From banks and phone lines to Malard missile base blast

An account of espionage: From infiltrating banking and telecommunications systems to sabotage at nuclear facilities and the explosion at a missile center in Malard

Shahed AlaviIran International

On August 16, 2026, a notice registering changes to Tehran Internet, a company active in payment services and digital businesses, was published. The notice named as chairman a little-known figure who, despite his obscurity, played an important role in Israeli espionage operations in Iran — from gaining access to provincial telecommunications networks and sabotaging the country’s nuclear facilities to exposing sanctions-evasion networks and the explosion at a missile development center in Bidganeh, Malard.

Mehdi Naderi Jahromi, chairman of Tehran Internet and founder and owner of the well-known 780 app, is now 51. His family had ties to Islamist circles before the 1979 revolution, and his father was among those who occupied the Imperial Iranian Embassy in Vienna on February 12, 1979.

Naderi founded Tehran Internet in 1999, establishing a business that less than a decade later, after bringing in a seemingly Hezbollah-aligned associate, would for at least four years serve Mossad operations inside Iran.

At the time, Naderi’s business revolved around telecommunications services. Mossad used that business, his connections and Naderi’s principal weakness — money — to advance Israeli operations in Iran.

An examination of Naderi’s business and banking records, alongside the exclusive account of his former associate Kia, an Imam Sadiq University graduate and Mossad agent, provides a detailed picture of a network that exploited banking credit and telecommunications deals and became a channel for Mossad infiltration in Iran. The penetration went so far that Mossad was able to finance the cost of its services and operations inside Iran through the country’s own banking system.

At Kia’s urging, Naderi bought a telecommunications company to expand his business and introduced his associate to people who enabled him to gain access to sensitive contracts and facilities. Kia used those connections to transfer banking information, gain access to telecommunications systems and assist Israeli operations.

This report is based on an examination of an exclusive collection of contracts, bank correspondence, corporate records and judicial documents; Kia’s account as a former Mossad agent in Iran; an interview with a telecommunications expert; and documents and information from open sources.

From top-up cards to the beginning of a partnership

Tehran Internet began by distributing telephone cards in 1999. Its business expanded in 2001 when it obtained distributorship for Tehran Province Telecommunications Company’s prepaid and public telephone cards. At the same time, its nationwide network of sellers, access to large numbers of customers and daily cash turnover led to increased cooperation with telecommunications companies and mobile operators in the early 2000s.

In the summer of 2008, Naderi submitted a request to Saman Bank to install 100 ATMs at its various branches. His company’s daily turnover of more than one billion tomans caught the attention of Kia, who at the time was responsible for ATM sales at Saman Electronic Payment Kish, a company owned by Saman Bank.

Kia, who had met Naderi several years earlier while working at the software company Tarfehnegar, suggested that he increase profits by shifting top-up sales from printed cards to electronic codes. The financial attraction and Kia’s ideas for generating greater income quickly prompted Naderi to offer him a job in his own group. In the autumn of 2008, Kia began working with Naderi as executive manager of the online sales project at Arg Electronic Pars.

The business grew rapidly, and Kia’s ability to generate income from money that had previously merely passed through the company’s accounts made Naderi increasingly dependent on him. Less than a year later, in October 2009, Kia left Saman Bank and began his new job as manager of Arg.

According to Kia, at the beginning of each month Irancell extended Tehran Internet 20 billion tomans in credit to be sold to customers in the form of prepaid cards. The cards were sold in cash, while payment to the operator was due one month later. In the meantime, the bank paid daily interest at an annual rate of 28% on Tehran Internet’s proceeds from these sales, allowing the company to earn income from the credit in addition to its sales profit.

Sham exports and 28% deposits: lessons in defrauding the banking system

According to Kia, Naderi also used his banking connections to obtain credit based on fictitious transactions and defraud the banking system.

