Spy Wars heat up!
The long-simmering Spy Wars between Israel on the one hand, and Iran and its allies in the Jebhat al-Mumana’a (Blocking Front) on the other, have been heating up a lot over the past couple of weeks.
Does all this accelerating string of revelations and counter-revelations indicate that the two sides are doing some deck-clearing preparatory to a military encounter that perhaps both of them now see as increasingly inevitable, or is there another explanation for what’s been happening?
Today, the security forces in heavily Hizbullah-influenced Lebanon announced that two weeks ago they arrested the latest in a long string of Lebanese citizens who have now been formally accused of (or in many cases, convicted for) involvement in the once-extensive spy network that Israel’s Mossad used to run in Lebanon.
This announcement comes hot on the heels of the revelation publicized out of Israel yesterday that a young man called Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a prominent Hamas leader in the West Bank who embraced Christianity a decade ago (the son, not the dad) had in fact also worked as an agent for the Shin Bet during the Second Intifada.
And all this comes, of course, as the authorities in Dubai continue to dribble out additional, extremely incriminating and well-documented details about the Mossad’s involvement in last month’s killing of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai.
And then, there was Tuesday’s announcement from Tehran that the Iranian authorities had captured Abdel-Malek al-Rigi, the accused head of Jundallah, an armed opposition group that’s been active active near Iran’s border with Afghanistan. The Iranian authorities did this by forcing down into one of their southern airports a plane on which Rigi was flying to Kyrgyzstan from Dubai, just a day after Rigi allegedly met with his CIA handlers in the emirate.
Dubai and Lebanon are both significant ‘entrepot’ locations whose enthusiastic embrace of free-market capitalism made them both of them, for many years, into places where agents, spymasters, and arms salesmen loyal to a dizzying range of paymasters and ideologies would interact– often engaging in unlikely-seeming collaborations with each other, but also, very frequently rubbing up against each other, or rubbing each other out, while all keeping close eyes on each other…
Beirut, certainly, played that role for many years (Kim Philby, etc), though it became far less ‘cosmopolitan’ and free-wheeling as the civil war set in in earnest in the late 1970s. But still, Israel and Syria each retained strong networks of spies and operatives in the country for many years thereafter. Last year, the Lebanese security forces succeeded in uncovering and rolling up much of Israel’s remaining spy network inside the country, which has probably significantly crimped Israel’s long-vaunted ability to dominate in the region’s long-summering spy wars.
So let’s turn to Dubai. As I blogged here recently, one of the most notable things about the fallout from Mossad’s assassination of Mabhouh there last month has been not– as some have claimed– the capability that the Dubai authorities showed in their investigation, but rather the intentionality and commitment they have shown thus far in their pursuit of it.
And then, we heard about the Iranian regime’s success in identifying and capturing Rigi on Tuesday.
Where did they get that information from, I wonder?
There have been some reports that they got some help from Pakistan in getting him. But most likely they did most of the footwork themselves– including by using the broad network of their own operatives and contacts that they have doubtless maintained inside Dubai for many years now.
Dubai may seem to many westerners like it’s only a kind of playground for their tastes– whether for shopping, beaches, tennis tournaments, ‘democracy’ seminars aimed at Iranian dissidents, military/naval bases, or whatever… But it has an even longer history as a entrepot with Iran; and throughout many years of various western sanctions efforts against Iran, dhows and larger ships would regularly ply between Dubai and ports in southern Iran, carrying large volumes of traffic both ways.
Don’t forget that– though the federation of which Dubai is part, the United Arab Emirates, has many close military relationships with Washington– still, the UAE leadership has been notably unenthusiastic about the prospects of a US or US-Israeli military attack against Iran.
And regarding Hamas, its head, Khaled Meshaal, was in the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi, holding an apparently friendly meeting with UAE president Sheikh Khalifa bin-Zayed al-Nahyan, just a few days before Mabhouh’s ill-fated visit to Dubai…
I think that fact provides some helpful background to the question as to why the Dubai authorities have been so dogged and committed in their investigation of Mabhouh’s Israeli killers. It is also quite possible that the UAE security authorities are undertaking even wider measures against Mossad’s continued and longterm activities within the federation than anything anyone there has thus far announced.
I guess my big question is whether this intensifying “war of the spies” that Israel and its allies have been conducting against Iran and its allies are a way for the intel agencies in these two countries to try to prepare the regional battlefield for a future war.
And just lest I be misunderstood, I certainly do not see this war being started by Iran. Iran has been doing very well in the region over recent years, thanks to the numerous massive mis-steps taken there by both Israel and its close friend the United States. It has every interest in just continuing to see the two western allies bumble along in the self-destructive way they’ve been going over the past decade or more… But Tehran’s decisionmakers are doubtless well aware that there are serious forces inside Israel trying to push the U.S. into an attack against their country. And, realists that they are, they no doubt want to prepare for every eventuality.
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