Post by the Scribe on Apr 14, 2020 22:42:24 GMT
Shadow force: The secret history of the U.S. intelligence community's battle with Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Zach DorfmanContributor,Yahoo News•July 26, 2019
www.yahoo.com/news/shadow-force-the-secret-history-of-the-us-intelligence-communitys-battle-with-irans-revolutionary-guard-090000959.html
Yahoo News photo illustration; photos: AP, Getty Images
The hackers pretended to be professors, appealing to Achilles’ heel of academics: their egos. Posing as admiring colleagues from other universities, they emailed their targets, claiming they had enjoyed their articles and wanted to read more of their work. The emails contained links to articles the “professors” claimed they could not access.
Once the actual professors clicked on these links, they were redirected to what seemed to be the login page for their universities, making it appear they had somehow inadvertently signed out. But the login page was fake. And once the professors entered their usernames and passwords, the information was captured by the hackers, who then had free rein over their accounts.
This wasn’t the work of run-of-the-mill cybercriminals. In March 2018, federal prosecutors in New York unsealed a shocking indictment: nine Iranians, prosecutors said, working on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), had undertaken a “massive, coordinated” hacking campaign that targeted hundreds of universities across the globe, including 144 based in the United States, as well as private U.S. and European companies, U.S. federal agencies and state governments, and the United Nations.
From at least 2013, these IRGC-sponsored hackers tried to infiltrate about 50,000 academic email accounts in the United States, said prosecutors, and successfully compromised roughly 3,700 of them. The hackers allegedly stole $3.4 billion in intellectual property and academic data from U.S.-based universities alone in “one of the largest state-sponsored hacking campaigns ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice,” said Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, at a press conference announcing the charges.
Many countries have military and intelligence agencies that operate abroad, but few are as far-reaching or prolific as the Revolutionary Guard, which has been involved in everything from conducting espionage campaigns in Europe and the Americas to supporting proxy forces in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
There is “nothing analogous to the IRGC in the West,” said a former senior intelligence official. The Revolutionary Guard has its own army, navy, air force and militia; vast and lucrative business interests; and covert action capabilities — led by its Quds Force — that are a kind of “combination of the CIA and special forces.” But the Revolutionary Guard’s close, symbiotic relationship with Iran’s Supreme Leader is probably its most notable characteristic. “The IRGC’s primary focus is spreading and protecting the revolution,” said the same former senior official.
At the same time, over the past decade, and over two successive presidential administrations, U.S. officials have struggled with how to respond to a unique organization that is simultaneously a conventional military actor, covert action force, intelligence agency, ideological vanguard and sponsor and facilitator of terrorism.
The April decision by the Trump administration to designate the Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization — an unprecedented move against an arm of a government — sheds renewed light on a powerful institution that dominates Iran’s security apparatus and is regarded as a formidable regional threat in the Middle East. It also raises the question of whether that designation has merely emboldened the organization, a concern highlighted by the recent sabotage attacks on oil tankers passing through the Gulf of Oman and off the coast of the United Arab Emirates in May.
Trump administration officials blame the Revolutionary Guard for those attacks, though the regime has denied responsibility. But the guard has claimed responsibility for the recent shooting down of a U.S. drone that Iran claims entered its airspace, and for seizing a British-flagged oil tanker in the Persian Gulf on Sunday. (U.S. officials have said the drone was operating over international airspace.)
A protest in Tehran on April 12 against the U.S. decision to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. (Photo: Rouzbeh Fouladi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
In fact, the history of the U.S. government’s attempts to deal with the hydra-like IRGC has been one of frustration and setbacks that defy easy solutions. Fifteen former intelligence and national security officials interviewed by Yahoo News describe an organization that can operate aggressively and is willing to resort to acts of terrorism. Those interviews also reveal a variety of previously unreported operations, including details of the IRGC’s involvement in a notorious computer hack, surveillance operations on U.S. soil and even a convoluted U.S. plan to negotiate with Iranian agents to trade aircraft parts for a kidnapped CIA contractor.
While none claim to know the perfect strategy for dealing with the Revolutionary Guard’s aggressive operations, some of those former officials worry that the Trump administration's approach is an extreme one, and may itself catalyze increasing IRGC adventurism abroad — and with it, the risk of confrontation with American forces.