In one case, working with the manager of a small bank in Dubai, Naderi obtained a letter of credit for the sham export of engineering services and presented it to the Bank of Industry and Mine in Iran. Assuming the exports were genuine, the bank provided Naderi’s company with financing worth 90% of the value of the credit at an interest rate of 5%.

According to Iran International’s source, Naderi said: “I use this money to work in Iran, pay the bank back a year later and get the LC back, and in the meantime I win the award for exemplary exporter. In this country, you just need to know how to work and where the holes are.”

But Naderi’s fraud did not end there. Kia suggested an easy way to expand it: “I put the proceeds from the LC in Saman Bank as a one-year deposit paying 28% interest. I get a guarantee against that deposit and use the guarantee to take out a one-year loan from another bank at 15%. Then I deposited that money again at 28%. Each time, using money that isn’t ours, we make around 13% net profit — no risk, no trace. A completely legal and clean cycle!”

Another part of Naderi’s banking fraud, which had a longer history, was made possible through cooperation with bank branch managers who worked with him: “At the end of the working day, he would get a bank cheque, but the branch manager would delay registering the issuance of the cheque for a full day. Naderi would then take the cheque to another bank and cash it. He would then get another bank cheque from the second bank and use it to settle the account at the first bank. And it would continue like that. An endless cycle for getting what amounted to a loan worth tens of billions, with no interest or cost.”

Kia says Naderi gave him the idea of using the same methods, and the corruption of bank managers, to finance Mossad operations in Iran: “I received money from Mossad once to carry out a mission. After that, not only did I finance my own missions, but I also even financed some other Mossad operations that I wasn’t carrying out myself.”

Naderi has repeatedly ended up in court. In one case, for example, as chief executive of Tehran Internet he was accused of paying a bribe to a telecommunications official.

One apparent reason Naderi escaped serious judicial action and was able to gain influence across different institutions was his connection to Mojtaba Khamenei’s office. To “maintain political support,” Naderi made monthly payments to accounts specified by Mojtaba’s office. In effect, the son of the Islamic Republic’s then-leader received a share of the proceeds from Naderi’s banking fraud, telephone-card sales and other income.

According to Kia, “Naderi used to say, ‘This is Mr. Mojtaba’s share. He instructs us to pay money into certain accounts for charitable purposes and to help people in need.’”

The espionage begins: introducing a Mossad agent to Qassem Soleimani

Naderi not only taught Kia how Mossad operations in Iran could be financed, but he also introduced him to people who gave Kia access to sensitive circles and enabled him to play a role in sensitive security and nuclear projects of the Islamic Republic.

One of the most important introductions took place at Zoha Kish Communications, one of the parent companies holding shares in Yas Holding, which was affiliated with the IRGC Cooperative Foundation: a meeting with Qassem Soleimani.

Kia says Naderi took him to Mohammad Khajouei, then the company’s chief executive: “Khajouei was a ‘brother of a martyr and a disabled war veteran.’ At the time, in addition to being the company’s chief executive, he headed the syndicate of private fixed-line telephone operators. He introduced me to Qassem Soleimani, who was there, as a Hezbollah brother active in e-commerce projects. That meeting later proved very useful for my mission.”

As a result of this meeting, Israel identified one of the methods used to finance IRGC Quds Force operations: revenue generated through illegal call termination. A covert telecommunications business inside Iran, generating dollar revenues through an offshore settlement network, had become a channel for financing the Quds Force’s regional operations.

In telecommunications, termination is the stage at which an incoming international call is transferred to the domestic network and connected to its destination number. Legally, the call passes through official gateways, and the charges are settled between operators. With illegal termination, however, the call enters the country through the internet or hidden gateways and is then injected into the network through SIM cards or domestic lines as if it were a local call. The international origin of the call is therefore concealed, and those operating the network profit from the difference in tariffs.

Naderi and his business partners, including Zoha Kish, generated dollar revenues by terminating calls through Irancell lines. The money was collected outside Iran and deposited into secure accounts belonging to trusted members of the network in Malaysia, Dubai and the United States.

