The intelligence agencies of Iran and the United States are at war, even if the two countries are not.
As the Trump administration applies “maximum pressure” to Iran, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) responds with a claim that it has arrested 17 CIA spies in the country.
At a news conference in Tehran, an official who identified himself as a director of counterespionage in the Intelligence Ministry described the arrests of people he said had been trained by the C.I.A., but he did not name them and gave few details of their alleged spying. The official declined to give his name, The Associated Press reported, and did not say how many of those arrested had been killed.
Al Jazeera reports from Tehran
The intelligence official claimed that none of the 17, who allegedly had “sophisticated training”, had succeeded in their sabotage missions.
Their missions included collecting information at the facilities they worked at, carrying out technical and intelligence activities and transferring and installing monitoring devices, he said.
Some of them had reportedly been recruited by falling into a “visa trap” set by the CIA for Iranians seeking to travel to the US.
“Some were approached when they were applying for a visa, while others had visas from before and were pressured by the CIA in order to renew them,” he said.
Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari, reporting from Tehran, said Iranian authorities also released a documentary which they said “shows to which extent these people went to try and exchange information with their CIA operatives outside the country”.
“The authorities said that this has been the largest uncovering of a network of spies inside the country for many years,” she added.
Whether there is anything new here is open to question; Without names of the alleged spies, the Iranian claims are impossible to verify. President Trump tweeted that the Iranian claims are “totally false,” which given his penchant for inaccuracy doesn’t mean much.
Iran’s Success
Last November, Yahoo News reported that the Iranian security forces had penetrated a U.S. spying operation with the clever use of Google.
From around 2009 to 2013, the U.S. intelligence community experienced crippling intelligence failures related to the secret internet-based communications system, a key means for remote messaging between CIA officers and their sources on the ground worldwide. The previously unreported global problem originated in Iran and spiderwebbed to other countries, and was left unrepaired — despite warnings about what was happening — until more than two dozen sources died in China in 2011 and 2012 as a result, according to 11 former intelligence and national security officials.
The Iranian press has also trumpeted alleged intelligence success stories. Back in April, Voice of America’s Jeff Seldin reported that MOIS had claimed to have penetrated a U.S. spy network across several countries, a claim one unamed U.S. official denied.
Spy vs. Spy
It’ no secret the CIA is taking active measures against Iran. We even know the name of the CIA official in charge: Mike D’Andrea, chief of the Iran Mission Center. D’Andrea has a documented record of using torture and assassination to advance U.S. policy goals, according to the New York Times.
In the years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. D’Andrea was deeply involved in the detention and interrogation program, which resulted in the torture of a number of prisoners and was condemned in a sweeping Senate report in 2014 as inhumane and ineffective.
And
Operatives under his direction played a pivotal role in 2008 in the killing of Imad Mugniyah, the international operations chief for Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group based in Lebanon. Working with the Israelis, the C.I.A. used a car bomb to kill Mr. Mugniyah as he walked home in Damascus, where Hezbollah enjoys strong ties with and support from the Syrian government.
Source: Iran Claims to Have Arrested and Executed U.S. Spies – The New York Times
