The Islamic Republic of Iran has experienced a number of serious counterintelligence failures over the years. Last month, Iran and Russia, a close ally of the Islamic regime, signed a pact that should assist it as it attempts to reform its counterintelligence.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has an extensive and complex intelligence apparatus. Its two most important intelligence institutions are the Ministry of Intelligence (MOI) and the intelligence arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). A third key intelligence organization is the IRGC’s Intelligence Protection Organization, which operates independently of the Corps’s intelligence arm and deals in counterintelligence.
While Iran’s intelligence organizations are well equipped and have achieved important successes (particularly in the area of signals intelligence, or SIGINT), the country’s intelligence apparatus is deficient with respect to counterintelligence, or “intelligence protection” as the regime has renamed it. The three most recent counterintelligence failures—all of them devastating— concerned the assassination of Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, the slaying of al-Qaeda´s number 2 on Iranian soil, and the assassination in Tehran of the architect of the Iranian nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
The Iran-Russia pact is not a surprise. More than a year has passed since the killing of Soleimani and six months have gone by since al-Masri’s assassination. The Iranian intelligence organizations have had plenty of time to analyze their counterintelligence apparatus, confront its massive weaknesses, and present their findings to policy makers. There is no doubt that the recent killing of Fakhrizadeh, which was a massive embarrassment for the regime, intensified this process. This is especially true in view of the fact that the Iranian spy chief recently claimed in an interview that the Fakhrizadeh assassination was organized by a member of the Iranian armed forces—which, if true, indicates that Iranian intelligence and counterintelligence are not only poor but compromised. The regime needs help in these areas, and the Iran-Russia information security pact may be its best means of effecting needed reforms.
1 comment:
In summation just a matter of days to the Harpazo.
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