According to Kia, this revenue was distributed on Qassem Soleimani’s direct orders: “Most of the money went to regional activities and to the forces and groups he designated. A covert telecommunications business had become a channel for financing the Quds Force’s regional operations.”

Buying a telecom company: Israeli access to the Bidganeh missile development center

To penetrate Iran’s telecommunications system, Israel asked Kia to encourage Naderi to buy one of the country’s declining private telecommunications companies.

Ertebatat Jame Novin, which had access to several telecommunications switches and several telephone exchanges, was at the time a fixed-line operator with its own telecommunications switch. It provided fixed-line telephone services in areas where the state telecommunications company did not.

Kia says access to an independent switch was highly attractive to Naderi because it would reduce his reliance on intermediaries and make the illegal termination business more profitable.

“Naderi, who was already working in this market, saw the purchase to increase his income and control. At the end of March 2010, he bought the company for 700 million tomans and transferred 100% of its shares to Arg Electronic Pars, which I was running.”

The acquisition was particularly important because of the locations of two of the company’s telecommunications switches.

One was in Malard, near Bidganeh, with capacity exceeding the needs of registered subscribers in an area containing the Shahid Modarres garrison and the Al-Ghadir missile base, also known as Bidganeh. The other was in Bushehr, providing fixed telephone lines to the residential compounds of the city’s air force and naval bases.

Israeli access to the switches provided an easy route for communications interception. But Kia says it took time for him to realize that, at least in the case of the Bidganeh missile base, interception was not the only objective.

A retired senior employee of the Communications Ministry told Iran International that because of the importance of switches for surveillance, their operation was monitored by intelligence personnel assigned to the ministry.

“Iran’s communications infrastructure is caught in a multilayered grip of security and military institutions. This control is embodied in a unit called ‘Network Security’ at the Communications Ministry, which is controlled by intelligence personnel. This unit is responsible for approving new switches and for systematic interception operations.”

According to the expert, interception technology is far more advanced today, but at the time intelligence agencies monitored data flows by installing surveillance programs on fixed-line telephone switches.

“Operators’ technical teams were required every month to extract the output from this surveillance platform and the network’s call detail records, or CDRs, in accordance with security protocols and administrative procedures, burn them onto CDs and hand them over to security officers.”

Kia says that after reporting his observations from an initial inspection of the telecommunications networks in Bushehr and Malard to Mossad, he was sent a file.

“Put the attached file on the secure flash drive and install it on the Bushehr and Malard switches.”

Several days later, during a meeting with the head of Network Security, a man named Norouzi, Kia was advised that when obtaining new equipment for the exchanges it would be better to buy from a domestic company.

“Norouzi said this company sells telecommunications switches and had already passed Network Security’s approval process. They had also bought the required lawful-interception software from a Chinese company and localized it. Using them would make the process of obtaining your security approvals easier too.”

The recommendation to buy from a domestic company was not motivated by network-security guarantees, but by the cut Norouzi demanded from the company for every switch sold — a security failure that would soon engulf one of the Islamic Republic’s most important figures and programs.

Kia says that on the night of November 11, 2011, Mossad instructed him to go to the Malard telecommunications building the following day and, at exactly 12:30 p.m., delete the installed file and the system log.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen. After connecting to the server, I opened the terminal, typed in the commands, and the file and log were deleted.”

Twenty minutes later, a massive explosion shook the area. Kia says he initially thought there had been an earthquake.

“I was gathering my things when suddenly I felt the shaking. At first I thought I was imagining it. Then I felt another, stronger tremor. The ground beneath my feet moved, the windows shook, a cup fell from the table and broke. The shaking lasted a few seconds and then stopped.”

According to published reports, seismographs at the International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology and the University of Tehran’s Institute of Geophysics recorded vibrations from the massive explosion at around 12:50 p.m., resembling a minor magnitude-2.2 earthquake. The blast was powerful enough for the tremor to be felt across large parts of western Tehran Province and into the center of the capital.

