Russia, Iran Military Cooperation Expands To Digital Surveillance
As the US weighs Iran's destabilizing actions across the Middle East, the United States now has to deal with Tehran’s expanding cyber cooperation with Russia.
As the US weighs Iran's destabilizing actions across the Middle East, the United States now has to deal with Tehran’s expanding cyber cooperation with Russia.
Challenges posed by Iran continue to grow, forcing the Biden administration to take more of a hands-on approach to the regime than it possibly wanted.
While Iran supplies drones and reportedly other weapons to Russia, its proxy forces attacked US bases in Syria last week, with the US launching a rare retaliatory strike, but emphasizing its goal of avoiding a wider conflict with Tehran.
The WSJ reported Monday that Moscow’s burgeoning military cooperation with Tehran includes a plan to help its sanctioned ally’s cyberwarfare capabilities, according to the Journal’s sources.
The US State Department has avoided a direct response to the report. Deputy spokesperson of the US State Department Vedant Patel was asked during his press briefing Monday to react though strangely, said he had not seen it, although the article was published hours before the briefing took place.
Patel did, however, publicly comment that there is no doubt about the concern felt in the White House. “What I will say is that of course Russia’s deepening of relationships with malign actors like Iran continues to be a deep concern,” he said.
He added, “We have seen the havoc caused by Iranian-made drones that Russia has unleashed on Kyiv, targeting energy and civilian infrastructure, so of course this relationship is one that we are paying close attention to.”
Iran, which never condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, began supplying kamikaze drones to its ally in mid-2022. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned in mid-July that Russia was seeking to obtain Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from the Islamic Republic.
The first Iranian drones were used by Russia in noticeable numbers in October and first evidence of a UAV downed by Ukraine emerged on October 6.
The WSJ quoted sources as saying that Russia has been providing Iran with communication, surveillance and eavesdropping capabilities, photography devices and lie detectors from the start of the war in Ukraine.
This is when talks in Vienna to revive the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran broke up, despite intense Western efforts to reach a compromise with Iran. In August, the European Union offered one final plan that according to Washington Tehran did not accept, by putting forth new unacceptable demands.
It is not clear to what extent Russia’s technical assistance is geared toward boosting military capabilities or Iran’s policing resources against dissidents. Surveillance technology in many cases can have dual use too. Tehran already has an extensive system of digital surveillance over its population much like China and it widely censors the internet.
As local media is under heavy government control, Iranians rely on messaging apps to receive news and exchange information. This becomes even more crucial during protests, when news about rallies and gatherings becomes a mobilization tool for protesters.
The government banned Instagram, the one accessible major platform last year to prevent communication between the people and news reaching the outside world about the protests.
Seeing this as insufficient, authorities also resorted to denying access to the Internet in wide swaths of the country for months, hurting millions of people who relied on digital commerce to make a living.
China has also been assisting Iran’s digital surveillance programs. In December, the United States blacklisted China’s Tiandy Technologies for supplying video surveillance equipment to the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC).
Western countries, Israel and Saudi Arabia have in the past reported frequent Iranian cyber-attacks on government and private institutions. Social media giants Facebook and Twitter have closed thousands of fake Iranian accounts for spreading disinformation.
What this means for Iranians and for wider geo-politics is yet to be seen, but what is clear, is that the desire for Biden to quietly leave the Middle East behind, is ever-more unlikely.
Mahmoud Vaezi told Mashreq news in Tehran on Monday that “the night when we were informed the Americans had killed Qassem Soleimani in Iraq it was a very tough time. Then the downing of the Ukrainian plane was so hard to bear.”
Flight PS 752 was hit with two surface-to-air missiles as it was taking off from Tehran on January 8, 2020, in the tense aftermath of Iran's missile attack on United States military bases in Iraq. The missile attack on US bases was in retaliation for the US killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad days earlier.
Vaezi went on to say that President Hassan Rouhani, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and other senior presidential aides were not initially told that the plane was shot down.
All 176 people onboard died in the incident, many dual-national Canadians, the Ukrainian pilots and crew, British citizens and others.
Iran first said that the crash was an accident but after video emerged showing projectiles hitting the plane and remarks by the United States and Canada that they had evidence of anti-aircraft missiles having been fired at the aircraft, the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) admitted three days later that it was responsible for shooting down the airliner, resulting from “human error.”
“At that time, President Rouhani insisted on making a statement as soon as possible to tell the people everything,” he added, but before that “Rouhani, Foreign Minister Zarif and Roads Minister Mohammad Eslami did not know what had really happened.”
He went on to say that after news outlets abroad reported it was not an accident and the plane was shot down, the Rouhani administration followed up but they [the IRGC] denied, and “finally we found out the truth, but we were having a hard time.”
One day after the incident, President Rouhani’s spokesman denied that the airliner was shot down.
"All these reports are a psychological warfare against Iran...all those countries whose citizens were onboard the plane can send representatives and we urge Boeing to send its representative to join the process of investigating the black box," Ali Rabiei said in a statement.
However, Iran never allowed investigators to visit the country or interview any officials. After months of delay, Tehran passed on the flight data recorder to France for analysis, but no new information emerged. The issue was not how the plane had crashed but to find out who had issued the order to fire at the airplane.
In the three years since the tragedy, the families of the victims have explored multiple avenues to get answers from Iran, including taking the unusual step last year of filing a case in the International Criminal Court.
A sham trail of a few low-ranking military men was held in Tehran but victim families who attended a few court sessions dismissed the exercise as futile in uncovering the truth about which high-ranking officials were responsible.