Kandahar, titled Mission Kandahar in Canada, is a 2023 American spy action thriller film directed by Ric Roman Waugh and written by Mitchell LaFortune. The film stars Gerard Butler (who is also a producer) and features a supporting cast that includes Ali Fazal, Navid Negahban, Bahador Foladi, Nina Toussaint-White, Tom Rhys Harries, Vassilis Koukalani, Mark Arnold, Corey Johnson, and Travis Fimmel. Loosely based on actual events, the story follows a CIA operative and his translator who flee from Afghanistan after their covert mission is exposed.

Tom Harris is a freelance undercover operative working for the CIA to insert malware into a secret Iranian nuclear research facility. Tom’s cover is a field technician for a Swiss communications contractor. His mission is successful, and the malware causes the facility to self destruct, preventing the Iranians from acquiring more nuclear bombs.

The Iranian government has been monitoring a British journalist Luna Cujai. She receives evidence from a whistle blower of the CIA’s ongoing sabotage of Iran’s nuclear programs. After the facility is destroyed, she is arrested by an Iranian security agency led by Farzad. She tells the Iranians she suspects a link between the facility’s destruction and the Swiss contractor because their contracts are next to government sites. The next day, Harris’s partner in the operation, Oliver, is killed by the Iranian Special Force after both Oliver and Harris’s identity are compromised.

Tom leaves Iran en route to London via Dubai. While in Dubai, his flight to London is delayed, and he visits his CIA handler, Roman Chalmers. Roman is a Muslim convert, living under the outward pretense of a Dubai socialite, a lifestyle he secretly despises. Roman claims to have delayed the flight to force this meeting. Tom accepts Roman’s lucrative CIA contract for a job in Herat, Afghanistan.