The explosion at the Al-Ghadir missile base in Bidganeh killed Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, regarded as the father of Iran’s missile program, and at least 27 other IRGC personnel.

The operation took place while Tamir Pardo was director of Mossad. Ronen Bergman, in his book Rise and Kill First, describes the incident as part of a targeted Mossad campaign to cripple Iran’s missile-launch systems and eliminate the father of the program. Other intelligence sources, including the book Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service, have claimed that the operation’s main target was not Tehrani Moghaddam himself but the destruction of an advanced solid-fuel missile engine with intercontinental range.

In 2016, Mohammad Tehrani Moghaddam said of the explosion: “This was not simply an accident. It was a carefully planned operation. Mossad had been trying to assassinate my brother for years.”

Kia says he does not know how the explosion was carried out or what role his own actions played in the chain of events leading to it.

“Was the file the cause of the explosion? Did it provide intelligence for the operation, or did it serve some other purpose and Mossad pulled the trigger?”

Post Bank: a gateway for circumventing sanctions

With Naderi’s help, Kia made his way into the office of the chief executive of Post Bank. Not long afterwards, through his dealings with the bank, he helped disable methods used to circumvent sanctions and finance the IRGC Quds Force through Post Bank.

Post Bank’s Jomhouri branch issued cheques and guarantees for Naderi’s companies, and Kia’s visits to follow up on those matters brought him closer to bank executives. It was a reciprocal relationship: working with Post Bank’s then-chief executive, he helped Naderi obtain guarantees and bank cheques, while Naderi brought billions of tomans in turnover from his companies to the branch.

According to Kia, Naderi had bought Mahmoud Afzali, then chief executive of Post Bank, through regular payments.

“Early on after I started working with Arg Electronic, Naderi asked me to look after the company’s relationship with Afzali. Afzali was the nephew of Davoudi, Ahmadinejad’s first vice president. On Naderi’s instructions, I went to Afzali’s office and gave him 30 Bahar Azadi gold coins in an Isfahan marquetry box. Right there, he introduced me to the deputy for branch affairs and put in a good word for me.”

That recommendation quickly led to Mossad gaining access to information showing how Post Bank was being used to circumvent financial sanctions.

Kia says that after the deputy for branch affairs asked him for financial assistance, he hired him as the company’s banking affairs adviser.

“During several meetings, he talked about Post Bank’s strategy and how the postal-services exemption from sanctions was essentially being used to circumvent sanctions. He said Bank Sepah was using Post Bank to conduct foreign-currency transactions connected to the missile and nuclear programs.”

In return for a Peugeot Pars purchase voucher as a bribe, and after Kia told him that Arg Electronic was seeking new methods of circumventing sanctions, the Post Bank deputy handed the Mossad agent a list of six months of Bank Sepah transactions.

Several months later, Mossad cashed in on that information.

On June 16, 2010, the US Treasury sanctioned Post Bank for providing financial services to Bank Sepah. In its statement, the Treasury said that after Bank Sepah was sanctioned and restrictions on other Iranian state-owned banks increased, the Iranian government began using Post Bank to facilitate its international trade. It said Post Bank acted on Bank Sepah’s behalf, concealed its foreign transactions and enabled trade between Iran’s military industries and foreign counterparties.

Less than 40 days later, on July 27, the European Union also sanctioned Post Bank for conducting Bank Sepah transactions, concealing their connection to Bank Sepah and facilitating the bank’s international military trade.

The relationship with Post Bank continued under Mohammad-Hassan Mohabian Araghi, who replaced Afzali in November 2010.

Kia says Mohebbian arranged to meet him through the head of the Jomhouri branch shortly after his appointment.

“I was sure Mohebbian had seen the bank cheques, the unsecured guarantees and the billions in turnover, and now he wanted his share. He was corrupt. In the 2009 election, when he was chief executive of the Post Company, he gave one billion tomans from the company’s financial resources to Ahmadinejad’s campaign.”

