cut-out

In the revelations about Iranian antisemitic activity in Australia we were introduced to the espionage term cut-out.  In the world of spying a cut-out is a person or mechanism that puts distance between the two people involved in an exchange of information so that they have no knowledge of each other even though they are in the chain of communications.

In this instance the cut-out was between the Iranian instigators of the violence and the criminals-for-hire who carried out the operation, so that, when arrested, those criminals could honestly say they had no idea they were working for the Iranian government.