There is a website where ordinary Iranians can geotag key military facilities directly onto the map of their country. The site works even during regime-imposed internet blackouts. And since at least the start of the war, Israeli intelligence has been using it to help identify targets such as missile launch sites.
“There are many things we’re told about the Iranian people,” an Israeli security operative told The Free Press. “Nobody ever said they are fools. To the contrary, they’re smart and brave. Most Iranian citizens are against the regime, so when you report a location, and then the thing you report disappears, you know what you’re doing.”
Mahsa Alert was created by Ahmad Ahmadian, 35, an Iranian American whose activism saw him detained and imprisoned in solitary confinement before he came to the United States in 2011 as a political refugee. Named after Mahsa Amini, the young Iranian woman who was arrested in 2022 for wearing her hijab improperly and died after severe beatings in custody, the app was launched on the heels of last summer’s 12-day war.