According to Kia, Mohebbian warned that if Post Bank was transferred from the Communications Ministry to the Economy Ministry, Naderi and his companies would lose their access to it. He soon asked Kia for help resolving the issue surrounding his appointment.

“Mohebbian said Reza Taghipour, the communications minister, had said that to win parliament’s support we needed to obtain Bahar Azadi gold coins for MPs. They wanted a total of 300 coins, worth close to 105 million tomans at the time.”

Kia says he raised the matter with his Mossad handler and quickly received an answer:

“Take care of him and get closer to him. He is a key for us. A motorcycle courier will deliver something to you first thing tomorrow.”

Mossad’s bribes to Mohebbian did not end with handing out gold coins to win over members of parliament. Not long afterwards, when Mohebbian’s young wife — his second wife — asked him for a luxury car, he sought Kia’s help.

The bribes produced a clear result. Whenever Kia asked, on whatever pretext, about Post Bank’s plans to circumvent sanctions, Mohebbian, eager to please and believe Kia to be safe, gave him everything.

The result of this cooperation and provision of information was Mohebbian’s inclusion on an EU sanctions list alongside the heads of other Iranian banks, published on December 1, 2011.

Goodbye to a partner: continuing with his money and methods

In the autumn of 2011, Mossad warned Kia that Naderi had begun asking questions about his family and background and had even asked a friend at the Intelligence Ministry about him. Mossad instructed Kia to leave Naderi’s group.

After separating from Naderi, Kia informed Mossad that he no longer needed outside funding for his activities and the missions assigned to him. Using the methods of fraud he had learned from Naderi, he could finance Israeli operations through corruption in Iran’s financial and banking system, using letters of credit, guarantees, loans and deposit interest.

Kia says working with Naderi taught him how to turn ordinary banking instruments into a chain for generating credit and liquidity: letters of credit for transactions that, according to him, had no genuine underlying basis; guarantees issued within days; multibillion-toman loans at low interest rates; and daily-interest deposits paying close to 30%.

For him, these methods were not merely techniques for making money. They were tools he could use independently after leaving Naderi.

According to Kia, within a few months these methods gave him a stable source of funding inside Iran, generating millions and sometimes billions of tomans a month. He claims some of the costs of Mossad operations in Iran — including missions he did not personally carry out — were paid from this money.

“Now the fuel for Israel’s espionage machine was being supplied not by Israeli taxpayers but from inside Iran. Money from Iran’s financial system, through its own loopholes, was going into Mossad’s pocket.”

Documents seen by Iran International show parts of the mechanism used to obtain credit, loans and guarantees.

A bank for the Quds Force in Dushanbe

Kia says that in the autumn of 2011 Mohebbian told him the IRGC Quds Force was trying to establish a front company in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, to create a channel for circumventing sanctions.

“The Quds Force is looking to create a channel for transferring money for its operations. Sanctions have made moving money very difficult, but Haj Qassem believes that Central Asian countries are under less scrutiny from Western governments because of Russian influence. And, of course, administrative corruption in some of these countries makes it easier to circumvent the rules.”

According to Kia, Mohebbian said a private company would pursue banking operations and a telecommunications project in parallel. A telecommunications project would be carried out for Tajikistan. In return, Tajikistan would grant a private Iranian company a license to establish a Post Bank in the country, opening a secure corridor for transferring money from Iran to Central Asia.

At a meeting attended by Kia, Mohebbian and Qassem Soleimani in the office of Communications Minister Reza Taghipour, the minister referred to then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s planned trip to Tajikistan for the third International Nowruz Celebration. He said the president wanted to inaugurate an Iranian project in Tajikistan during the visit and that Tajikistan, in return, had agreed to grant a private Iranian company a concession to establish a Post Bank there.

