It would be very strange if the discovery of MOSSAD’s penetration into the highest leadership of Lebanese Hezbollah a few days ago does not create a security-political storm in Iran. Last week, seyed Hassan Nasrallah announced that a senior Hezbollah authority had been a spy for Israel. He was talking about Mohammad Shoorbe (Shawraba), the head of Nasrallah’s personal detail and the commander of Hezbollah’s foreign military operations. Shoorbe had spied for MOSSAD for eight years and through him Israel was aware of practically all of Hezbollah’s activities, even the personal life of Nasrallah. It would not be an exaggeration to say that despite the fearsome intelligence apparatus that he maintains he was still fully exposed to Israel, which should be a major lesson for all of Iran’s leaders. Amongst his key responsibilities was to report to MOSSAD the operational plans of all Hezbollah’s foreign operations so they would be neutralized.
Five years ago after the assassination of Emad Moghnie, Iran’s Etemad newspaper published a report titled, “Who Betrayed Haj Rezvan?” which was widely covered in the regional media and was the most read story in London’s al-Hayat newspaper for a week. Haj Rezvan was the nom de guerre for Emad Moghnie in Iran. The US and Israel searched for thirty years to find him. After participating in a Damascus event to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Islamic revolution in Iran, Moghnie walked out and as he got into his Mitsubishi Pajero outside, the car exploded killing him. For three or four days nobody knew who had been killed until Hezbollah officially announced that Moghnie had been assassinated. Now it is clear that Moghnie’s participation at the party organized by the Iranian embassy in Damascus had been compromised by Shoorbe.
The issue of Israeli spy networks among Arabs and among political groups in countries around Israel is an unsolvable crisis which Arab countries seem to have given up and accepted that they are not at par with Israel. But the spying of the most senior foreign operations commander of Hezbollah is important because of the strategic alliance that Iran and Hezbollah enjoy which means much that the multiple trips that this MOSSAD agent had to Iran in fact extended the arm of Israel’s spy agencies straight into Iran.
The work of intelligence agencies is based on creating spy rings and if Shoorbe had close ties with Iranians, then it can safely be concluded that there is a MOSSAD network that has been operating in Iran for the past eight years.
Using the same logic one can also assume that such a ring also exists in Iran’s ministry of intelligence, the IRGC’s Ghods Force, the IRGC, and particularly the counter- intelligence apparatus of the IRGC and perhaps even in the judiciary branch of the government, the Basij paramilitary force and even some religious groups that are active in Iraq and Syria. Certainly, the non-Iranian leaders of these groups who have had close ties with Lebanese Hezbollah will also now be suspect.
To discount the notion that MOSSAD may have spy rings in Iran through Lebanese Hezbollah, one only has to be reminded of the five assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists. That a group of armed motorbike riders would be waiting in front of the house of someone who is not known to the public to be working for the country’s atomic energy organization and then assassinate him indicates the presence of an intelligence network that has deep roots in Iran. The uncovering of the spying relationship of Hezbollah’s senior commander can provide Iran with a wealth of information about such networks in Iran.
If one follows the reports and events taking place around Israel, one can suspect footprints of Israel’s spy networks in Iran. Iran has been sending military equipment to Hezbollah for years. Many of these shipments had been attacked and destroyed by Israeli warplanes, which is a good reason to believe that these shipments could have been known to MOSSAD at the time of their inception in Iran.
If Nasrallah feels any debt to Iran for what Iran has been giving to the residents of south Lebanon for years and if he provides safe Iranian institutions with information about the busted spy rings in Hezbollah, perhaps then the spy rings in Iran could be tracked.
Otherwise, we may once again witness someone like Ahmadinejad winning national elections.