NYT: Russian intelligence services expose British spy in Iran

Russia's intelligence services have exposed a British spy in Iran, The New York Times [NYT] reports, citing Western, Israeli and Iranian sources.

The point is about Iran's former deputy defence minister Alireza Akbari, who was executed in January 2023 for spying for Britain.

The NYT wrote that Akbari was indeed a British spy - and an extremely valuable one.

It was Akbari who provided the information about the existence of an underground uranium enrichment facility in Fordow town of Iran.

This information confirmed that Iran's nuclear programme is military in nature.

According to the NYT, Akbari had long lived a double life. To the public, he was a religious zealot and political hawk, a senior military commander of the Revolutionary Guards and a deputy defence minister who later moved to London and went into the private sector but never lost the trust of Iran’s leaders. But in 2004, according to the officials, he began sharing Iran’s nuclear secrets with British intelligence.

In addition to accusing Akbari of revealing its nuclear and military secrets, Iran has also said he disclosed the identity and activities of over 100 officials, most significantly Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the chief nuclear scientist whom Israel assassinated in 2020.

Britain has never publicly acknowledged that Akbari, who became a British citizen in 2012, was its spy. “It is our longstanding policy not to comment on matters relating to intelligence,” said William Archer, the spokesman on Iran for the British Foreign Office.

In September 2019, the NYT reported that the intelligence source on the Fordow nuclear site was a British spy. The intelligence that Akbari provided was one of the revelations that the British intelligence official passed on to Israeli counterparts and other friendly agencies in 2008, according to three Western intelligence and national security officials.

Akbari, who was 62 when he was executed, was an unlikely spy. He displayed a fanatical allegiance to the ideals of the Islamic Republic and unwavering support for its leaders, according to interviews with his brother Mehdi Akbari and people who knew him.

“My brother was deeply religious and very revolutionary, more so than anyone in our family,” said Mehdi Akbari.

In 2004, amid growing suspicions in Israel and the West that Iran was secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program, Akbari was responsible for convincing key embassies in Tehran that it was not, meeting regularly with the ambassadors of Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.

Akbari said he was recruited in 2004 and told he and his family would be given visas for Britain. The next year, he travelled to Britain and met with an MI6 handler, he said. Over the next few years, Akbari said he created front companies in Austria, Spain and Britain to provide cover for meetings with his handlers. Iran has said that MI6 paid Akbari nearly 2 million pounds, currently about $2.4 million.

Akbari also was traveling regularly to London. In 2010, he had a heart attack there, his brother said and stayed. He was soon joined by his wife and two daughters, and eventually obtained British citizenship, living off an investment portfolio and travelling to Iran to maintain contacts with senior officials. In the videos, Akbari said he faked the heart attack in order to stay in Britain.

Still, he travelled back and forth from London to Tehran at least three times from 2010 to 2019 and stayed at a family home he had kept in Tehran, his brother said.