Although Ahmadinejad inaugurated the Iran House project during the trip, Iran’s main intended project — installing and operating GSM wireless fixed-line telephones in Tajikistan in return for a 25-year concession to establish a Post Bank — ultimately went nowhere after Mossad obstructed it.

Soleimani, who Kia says remembered meeting him at the Zoha Kish office, praised the “abilities of this young revolutionary” and gave a clearer account of the Quds Force’s plans for the Tajikistan project.

“Mr. Taghipour will handle the technical side. Mr. Mohebbian and Mr. Babak Zanjani will provide financial backing for the project.”

According to Kia, Soleimani went on to say that one objective of the project was to support opposition forces in the Republic of Azerbaijan in response to that government’s alignment with Israel. He said two men — Bahman Karbasi, an alias, from the Quds Force, and Komil Mirzayev, a Tajik diplomat in Tehran — would assist in advancing the project on his behalf.

Kia says that after meeting Karbasi, he was given a birth certificate, national identity card and passport bearing his photograph but a new identity: Mahmoud Ghaem-Maghami.

At the same time, Kia used money he had earned while working with Naderi to buy a five-storey building in the Molla Sadra area. With Karbasi, he registered a company called Exir Tejarat Sadra, registration number 412543, whose shareholders had been introduced by Soleimani through Karbasi.

The initial capital for the bank branch to be established in Tajikistan was $5 million.

Kia says that during a trip to Dushanbe on April 23, 2012, an agreement was signed at a meeting with Matlubkhon Davlatov, then first deputy prime minister, and Beg Sabur, also known as Zakharov, then head of the Communications Service of the Republic of Tajikistan and simultaneously chairman of Tajik telecom.

Under the agreement, Iran would invest $2 million, with a 25% advance payment, in partnership with a Tajik company to install 5,000 GSM wireless fixed-line telephones in rural and remote parts of the country. In return, Tajikistan would grant a private Iranian company a 25-year concession to operate Post Bank Tajikistan, with initial capital of $5 million.

A Post Bank Iran document dated December 26, 2011, four months earlier, shows that Pardazesh Abri Mobin was the private company authorized by the bank to sign and pursue the agreement.

In another document dated April 26, 2012, three days after the agreement was signed, the head of Tajikistan’s Communications Service referred to the positive meeting three days earlier, said there was no objection to participation in establishing a Post Bank in the country and stressed that the banking plan should be pursued.

Another document from Tajikistan’s Communications Service, dated April 28 that year, refers to the purchase of wireless fixed-line telephone equipment for Tajik telecom and implementation of the contract.

In another document dated February 20, 2012, a company called Mobin Tejarat Anzali appointed Komil Mirzayev as an adviser on its Tajikistan projects from that date until August 28, 2012. Legal records list Mahmoud Ghaem-Maghami as chief executive of the company and show him holding a position at Pardazesh Abri Mobin.

On Mossad’s instructions, Kia delayed implementation of the Tajikistan project on the pretext of difficulties securing financing, giving Mossad, he says, time to find a way to stop it.

The effort ultimately succeeded. Azerbaijan, after learning of the project, pressured the Tajik government to stop the Post Bank plan and changed the position of the Russians, who had previously supported it. The project was ultimately abandoned.

IBM servers: from Paris to Warsaw

More than a decade before the Hezbollah pager operation, Mossad had tested the same model in a deal involving Iran: creating a seemingly independent commercial front company, inserting itself into the equipment supply chain and selling a product that had already been compromised in software or hardware for a security objective.

The deal involving IBM servers for Iran’s nuclear program was an early example of the same method: taking control of the supply chain behind the name of a company the buyer believed was an ordinary commercial enterprise.

Iran’s efforts to purchase products covered by US sanctions made the operation easier for Israel.

IBM was among the companies that had not done business with Iran since the summer of 1995: “IBM complies with all US economic sanctions and has no subsidiary, affiliate, joint-venture arrangement, business partner or other operation in Iran, and our contracts with business partners explicitly prohibit the transfer of our products to Iran.”

