Iran Opens File on US Spying on Imam Khamenei’s 2009 Visit to Kurdistan

The Iranian Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday that it will launch special investigations into a recent leak by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden about the US spying on the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei during his visit to the country’s western province of Kurdistan in 2009.
“The Islamic republic of Iran will specifically pursue this case of the US spying,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham told reporters during a weekly press conference here in Tehran today.

“Iran strongly condemns the wiretappings (done by the US), to which even the US allies have not been immune,” she added.

The New York Times on Sunday published new details on NSA documents obtained by Edward Snowden.

“In May 2009, analysts at the agency learned that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was to make a rare trip to Kurdistan Province in the country’s mountainous northwest. The agency immediately organized a high-tech espionage mission, part of a continuing project focused on Ayatollah Khamenei called Operation Dreadnought,” the report said.

“Working closely with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which handles satellite photography, as well as G.C.H.Q., the NSA team studied the Iranian leader’s entourage, its vehicles and its weaponry from satellites, and intercepted air traffic messages as planes and helicopters took off and landed.”

“They heard Ayatollah Khamenei’s aides fretting about finding a crane to load an ambulance and fire truck onto trucks for the journey. They listened as he addressed a crowd, segregated by gender, in a soccer field.

“They studied Iranian air defense radar stations and recorded the travelers’ rich communications trail, including Iranian satellite coordinates collected by an NSA program called Ghosthunter. The point was not so much to catch the Iranian leader’s words, but to gather the data for blanket eavesdropping on Iran in the event of a crisis.”

According to Snowden’s leaked documents, this ‘communications fingerprinting’, as a document called it, is the key to what the NSA does. It allows the agency’s computers to scan the stream of international communications and pluck out messages tied to the supreme leader. In a crisis — say, a showdown over Iran’s nuclear program — the ability to tap into the communications of leaders, generals and scientists might give a crucial advantage.