Spies and Bombs: The Iranian plot in Africa is exposed

The destination this time: the Emirates of the United Arab Emirates in Addis Ababa and Khartoum – and gathering information on Israeli and American targets. The New York Times revealed today (Monday) that a network of activists who followed the Emirates ‘mission in the Ethiopian capital, with a stockpile of weapons and explosives, had been activated by the Tehran Ministry of Intelligence, and that another group had plotted to harm the Emirates’ embassy in Sudan. According to the American newspaper, this is further evidence of the expansion of the struggle between Iran and the West towards the African continent.

The 15 operatives in the network exposed in Ethiopia were recently arrested by the country’s intelligence services, who said they had thwarted a severe attack that would have wreaked havoc in Addis Ababa. So far the authorities there have not said who the person behind them is. The only clue to Iranian involvement was the arrest of another activist in Sweden, an Iranian named Ahmad Ismail, who according to the Ethiopians was arrested in collaboration with “friendly” intelligence services from Asia, Africa and Europe.

But now, according to the Times, US and Israeli officials explicitly say that Tehran was behind this network. Sources said that last fall Iranian intelligence ordered its operatives to gather information on the embassies in Israel and the US in Addis Ababa.

According to sources who spoke to the Times, the purpose of the network’s activities in Ethiopia was partly to find “soft targets” for revenge for painful actions that Tehran attributes to its enemies, such as the assassination last November of senior nuclear scientist Muhsin Fahrizadeh, or the assassination of the Iranian bomb. Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards, Qassem Suleimani, in an American bombing in Baghdad about a year ago.

A senior U.S. security official told the Times that the arrests in Ethiopia were also linked to another recent Iranian plot in Africa – an assassination attempt on a U.S. ambassador to South Africa, which Politico reported in September last year.

So far, Ethiopian authorities have not revealed the identities of most of the detainees in the spy network, except for two. Sources in Israel said that at least three of them were operatives recruited by Iran, along with other detainees. The Iranian arrested in Sweden, according to Deputy Admiral Heidi K. Berg, who heads the intelligence department at Africa Command at the Pentagon, was the “brain” behind the network uncovered in Addis Ababa.

According to the Ethiopian intelligence services, another network was also arrested in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, and planned to harm the Emirates’ embassy there. A Sudanese source confirmed to the Times this Ethiopian claim.

Iran, not surprisingly, has denied the allegations. “These baseless allegations are being promoted solely by the Zionist regime’s malicious media,” a spokeswoman for the Iranian embassy in Addis Ababa told the Times. “Neither Ethiopia nor the United Arab Emirates have said anything about Iranian intervention in these matters.”

The Iranian intention to harm the goals of the UAE comes, of course, against the background of the peace agreement with Israel signed last year, at the end of the term of former US President Donald Trump. And from the outset, the UAE is considered one of Iran’s main rivals in the Persian Gulf, alongside Saudi Arabia.

Experts who spoke to the New York Times said that foreign embassies, especially in Africa, are easy prey for the Iranians. “Africa is a relatively easy place to operate, and Ethiopia is now preoccupied with other issues,” former CIA officer currently working at the Brookings Research Institute told the Times, referring to the ongoing conflict in the northern Ethiopian province of Tigray.

The Times writes that this wave of arrests in the Ethiopian capital is just another chapter in the “cat and mouse games” of the Israeli institution operating in Africa and around the world against Iranian activists, and mentions a long list of cases in which activists in many countries were arrested. Only on February 4 was an Iranian diplomat, who was in fact the head of the Iranian intelligence ministry’s branch in Vienna, sentenced to 20 years in prison in a Belgian court – after commanding an Iranian terrorist network throughout Western Europe. He was arrested in pursuit in Germany in 2018, in a joint operation by a local institution and intelligence services. Following the exposure and arrest, the European Union imposed harsh sanctions on the Iranian intelligence ministry and several senior officials.

The Times links this pursuit to Mossad chief Yossi Cohen’s visit to Ethiopia in November 2020, to discuss joint “counterterrorism operations.”

The Iranian conspiracies uncovered in Ethiopia and Sudan also come amid growing tensions between Tehran and Washington, and the possibility that President Joe Biden is now considering returning to the 2018 nuclear deal with which Trump withdrew. Biden demands that Iran return to abide by the agreement before removing the sanctions that are suffocating its economy, but it refuses to do so and threatens even more serious violations of the agreement, in what is seen as an attempt to put pressure on the new US administration.

The activity in Africa, according to some experts who spoke with the Times, is probably related to this Iranian pressure campaign. Persin Nadimi, who is investigating Iran’s military activities on behalf of the Washington Institute for Policy in the Near East, said Tehran may be asking to send a message to the Biden administration that “if you do not reach an agreement with Iran quickly, this is what you will get: a dangerous neighborhood.”

A Times report highlighted the fact that Iranian influence in those African countries, such as Ethiopia and Sudan, has weakened in recent years, while Israeli and UAE influence is on the rise. For example, while in the 1990s former Sudanese ruler Omar al-Bashir has had extensive ties with the Islamic Republic, since his ouster in 2019 the new regime changed its course and last year even joined the “Abraham Accords” promoted by the Trump administration, although a peace agreement has not yet been reached. Officially signed with Israel.

The United Arab Emirates also increased its influence in the region, and was the one to mediate in 2018 a historic peace agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia. In the past, Iranian warships have docked in ports in Eritrea, the newspaper noted, but now state-owned warships are moored there.

The Times mentions several previous Iranian conspiracies in Africa in recent years, one of which is particularly interesting in light of the claim in the report that Israeli intelligence officials were involved in the investigation of Iranians arrested in Kenya. The two Iranians were arrested in 2012 and sent to 15 years in prison for possession of 15 kilograms of explosives. Kenyan authorities claimed they were members of a Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards. The claim that Israeli intelligence was involved in their investigation was voiced by their lawyers. In 2016, Kenya deported from its territory four Iranians arrested outside the Israeli embassy in the country, with a video documenting the compound.