According to Kia, he was instructed to make the necessary arrangements to purchase and transfer two dual-use, sanctioned IBM z10 servers from Germany to Iran.

Kia says the servers, which also had banking applications, were ostensibly being purchased for a company providing technical banking services in Iran.

Iran Data Processing Company, which carries out work for banks in Iran, signed a contract with Mobin Tejarat Anzali under which the latter would arrange the purchase and shipment to Dubai through an intermediary German company.

Iran Data Processing Company, the legal and operational successor to IBM’s former branch in Iran, is one of the country’s longstanding suppliers of processing infrastructure to the banking network and, from the early 2010s, supplied Iranian banks with equipment, system software, installation and support services.

Documents seen by Iran International include correspondence concerning the purchase of the equipment.

In the first letter, dated August 21, 2012, and referring to a contract for the purchase of two IBM z10 servers, the sender asks Iran Data Processing Company to withhold, until further notice, payment of €2 million to the intermediary company Atosa in Germany because of delays in purchasing the two machines.

In a second letter, dated September 5, 2012, Mobin Tejarat Anzali informs Iran Data Processing Company that the German company Atosa had provided details of which configurations of the “IBM 2097-E64” servers were available for purchase.

IBM had previously announced on July 12, 2011, that official sales of this server model were ending. It is unclear whether the machines Atosa said were available were second-hand, refurbished or remaining dealer inventory.

According to Kia, the servers belonged to a French company and were to be purchased by Atosa in Germany and sold to an Emirati company that did business with Iranian companies.

The Emirati company would then sell the shipment to a shell company in Tajikistan. The cargo would be sent to Bandar Abbas, ostensibly in road transit to Tajikistan.

Once inside Iran, the servers were to be removed from the shipment and replaced with two fake machines that would continue to Tajikistan, allowing the import to be registered with Tajik customs and preventing the sanctions-evasion route from being compromised.

Kia met Mohammad-Ali Salehi, the manager of Atosa, in Germany and travelled with him and a specialist to a warehouse outside Paris to inspect the machines’ specifications and approve the purchase.

After technical approval, the servers were transferred to Frankfurt. Kia and the specialist travelled to Germany again so the equipment could be inspected once more before shipment to Dubai.

Kia says it was during this trip that he exposed the shipment.

“On that second trip, I gave information about the shipment to Germany’s Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control and to the German police and then returned to Iran.”

The servers were seized at Frankfurt airport and Salehi was temporarily detained. After the incident, there was no longer any reason for Atosa, which worked with the Iranian government, to continue operating, and on August 15, 2013, it declared bankruptcy.

Kia says Salehi’s financial behavior gave him a sufficient pretext to blame the exposure of the IBM shipment on Salehi’s suspicious spending.

“I said that after receiving the money, Salehi took part of it from Dubai to Germany, sold his house, bought a bigger house and renovated it — behavior that attracted the attention of the German authorities and probably caused them to put him under surveillance.”

But the trap Mossad had laid this time was bigger than anything the Islamic Republic had previously encountered.

“At the situation-assessment meeting, I said that during these trips and conversations with specialists, I had found information about a company in Poland that had exactly the two servers we wanted and was willing to sell them to us, but because it would deliver the shipment itself in Dubai, it wanted more money.”

The shipment was compromised by a Mossad front company in Warsaw. After an agreement was signed and the advance payment received, the servers were transferred to Dubai and Kia was contacted to take delivery and pay the remaining balance.

“Two Iran Data Processing experts travelled with me to Dubai and tested the servers. The experts said everything was fine. The specifications matched exactly what we had ordered.”

The servers, which had been physically hacked, ultimately reached Iran and, after being delivered to the Atomic Energy Organization, were installed at the Natanz nuclear facility. Iran International’s source insists that they transmitted information processed at the facility to Mossad.

Back to Taliya: this time at the heart of the network

The Taliya mobile operator was not a new name to Tehran Internet’s telephone-card and SIM-card distribution network.

