26-29 September: Affordable Housing Development Summit Middle East, Manama
27-28 September: Unconventional Gas, London
3-5 October: Middle East Investments Summit 2010, Dubai
3-6 October: SWPF - Saudi Water & Power Forum 2010 Conference & Exhibition, Saudi Arabia
3-7 October: Funds Forum Middle East, Bahrain
4-6 October: POWER-GEN Middle East 2010, Doha, Qatar
10-12 October: The 3rd annual Saudi Arabia International Oil & Gas Exhibition & Conference, Dammam
11-12 October: Unconventional Oil 2010, London
12-14 October: Offshore Middle East 2010: The 3rd Annual Offshore Middle East Conference & Exhibition, Doha
18-19 October: Maghreb/Middle East Renewable Energy Conference, Marrakech
24-27 October: MENA Mining Congress 2010, Dubai
26-28 October: Iraq Mega Projects 2010 Conference & Exhibition, Istanbul
27-28 October: Gas to Liquids 2010, London
21-23 November: Private Equity World MENA 2010, Dubai
29 November-1 December: Iraq Petroleum 2010 Conference, London
6-8 December: Smart Grids Middle East, Dubai
Untitled Page
Issue 804, 27 April 2007
GCC should fear Iran’s industrial spies, not its agent provocateurs
From industrial espionage to the cultivation of potential agents, Iranian intelligence is seeking to gain advantage in the Gulf monarchies – but the actual threat should not be over-stated.
Iran’s nuclear showdown with the West and influence-building activities in Iraq are promoting a growing perception that Tehran could again seek to destabilise Gulf states using its much-vaunted intelligence apparatus.
GSN’s recent soundings of security officials suggest that the richest Gulf Co-operation Council states are particularly concerned about the often understated threat of industrial espionage, but mainly otherwise think they have Iranian activities under control.
Events ranging from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)’s seizure of UK naval personnel in the Shatt al-Arab to the activities of Iranian operatives in Iraq have cast a spotlight on Iranian intelligence activities in the region.
Typical of recent reports, in early March, London weekly The Sunday Times published the breathless account of Adel Assadinia, formerly Iran’s consul-general in Dubai and a self-professed conduit for Iran’s intelligence services. Assadinia’s story included allegations of lurid plots to entrap Europeans and funnel money to Hizbollah operations in Lebanon.
There is plenty of misinformation about, but GCC region security chiefs would be unwise to discount the intelligence threat from Iran.
Key organisations are the IRGC’s Qods force and the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security (MOIS, also known as Vevak), which first demonstrated their covert warfare capabilities during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, when Iran manipulated Shia communities in Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
Then, IRGC Qods operated the Manzariyah training centre near Qom, which recruited from GCC students in the seminary – run by IRGC-lined clerics – and trained some Bahraini and Kuwaiti extremists. Shiite communities often establish informal community funding schemes that provide an easy conduit for Iranian funding, which MOIS and IRGC aggressively provided.
The networks and operating practices forged during this period saw some use in the 1990s, culminating in the patient development of Iranian-trained cells within the Bahraini Shia community (implicated in an attempted coup in 1996), plus the disruption of several Hajj festivals at Mecca.
Detailed US Congressional testimony – long contested by Tehran – indicates that Iranian agents were directly involved in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, in Saudi Arabia, when 19 US military personnel died.
Tentacles spread
Iran maintains all the elements needed to undertake terrorist actions within the GCC; both the IRGC’s Intelligence Directorate Gulf Affairs section and Qods paramilitary wing maintain an active presence in Iranian embassies and front companies throughout the Gulf.
Less significant but still threatening, MOIS maintains a 2,000-strong foreign intelligence directorate that is active in intelligence-collecting and network-building in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
MOIS and IRGC operatives have considerable freedom of movement in the GCC – at times using unregulated dhow and speedboat traffic for entry and then either merging into the large expatriate Iranian population or operating under diplomatic cover. One aim is to cultivate individuals and communities to act as long-term local proxies.