The FBI, CIA and Department of Defense declined to comment. The Iranian Mission to the United Nations also did not respond to requests for comment.
Dealing with the Revolutionary Guard was “complicated,” said Richard Nephew, an Iran director at the National Security Council from 2011 to 2013 who helped lead the Obama administration’s sanctions policy. “We looked at the IRGC as being a regional force that employed tactics that were both conventional and unconventional, including direct support for terrorism,” he said. “Simply to say they are a terrorist group — well, yes, one can say that. At the same time, though, they get a budget line that comes directly from the Iranian budget; they are seen as part of the security system of the country.”
But even if the Obama administration — and, before it, the George W. Bush administration — struggled with finding a way to deal with the IRGC, Nephew is critical of the idea that the Trump White House’s decision to designate it as a terrorist group will meet with any greater success.
“They are not a proxy group,” Nephew said. “You cannot simply say, ‘Cut them off.’”
Founded in the aftermath of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the IRGC was created by the country’s then ruler, Ayatollah Khomeini, to protect and fortify the young regime. With Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran’s oil fields in 1980 — setting off a bloody eight-year conflict that killed more than 1 million — Tehran’s post-revolutionary regime was thrust into almost immediate crisis, with the IRGC taking a lead role in repelling the invading Iraqis.
Members of the Revolutionary Guard in 1981, holding AK-47 assault rifles and pictures of the Islamic Republic's leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. (Photo: Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images)
The IRGC soon became the most formidable player in Iran’s security apparatus, and one of the regime’s key centers of power, operating in parallel to, and eventually dominating, Iran’s regular military forces. But the Revolutionary Guard is much more than just a military actor: Its covert action arm, the Quds Force, quickly fanned out across the wider Middle East, building relationships with Shiite militants and terrorists in the region. Most notably, the Quds Force helped create, equip and train Lebanese Hezbollah, which would bear responsibility for many of the worst acts of terror worldwide in the 1980s and 1990s and is arguably the most sophisticated terrorist organization in existence today.
more www.yahoo.com/news/shadow-force-the-secret-history-of-the-us-intelligence-communitys-battle-with-irans-revolutionary-guard-090000959.html
Zach DorfmanContributor,Yahoo News•July 26, 2019
www.yahoo.com/news/shadow-force-the-secret-history-of-the-us-intelligence-communitys-battle-with-irans-revolutionary-guard-090000959.html
Yahoo News photo illustration; photos: AP, Getty Images
The hackers pretended to be professors, appealing to Achilles’ heel of academics: their egos. Posing as admiring colleagues from other universities, they emailed their targets, claiming they had enjoyed their articles and wanted to read more of their work. The emails contained links to articles the “professors” claimed they could not access.
Once the actual professors clicked on these links, they were redirected to what seemed to be the login page for their universities, making it appear they had somehow inadvertently signed out. But the login page was fake. And once the professors entered their usernames and passwords, the information was captured by the hackers, who then had free rein over their accounts.
This wasn’t the work of run-of-the-mill cybercriminals. In March 2018, federal prosecutors in New York unsealed a shocking indictment: nine Iranians, prosecutors said, working on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), had undertaken a “massive, coordinated” hacking campaign that targeted hundreds of universities across the globe, including 144 based in the United States, as well as private U.S. and European companies, U.S. federal agencies and state governments, and the United Nations.
From at least 2013, these IRGC-sponsored hackers tried to infiltrate about 50,000 academic email accounts in the United States, said prosecutors, and successfully compromised roughly 3,700 of them. The hackers allegedly stole $3.4 billion in intellectual property and academic data from U.S.-based universities alone in “one of the largest state-sponsored hacking campaigns ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice,” said Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, at a press conference announcing the charges.
Many countries have military and intelligence agencies that operate abroad, but few are as far-reaching or prolific as the Revolutionary Guard, which has been involved in everything from conducting espionage campaigns in Europe and the Americas to supporting proxy forces in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
There is “nothing analogous to the IRGC in the West,” said a former senior intelligence official. The Revolutionary Guard has its own army, navy, air force and militia; vast and lucrative business interests; and covert action capabilities — led by its Quds Force — that are a kind of “combination of the CIA and special forces.” But the Revolutionary Guard’s close, symbiotic relationship with Iran’s Supreme Leader is probably its most notable characteristic. “The IRGC’s primary focus is spreading and protecting the revolution,” said the same former senior official.
