The state-owned energy sector of Iran, one of the world’s most lucrative, has become a major target of international espionage since the imposition of new sanctions by the United States this year.
The purpose of Washington’s sanctions is
to limit the Islamic Republic’s ability to export energy, and by doing
so end the country’s reliance on its primary source of income. It is
estimated that Tehran’s energy exports have fallen by about 80 percent
during the past year, and may continue to fall if the US has its way.
This means that American and Iranian intelligence agencies are currently
engaged in an intense war of espionage that concentrates on what
remains of Iran’s oil exports. Iran continues to entice international
buyers by selling energy at below-market prices, while sales are
facilitated through the use of throwaway bank accounts that are
difficult to trace. Exports are then carefully smuggled into overseas
destinations through a variety of means.
In an article published last week, The New York Times’
Farnaz Fassihi explains that every snippet of information about Iran’s
oil industry has now become “a prized geopolitical weapon” in a “a
high-stakes global game of espionage and counterespionage”. Fassihi
quotes a recent statement by Iran’s Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zanganeh
that “information about Iran’s oil exports is war information”. That
includes information on how Iran manages to deliver its exports abroad
and how it gets paid for doing so. Once the US tightened its sanctions
on Tehran, Iranian energy officials began to suspect that most inquiries
to purchase oil were from foreign spies in search of information on the
methods of transaction, writes Fassihi. So the Ministry of Petroleum
stopped allowing thousands of freelance energy brokers to mediate
between it and buyers. It proceeded to concentrate all transactions into
the hands of fewer than five vetted individuals with prior tenure in
the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and other vetted government
agencies. It also began to train Ministry officials on security and
counterespionage protocols.
When the Iranians made it difficult to
access information through the Ministry of Petroleum, foreign spy
agencies changed their tactics, writes Fassihi. They used foreign
academic researchers, including PhD students, who offered payments in
hard cash for information on Iranian oil export methods that would help
them in their research. Others descended on Tehran offering visas to the
US, alcohol, prostitutes, and cash payments ranging from $100,000 to
over $1 million in exchange for intelligence on the Iranian energy
export sector. There is an atmosphere of paranoia in the Iranian
capital, writes Fassihi, and the process of purchasing oil from Iran
resembles a Hollywood spy thriller. Representatives of foreign buyers
are asked to come to Tehran in person and are regularly required to
switch hotels in the middle of the night. Additionally, once a
transaction is agreed upon, the buyer’s representative is required to
stay at a Petroleum Ministry safe house until the funds are transferred
into Iranian government coffers. After that, the representative is
allowed to leave, writes Fassihi.
https://intelnews.org/2019/08/13/01-2607/
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