According to the defector Assadinia, Iran has trained secret networks of agents across the Gulf to attack Western interests and incite civil unrest in the event of a military strike against its nuclear programme. “Spies working as teachers, doctors and nurses at Iranian-owned schools and hospitals have formed sleeper cells ready to be ‘unleashed’ at the first sign of any serious threat to Tehran,” The Sunday Times said.
Assadinia listed other intelligence activities as including the running of nightclubs and prostitution rings, where carousing officials and diplomats could be lured into “honey trap” blackmail operations.
Dubai as forward base
US naval force protection officers have told GSN that attempts at recruitment have occurred in Dubai. The Dubai consulate is considered to be Iran’s forward operating base in the GCC. Assadinia said Tehran recruited active agents from the half million Iranian expatriates present in the GCC.
Speaking from asylum in the West, Assadinia even suggested the name of a hospital in Dubai – which the UK paper did not publish for legal reasons – where doctors and nurses were alleged to have worked for Iranian intelligence.
Iran’s ability to undertake sabotage operations is another cause of concern. Assadinia claimed: “The Iranian government believes that to survive it needs permanent bases throughout the Middle East. Anybody who contemplates threatening or invading Iran will have those cells unleashed against them.”
With US/Iranian tensions rising fast, the GCC states are indeed concerned they could become a proxy battleground. Obvious targets include the US Fifth Fleet headquarters at Manama, Bahrain; shore leave and berthing facilities at Jebel Ali and Port Rashid in the UAE; Al-Udeid airbase in Qatar; various US encampments in Kuwait; and Al-Dhafra airbase in Abu Dhabi.
The US Navy is particularly concerned about attacks on shore leave buses, which depart the UAE’s ports with alarming predictability and lack of protection.
Overstating the risk
Despite the threat presented by determined and long-planned Iranian revenge operations against US interests, the everyday threat of Iranian influence-building in the GCC is probably overplayed. A growing number of defectors are spilling the beans on operations in the Gulf (with the odd embellishment to please their new masters), and this is one reason why GCC securocrats are not more concerned about Iranian spying.
Another factor is decreased professionalism. One Saudi intelligence operative told GSN, “the Iranian operations are far less sophisticated now than they were in the 1980s, or maybe we are better at catching them.”
Further, many Saudi security officials have not bought into efforts by Sunni Saudi factions to suggest the Shia of Eastern Province represent an ‘enemy within’ .
However, according to GSN’s sources in the Saudi and Qatari intelligence communities, there is one field in which the threat from Iran’s intelligence agencies are systematically understated: scientific and technical intelligence.
Spying on the oilmen
In some cases, Iranian government-sponsored industrial espionage has focused on competitive intelligence about Kuwaiti, Saudi and particularly Qatari plans to exploit oil and gas fields shared with the Islamic Republic.
In February, a US national working for Qatar Petroleum was sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of espionage; he narrowly escaped the death penalty. According to Qatar’s criminal court, the accused endangered national economic security by attempting to sell information about the North Field to “foreign embassy officials”.
Qatargas is particularly concerned about attempts to gain access to scientific and technical intelligence concerning gas-to-liquids; other LNG-related technologies; and even drilling technologies. Western firms bringing their technologies to the table see Iran as a major threat due to their compulsive reverse-engineering of any technology they obtain.
The Kuwaiti security services remain on high alert following the attempted smuggling of camera phones into secure oil industry facilities, in events which have been chalked up as Iranian-sponsored industrial espionage rather than jihadist reconnaissance.
The Soviet-era KGB was feared for its ability to penetrate Western governments, recruit agents of influence and undertake paramilitary operations, yet its real successes – the archives reveal – often came in the unheralded field of scientific and technical intelligence, which made a real tangible difference to the economic lifeblood of nations.
Contemporary thinking about Iran’s intelligence agencies likewise focuses on the glamorous Cold war-type aspects, while Iran’s spies may have moved into greener, if more prosaic, pastures by undertaking work of truly national importance against their neighbours and economic rivals.
