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8 Iranian Intelligence Organizations
- Georgetown University Press
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C H A P T E R 8 Iranian Intelligence Organizations Carl Anthony Wege T he Islamist government of Iran is rooted in a vision of Twelver (IthnaAshari ) Shi’ism, which traditionally asserted that any government other than that of the hidden imam1 was necessarily illegitimate.2 Clerical authorities came to govern Iran directly without intervening or parallel political structures only following the historically unique 1979 Revolution.3 To paraphrase Gabriel Almond, as quoted by Stephen Welch in chapter 2, the 1979 Revolution changed the ‘‘pattern of orientations to political action’’ wherein ‘‘every political system is embedded.’’ Revolutionary Iran became a neotheocracy ideologically driven by a radicalized Shiism to foster regional revolution.4 The structure of Iran’s intelligence establishment derived from the imperatives of this revolutionary state, whereas Persia’s renewed ambitions to further a Shi’a Islamist imperium transformed political dynamics across the region. Iran’s Security Architecture Iran, like other governments across the Near East, relies on multiple overlapping security organs to sustain its regime. Tehran’s Shi’a regime is characterized by an interwoven network of competing security organs and clerical factions. These security organs are often associated with individual clerics or specific clerical factions, which are differentiated by varying degrees of adherence to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s original version of Islamic jurisprudence / 141 / 142 / Carl Anthony Wege (velayat-e faqih).5 The distinctive characteristic of Iranian intelligence is the Islamist veneer that overlays both the structure and function of its intelligence bureaucracies in their association with these clerical factions. Iran’s prerevolutionary National Intelligence and Security Organization (Sazemn-i Ettela’at Va Amniyat-I Kishavr, SAVAK), which was created by the shah in 1957 with assistance from the US Central Intelligence Agency and Mossad,6 is the antecedent institution of the modern Iranian intelligence establishment .7 Its orientation, focus, organization, and approach to the intelligence enterprise were entirely secular. Although postrevolutionary Iranian intelligence institutions go to great lengths to deny any association with the old SAVAK, it nonetheless influenced the initial configuration of the Revolution’s successor intelligence entities. The Khomeini government in its first months relied on the Palestine Liberation Organization for intelligence support.8 However, by August 1979 a Ministry of Intelligence and National Security (Sazamaneh Etelaat va Amniateh Mihan, SAVAMA) had been created by Hojatolislam Mohammed Mufateh.9 SAVAMA was the immediate SA VAK successor organization developed under General Hussein Fardust. Fardust, although closely associated with the shah, organized the new service using the remnants of SAV AK, and he recovered most of the SAVAK files on political dissidents.10 The institutional responsibility of SAVAMA was foreign operations (the Revolutionary Guards were responsible for internal security during the first years of the Islamic Republic of Iran).11 The postrevolutionary intelligence establishment developed on the foundation of both the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS, now called the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security) and Mohsen Rezaii’s Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC; Pasdaran or Pasdan-e Inqilal-e Islami).12 MOIS functioned more as an executive entity than an actual ministry, in that it was directly responsible to the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) and not to the Islamic or Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majlis-e Shora-ye). Iran’s intelligence services, as they were maturing through the 1990s, established relationships with foreign services such as the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshnei Razvedki, SVR).13 The SVR trained hundreds of Iranian intelligence personnel and was allowed to station Russian personnel on Iranian soil.14 The traditional emphasis of the Russian services on disinformation and the placement of agents of influence, particularly during the time of the Soviet KGB, were continued by the modern SVR and are sometimes reflected in MOIS’s operations. Illustrative of this practice is the argument made by some scholars that Iranian disinformation operations successfully persuaded the Western powers before the 2003 invasion that Iraq was engaged in a significant program of weapons of mass destruction aimed at its neighbors.15 Iran could thereby have used the United States to get rid of Saddam Hussein and have thus removed a major military obstacle to Iranian [18.218.129.100] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 10:18 GMT) Iranian Intelligence Organizations / 143 expansion. The maturation of the Iranian services also resulted in especially close relations with the services of Syria, and important relations with the services of Sudan, Libya, and Tajikistan.16 The Ministry of Intelligence and Security (Vezarat-e...