At the same time, over the past decade, and over two successive presidential administrations, U.S. officials have struggled with how to respond to a unique organization that is simultaneously a conventional military actor, covert action force, intelligence agency, ideological vanguard and sponsor and facilitator of terrorism.
The April decision by the Trump administration to designate the Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization — an unprecedented move against an arm of a government — sheds renewed light on a powerful institution that dominates Iran’s security apparatus and is regarded as a formidable regional threat in the Middle East. It also raises the question of whether that designation has merely emboldened the organization, a concern highlighted by the recent sabotage attacks on oil tankers passing through the Gulf of Oman and off the coast of the United Arab Emirates in May.
Trump administration officials blame the Revolutionary Guard for those attacks, though the regime has denied responsibility. But the guard has claimed responsibility for the recent shooting down of a U.S. drone that Iran claims entered its airspace, and for seizing a British-flagged oil tanker in the Persian Gulf on Sunday. (U.S. officials have said the drone was operating over international airspace.)
A protest in Tehran on April 12 against the U.S. decision to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization. (Photo: Rouzbeh Fouladi/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
In fact, the history of the U.S. government’s attempts to deal with the hydra-like IRGC has been one of frustration and setbacks that defy easy solutions. Fifteen former intelligence and national security officials interviewed by Yahoo News describe an organization that can operate aggressively and is willing to resort to acts of terrorism. Those interviews also reveal a variety of previously unreported operations, including details of the IRGC’s involvement in a notorious computer hack, surveillance operations on U.S. soil and even a convoluted U.S. plan to negotiate with Iranian agents to trade aircraft parts for a kidnapped CIA contractor.
While none claim to know the perfect strategy for dealing with the Revolutionary Guard’s aggressive operations, some of those former officials worry that the Trump administration's approach is an extreme one, and may itself catalyze increasing IRGC adventurism abroad — and with it, the risk of confrontation with American forces.
The FBI, CIA and Department of Defense declined to comment. The Iranian Mission to the United Nations also did not respond to requests for comment.
Dealing with the Revolutionary Guard was “complicated,” said Richard Nephew, an Iran director at the National Security Council from 2011 to 2013 who helped lead the Obama administration’s sanctions policy. “We looked at the IRGC as being a regional force that employed tactics that were both conventional and unconventional, including direct support for terrorism,” he said. “Simply to say they are a terrorist group — well, yes, one can say that. At the same time, though, they get a budget line that comes directly from the Iranian budget; they are seen as part of the security system of the country.”
But even if the Obama administration — and, before it, the George W. Bush administration — struggled with finding a way to deal with the IRGC, Nephew is critical of the idea that the Trump White House’s decision to designate it as a terrorist group will meet with any greater success.
“They are not a proxy group,” Nephew said. “You cannot simply say, ‘Cut them off.’”
Founded in the aftermath of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the IRGC was created by the country’s then ruler, Ayatollah Khomeini, to protect and fortify the young regime. With Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran’s oil fields in 1980 — setting off a bloody eight-year conflict that killed more than 1 million — Tehran’s post-revolutionary regime was thrust into almost immediate crisis, with the IRGC taking a lead role in repelling the invading Iraqis.
Members of the Revolutionary Guard in 1981, holding AK-47 assault rifles and pictures of the Islamic Republic's leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. (Photo: Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images)
The IRGC soon became the most formidable player in Iran’s security apparatus, and one of the regime’s key centers of power, operating in parallel to, and eventually dominating, Iran’s regular military forces. But the Revolutionary Guard is much more than just a military actor: Its covert action arm, the Quds Force, quickly fanned out across the wider Middle East, building relationships with Shiite militants and terrorists in the region. Most notably, the Quds Force helped create, equip and train Lebanese Hezbollah, which would bear responsibility for many of the worst acts of terror worldwide in the 1980s and 1990s and is arguably the most sophisticated terrorist organization in existence today.
more www.yahoo.com/news/shadow-force-the-secret-history-of-the-us-intelligence-communitys-battle-with-irans-revolutionary-guard-090000959.html