Documents seen by Iran International show that in 2009 the company wrote to Tehran Internet and its manager Naderi thanking them for distributing Taliya cards across the country.

Six years later, Taliya’s name appears again in the documents in this case, this time in contracts for the purchase and servicing of network equipment and involving different parties.

A business that had begun by putting telephone cards into customers’ hands had now reached the point of supplying the equipment through which customers’ calls passed.

According to Kia, in the winter of 2013 Hossein Dehghan Poudeh, a former IRGC Aerospace Force commander and then-chairman of Taliya, invited him — now operating under the name Mahmoud Ghaem-Maghami — to his office to discuss modernizing Taliya.

The equipment had become outdated. European companies Siemens and Nokia, which had previously supplied it, were no longer willing to work with Iran because of sanctions. The equipment, which faced servicing and updating problems, repeatedly malfunctioned.

The new supplier would have to provide both equipment and after-sales service while also finding a way to make the new equipment compatible with the existing European systems.

That need presented Mossad with a new opportunity.

Having successfully tested a method for easily transferring compromised equipment into Iran in the IBM server deal, Mossad could this time not only supply compromised equipment but, under the pretext of making the systems compatible, legally send its own specialist agents into Iran to ensure access to Iranian telecommunications systems and intercept subscribers’ calls, messages and locations.

Mossad established a front company in Shanghai called I&T Chong Shang to sell the equipment through Kia and send a team to Iran to inspect the network.

Kia presented the proposal to Dehghan and secured his approval for the front company.

In a document seen by Iran International, the company wrote to Taliya on July 29, 2013, in a letter concerning a support agreement, stating that as Huawei’s representative it was responsible for providing full support to Mechatronic Mobin Argham in supplying equipment and services for the mobile-network core project.

The “core” is the central part of an operator’s network, managing functions such as subscriber identification, call establishment and connecting phones to the internet.

Meanwhile, another document seen by Iran International shows that equipment supply and project support were also being pursued through more than one route.

The genuine company UV Communication Technology wrote to Mechatronic Mobin Argham on July 18, 2013, proposing that ZTE equipment be used instead of Huawei for Taliya’s third-generation project and offering to provide project support.

Kia says a four-member Mossad team apparently arrived in Iran from China: two who appeared Chinese and two who appeared European.

They remained in Iran for a week and inspected Taliya’s technical facilities.

“I told Taliya’s managers that the two Europeans had come to inspect and coordinate Taliya’s European equipment, while the two Chinese were specialists in Chinese telecommunications equipment and were here to prepare a list of the Chinese equipment needed to develop and launch Taliya’s network.”

In return for accepting Mekatronic’s proposal, Dehghan demanded that the company provide Taliya with a 50-billion-toman performance guarantee.

According to Kia, after the team’s inspection, the Chinese company sent a list of the necessary equipment. When the first shipment reached Iran, Mechatronic announced that it was ready to begin work. Taliya subsequently said it was ready to begin installing new BTS towers.

But an unexpected event thwarted Israel’s plan this time.

After Mossad learned that its agent’s identity had been exposed, it urgently extracted him from Iran. With his departure, the person responsible for the contract was gone and, more importantly, security concerns emerged. Mekatronic’s contract with Taliya was cancelled in February that year.

Judicial documents show that in one case, at the request of Mechatronic Mobin Argham, Sarmayeh Bank issued a guarantee worth 11,258,380,000 tomans in Taliya’s favor. The guarantee was extended twice, until February 19 of that year, and its value was ultimately paid to the beneficiary on April 22, 2014.

Taliya eventually signed a contract with Skycom, a Hong Kong-registered company affiliated with China’s Huawei, which carried out the upgrading, installation and localization of switches and equipment for Taliya.

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I would like to thank my fellow journalists Sanaz Ghazizadeh and Diako Alavi, without whose help this report would not have been possible.