Hanged Iranian politician allegedly ‘British spy’ who shared secrets about Iran’s nuclear ambitions
A British-Iranian politician hanged by the Iranian regime in January was a “British spy” who shared sensitive information for 15 years, intelligence officials say.
Insider Sources told the New York Times that former Iranian Deputy Defense Minister Alireza Akbari handed over Britain’s 2004 nuclear and military secrets.
He was convicted of espionage and hanged in Iran on January 14 this year, but the British government has not acknowledged that Akbari worked for MI6.
Akbari was charged with leaking secrets in 2019 after Iran — with help from Russian intelligence — discovered that he had revealed the location of the Fordow underground nuclear enrichment facility in northern Iran’s Qom province.
Alireza Akbari (pictured, undated) was executed in January on suspicion of spying for Britain
Image shows the Fordow facility in northern Iran, reportedly identified by Alireza Akbari
Iran tests a medium-range surface-to-surface missile, the Sejil-2, in northeastern Iran in 2009. Then-President Ahmadinejad said Iran was capable of sending any aggressor “to hell.”
The New York Times reported that a British intelligence official visited Israel in 2008 and shared information from Akbari that suggested Iran was building nuclear weapons.
Akbari had also reportedly determined that Iran was enriching uranium at an underground site in Fordow, near the city of Qom in northern Iran.
The role of the former defense minister in disclosing Iran’s reported proliferation of nuclear activity was not known to Iran at the time.
In 2009, then President Obama faced Iran over the alleged construction of the clandestine underground facility and said it would not rule out military action if they did not “come open” about the scope of their programs.
Iranian officials acknowledged the existence of the Qom facility but said it had been reported as required.
Western officials noted that by 2006, when construction of the enrichment facility began, Iran had agreed to notify the IAEA of any new construction.
The IAEA said after an arranged inspection in October 2009 that it believed there was a ‘high-level decision not to cooperate’, with facility blueprints being withheld.
The situation steadily escalated until Iran and several world powers signed an agreement in 2015 to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from harsh sanctions.
In January 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency finally verified that Iran had taken steps under the so-called Iran deal, intended to limit its nuclear program to “peaceful” uses.
President Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in 2018.
Yoni Koren, then chief of staff to Israel’s defense minister, said the information shared about the Fordow enrichment facility was shocking at the time.
“The great contribution of the British to the combined Western effort to collect data from within the Iranian nuclear project has always been in human intelligence,” he said.
“They had a foothold in places where neither we nor the Americans were present.”
Norman Roule, the former national intelligence manager for Iran at the CIA, also said the Fordow discovery has radically changed the attitude of the international community towards Iran.
This handout photo, provided by Iran’s military bureau on August 24, 2022, shows suicide (kamikaze) drones during a two-day drone exercise at a secret location in Iran
Iranian forces conduct a military exercise using ballistic missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles in the Great Salt Desert, in the middle of the Iranian plateau, on January 15, 2021 in Iran.
Iran’s former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad registers his candidacy for Iran’s presidential election on May 12, 2021 in Tehran. Akbari was arrested in 2019 under Ahmadinejad’s regime.
After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Alireza Akbari rose to prominence as the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards.
He was responsible for the implementation of UN resolution 598, which ended the war with Iraq in 1988.
Akbari served as Iran’s deputy defense minister from 1998 to 2003.
In this role, he fervently opposed the nuclear deal with the West, arguing that it would threaten the security of his country.
He said, “If we back off every time they put pressure on us, they will continue the pressure and push us further back until we are completely disarmed and defenseless.”
Akbari was initially responsible for arguing on the world stage that Iran’s nuclear program was for peaceful purposes only, as energy production.
He was subsequently arrested on suspicion of spying for Britain in 2008 and later released on bail.
Akbari moved to London with his wife Maryam and their daughters Atefah and Faezah and settled in Hammersmith.
He became a British citizen in 2012.
He returned to Iran several times and was arrested in 2019 after Iran determined, with help from Russian intelligence, that he was responsible for leaking nuclear and military secrets to Britain.
He was also accused of sharing the identities and activities of more than 100 officials with Western intelligence agencies.
The Iranian regime announced in January this year that it had executed Akbari by hanging 62 years old.
It turned out that he had been secretly detained since 2019.
In a videotaped statement to his death, Akbari said, “They broke my will, drove me insane and forced me to do whatever they wanted.
“Through the power of guns and death threats, they made me confess false and corrupt allegations.”
Alireza Akbari during an interview in Tehran. Akbari was executed after being sentenced to death for “corruption on earth and harming the internal and external security of the country by passing on intelligence,” the judicial news agency Mizan Online reported.
This 2020 satellite photo taken by Maxar Technologies shows construction at the Fordow facility in Iran
MI6, the British intelligence agency in London, denied that Akbari had fed British Iranian secrets
Iran has been developing nuclear technology since 1957, initially backed by the US’Atoms for peaceprogram that provided nuclear technology adopters in exchange for a commitment to use it for civilian purposes only.
Iran claims its nuclear program is peaceful and enriches uranium to levels consistent with the fuel needed for power plants.
US officials are still warning of the potential threat from Iran’s nuclear program.
In March, a top US Defense Department official said Iran could make enough material for one nuclear bomb in “about 12 days.”
This was a dramatic drop from the estimated year it would have taken while the 2015 Iran nuclear deal was in effect.