Friday, May 04, 2007
More on the shadow war with Iran
I'm riding home from Newark airport after a tiring four days on the road. I therefore missed the Republican debate, so all my impressions are from reading blog round-ups. Your own reactions are more than welcome.
Meanwhile, here is a bit from a Stratfor analysis that I received by email on Thursday morning. If you have been wondering whether we have any capability to get down and dirty with the mullahs, it is at least slightly encouraging. Fair use excerpt (subscribe now!):
Hossein Mousavian, a former nuclear negotiator for the Iranian regime, was arrested on Wednesday at his home and taken to Tehran's Evin prison on national security-related charges, specifically "communication and exchange of information with foreign agents," Persian-language Fars News Agency reported. This carefully timed arrest appears to be yet another move in the covert intelligence war between Iran and the United States.
Mousavian has served as Iran's ambassador to Germany, secretary of the foreign policy committee of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and as a leading negotiator in nuclear talks with the European Union. After losing his SNSC post in 2005, Mousavian became deputy head of the Tehran-based Center for Strategic Research, a think-tank closely affiliated with former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Mousavian's dismissal, along with Ali Larijani's replacement of SNSC chief Hassan Rowhani, is likely due to the sacked officials' dissenting views on how Iran should manage its nuclear ambitions. On a number of occasions, Mousavian has recommended that Iran bargain over its rights to a nuclear fuel cycle and give in to the U.N. Security Council's demand that it suspend uranium enrichment.
The arrest is part of an intensifying covert intelligence war between Iran and the United States. This battle has involved a number of public incidents, including: the apparent abduction of an ex-FBI agent, the U.S. detainment of five Iranian officials in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil, the Mossad hit against Iranian nuclear scientist Ardeshir Hassanpour and the retaliatory assassination in Paris against the head of the Israeli Defense Ministry Mission to Europe, the abduction of an Iranian official in Baghdad (who was later swapped for the 15 British detainees), as well as three recent defections of senior Iranian officials to the West.
Alarmed by these defections, Iran has ramped up its covert collection efforts around the globe to root out additional moles working for the West. Though Mousavian was a prominent public figure who apparently was entrusted with a great deal of responsibility in national security matters, there is reason to believe he has been cooperating with Western intelligence for several years. The United States has made a concerted effort since the Iranian Revolution to target Iranian figures destined for the country's security and intelligence organizations, and Mousavian apparently made the cut. That is, until, Iran's internal counterterrorism inquest caught up with him.
...In all likelihood, Mousavian was under investigation for quite some time, and the announcement of his arrest is intended to serve a political purpose.
That purpose lies in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, where the United States and Iran are expected during the next two days to engage in multilateral negotiations over Iraq. Now that Washington and Iran have brought their private negotiations into the public sphere, Iran is looking for an insurance policy to keep the United States in check during these talks. It is worth noting that the original report about Mousavian's arrest appears to have come from Iran's state-owned IRNA. By strategically timing this announcement, Iran is sending a clear signal to Washington that now is the time to fold and engage in serious negotiations.
I'm not sure I agree with that last bit; it strikes me as much more plausible that the "clear signal" being sent is that Tehran believes it can roll up our spies as quickly as we can recruit them. Maybe they can, maybe they can't. I'm just happy to see that Iran thinks there are Western intelligence assets that need arresting. If they are right then we are more in the game than I realized. If they are wrong, then they are turning on their own in paranoia. Either way, it is a sign of the regime's insecurity. Yes, insecurity can be destabilizing, but it may also undermine their confidence and make them more prone to compromise.
12 Comments:
By 
, at
Fri May 04, 11:12:00 AM:
Between the usual physical and mental breakdowns that accompany middle age, holding a fairly stressful job, and going home to three teenagers and two dogs each night, I was pretty sure my life was as rough as it gets. But I don't think I'd trade places with this Mousavian guy right now. No sir.
By , at
Fri May 04, 12:08:00 PM:
It seems that this blog changes its mind every other post about the character of the CIA. Is it our best weapon against in this "shadow war" we are fighting against Iran and its agents? A bumbling, bureaucratic, inept source of "intelligence failures" that has caused more trouble for this country than anything else? Is it both?
By 
Cardinalpark, at
Fri May 04, 02:56:00 PM:
Phrizz11 - for the record I think I'm the one who has dumped on the CIA. And they've richly deserved it.
With respect to Iran, we do need to consider a few things. First of all, Iran is surrounded by enemies, not just the US. I suspect that there are Arab intel services, Turkish, Israeli Mossad, British, French and German intel crawling all over Iran, which is not a hermetically sealed society like Iraq under Saddam or North Korea.
