend toward zero.

In the current period, one cannot dismiss an intellectual current or political movement with the label of "infiltrator." A spy operates on the logic of a "radial" single-agent activity, and there is essentially no network involved. Espionage and its classical functions today serve as a prelude to paralyzing decision-making and successive purges, ultimately leading to a helpless government that could collapse in a single major operation.

The solution is to focus on increasing "public trust" and prioritizing the project of reviving the "state-nation" over populist politics, and creating an optimal combination of "efficiency and preservation." The function of democracy is that the people's voice is transmitted by the people themselves, not through "informants" and "controlled media" that reflect a portion of reality after filters and disrupt the analytical power of the sovereignty.