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3 Iran's clerical
spymasters By Mahan Abedin
The recent detentions of four
Iranian-Americans in Iran on charges relating to
national security have touched off a flurry of
speculation about the real motives behind the
arrests.
Much of the speculation is
centered on political motives. An oft-repeated
argument is that Dr Haleh Esfandiari (head of the
Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars), Parnaz Azima
(a journalist for Radio Farda, the
Persian-language service of
Voice of America/Radio Free Europe), Dr Kian
Tajbaksh (an urban-planning expert and a
consultant to the World Bank on development
projects), and Ali Shakeri (a founder and board
member of the Center for Citizen Peace building at
the University of California, Irvine) have fallen
victim to a hostage-taking game by the Iranian and
US governments.
The detentions of the
Iranian-Americans - it is argued - are in response
to the detentions of Iranian diplomats and
intelligence officers in Iraq. More broadly, it is
often argued that the detentions must be
understood in the context of worsening tensions
between Iran and the United States.
These
arguments not only assume the complete innocence
of the accused but moreover dabble in amateurish
analysis. The idea that the Iranian government -
as cruel and incompetent as it may sometimes be -
would detain its own citizens to settle scores
with the US over Iraq-related issues is downright
silly.
This article looks at this
sensitive and emotive issue from a purely
security/intelligence perspective. The arguments
made here should in no way be interpreted as
support for the Iranian government's position.
From the standpoint of the author, we simply do
not know the precise circumstances surrounding
these detentions. But to assume the innocence of
the accused simply on account of their being
well-known and respected academics, journalists
and consultants is just as dangerous as assuming
their guilt.
To grasp the different
dimensions of this issue, it is important to form
a basic understanding of the Islamic Republic's
intelligence community. Rigorous academic research
on Iran's post-revolutionary intelligence
community is almost non-existent. And much of the
existing research tends to focus on the wrong
things. For instance, researchers tend to obsess
over the extent of continuity and discontinuity
between the pre-revolutionary and
post-revolutionary intelligence communities. While
this can be a worthwhile - albeit esoteric -
exercise, it runs the risk of blinding the
researcher to the most important aspects of the
subject.
More than 28 years after the
revolution, the Islamic Republic has created an
intelligence community that is markedly different
- in terms of personnel, constitutional
arrangement, ideology and methodology - to the
pre-revolutionary intelligence community. The
country's leading intelligence agency, the
Ministry of Intelligence and National Security, is
worlds apart from the shah's notorious SAVAK
(Sazeman-e Ettelaat va Amniyat-e Keshvar, or
Organization for Intelligence and National
Security). Since its formation in 1984, the
Ministry of Intelligence has deliberately
cultivated a low profile (as opposed to the
effusive and sometimes flamboyant SAVAK) and gone
out of its way to convince political masters and
citizens alike that it is an intelligence
organization as opposed to a secret-police force.
Another mistake of Western researchers has
been to overestimate the strength and efficiency
of the post-revolutionary intelligence community.
This is partly due to relentless disinformation on
the breadth and depth of activities of
organizations such as the Ministry of Intelligence
and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' Quds
Force.
But more important, genuine
researchers and spies alike are often fooled by
first impressions. Indeed, Iranian intelligence
officers often seem markedly different from other
officials and servants of the Islamic Republic.
Unlike those of other important bodies - in
particular the Foreign Ministry and the state
broadcaster - the Intelligence Ministry's
personnel reflect the diversity of Iranian
society. Moreover, the ministry's personnel are
often of a much higher quality - better educated,
well travelled and broad-minded.
But this
first impression can be profoundly deceptive.
For all its sophistication, the
Intelligence Ministry is ultimately subordinate to
strict clerical control. It is instructive that
every minister of intelligence from 1984 onward
has been a cleric. Aside from a few
clerical-dominated organizations such as the
Assembly of Experts and the Council of Guardians,
no other organization or institution in
post-revolutionary Iran (not even the presidency)
has been subject to this level of clerical
subordination.
This arrangement reflects
two realities: first, it underscores the unique
importance of the Intelligence Ministry to the
clerics who control the commanding heights of the
Iranian government; second, it reflects widespread
fears inside the inner sanctums of the Islamic
regime that the ministry - on account of its
diverse personnel and higher levels of
professionalism - cannot be fully trusted.
While the Islamic Republic's intelligence
agencies are the most professional and capable in
the Middle East (with the possible exception of
Israel), they have found it very difficult to
operate effectively in the West. Since the early
1980s, Iranian intelligence has been able to
develop formidable intelligence networks
throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and
Southeast Asia. But the Iranians have found it
almost impossible to achieve even modest gains in
Western Europe and North America. A combination of
factors, including lack of language skills,
unfamiliarity with Western cultures, and very
limited liaison relationships with Western
intelligence services, is at the heart of this
failure.
The Intelligence Ministry in
particular is notorious for spectacular failures
in the West. Its core operations in the West
(which mostly revolve around the penetration of
dissident Iranian organizations and the management
of covert arms-procurement rings) have often been
easily disrupted by Western intelligence services.
Moreover, the ministry has often failed to provide
adequate care of its agents.
The
Intelligence Ministry tends to arrange meetings
with its agents in Istanbul, Athens, Larnaka and
Beirut. Very often these agents are either
interdicted at Western European airports (on their
way to their destination), which provides a
suitable psychological environment for Western
intelligence to "turn" them into double agents, or
they are picked up by Greek or Turkish
intelligence at the point of arrival, which
exposes the agents to even graver exploitation by
hostile and friendly intelligence services alike.
Its operational successes and failures
notwithstanding, another key feature of the
Iranian intelligence community is its relative
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