Friedman's post is kind of simplistic. There seems to be an assumption in your post that it lauds the CIA. That need not be the case.
Having said that, let's hope that they are more effective in Iran than they were in Iraq, or viz al qaeda, eh?
By , at
Fri May 04, 03:10:00 PM:
By Escort81, at
Fri May 04, 03:14:00 PM:
phrizz11 -
I think it's fair to say "yes" to your last question -- the CIA is both bumbling and it is a good weapon, at least potentially.
I like to believe that there are some pretty good intelligence officers out there in the field recruiting human sources in key countries of interest. These sources risk their lives, for whatever their motivations are -- ideology, money, anger at their own regime. Sometimes the information that is passed up the chain to Langley is good, sometimes not (sometimes the sources are deliberately or unwittingly passing bad info). The case officers also put themselves at risk, particularly if they are under non-official cover.
The bureaucracy at Langley clearly is not operating at anything close to an optimal level. It is risk averse because of several decades of Congressional hammering, which flows from the underlying paradox between the culture of an open society and the need for a secret foreign intelligence service.
CIA failed to have predictive intel on the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait (although it did have good satellite intel, it had, of course, no human intel in Saddam's inner circle), any of bin Laden's attacks in the 1990s, and 9/11.
Now we have the former head of CIA claiming that there were certain things he would tell the head of NSC but not the President, notwithstanding that he gave the President a daily intellegnce briefing every morning. All of the wonderful intelligence in the world is no good unless it it well analyzed and passed along to all key policy makers.
We see the failures, and they are bad, really bad. We don't see the successes, or the daily struggle in the shadow war.
I am not sure that, at the micro level, our culture is generally good at such things -- I think that the Russians running KGB had superior natural ability, and the Iranians running SAVAMA are equally talented. It helps to have a certain streak of paranoia (see: 19th century Russian literature) in the national psyche to have a good intelligence service staffed by capable professionals; Americans, as a young country and culture, have always been a bit naive. Having deep pockets and outstanding technology can compensate to some degree, but the U.S. will always be a softer target for intelligence penetration than its key adversaries.
By , at
Fri May 04, 05:08:00 PM:
Unrelated to your post... I was wondering if you could give us an update on your home solar project.
By Georg Felis, at
Fri May 04, 08:49:00 PM:
Ain't it amazing what we can do when Tenant gets out of the way?
By , at
Sat May 05, 12:48:00 AM:
Dont condem all arabs for the act of a few becuase think of how many died in the world trade center and we all know how arabs dont like arabs killing arabs
By allen, at
Sat May 05, 01:17:00 PM:
There may be others than the CIA at work in and around Iran. For example, DoD has much expanded its efforts.
By Purple Avenger, at
Sat May 05, 01:54:00 PM:
The CIA seems to me largely a myth these days. The Church commission and Clinton's gutting of what remained of the operations directorate saw to that.
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat May 05, 10:32:00 PM:
"I am not sure that, at the micro level, our culture is generally good at such things -- I think that the Russians running KGB had superior natural ability, and the Iranians running SAVAMA are equally talented. It helps to have a certain streak of paranoia (see: 19th century Russian literature) in the national psyche to have a good intelligence service staffed by capable professionals; Americans, as a young country and culture, have always been a bit naive. Having deep pockets and outstanding technology can compensate to some degree, but the U.S. will always be a softer target for intelligence penetration than its key adversaries."
I can assure you that our personal are just as talented as any other nations' personnel. It's our system that screws us.
For instance, it is illegal for operatives of a certain major agency to provide money to someone if they think it may be used to procure drugs. That all but erases the possibility of buying sources linked to the international drug trade. (in Afghanistan, for instance) It is also illegal for operatives of this agency to misrepresent their employers to potential sources; they HAVE to say, if asked, "we work for X." A source who would be perfectly willing to talk to representatives of a diplomatic mission, a large private company, or even some other third party agency, can be put off and go cold.
In the end, the blame for this country's half-crippled intelligence lays at the foot of Congress, and every effort to try to strengthen our hand, whether it be the Patriot Act or NSA eavesdropping, is fought tooth and nail by conspiracy theorists and idealogues who cannot be convinced that we are not some sort of evil Stasi out to enslave the public.
By Georg Felis, at
Sun May 06, 04:48:00 PM:
In addition if an Agency handler gets a good source providing good information, there is a creeping tendency for the Upper Management to either A) Think they can handle him better and take over in a ham-handed way or B) Discount his information because it is coming in too easy and counters The Way They Think It Works. Oh, and C) Leak the information to the press in a way to reveal the source. (Disclaimer: I don't work for any three-letter abbreviated Government Agency)
