Europe should counter Iran’s cyber espionage, infiltration, terrorism

Supporters of the Iranian opposition, National Council of Resistance (NCRI) hold a rally in front of the EU headquarters against the visit of Mohammad Javad Zarif the Foreign Minister of Iran in Brussels, Belgium, 15 May 2018. [Stephanie Lecocq/EPA/EFE]

The more discord persists in the West over the means of responding to Iranian covert operations, the more impact these operations will have, writes Alejo Vidal-Quadras.

Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a Spanish professor of atomic and nuclear physics, was vice-president of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014. He is currently the president of the Brussels-based International Committee In Search of Justice (ISJ).

Both Facebook and Twitter recently announced that they had removed hundreds of accounts in the wake of revelations from the cybersecurity FireEye, which identified them as being linked to coordinated disinformation campaigns that originated with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The closure of more than 652 Facebook pages and nearly 300 Twitter timelines appears to confirm that, whereas Iranian efforts to influence public opinion in the West were already well known, they were in fact much more large-scale than previously suspected.

The Iranian campaign was reportedly less sophisticated than its more widely publiciqed Russian counterpart, but it represents a steadily growing threat to the political integrity of the US and Europe, and perhaps also to the policy outcomes of those countries.

To whatever extent this or other Iranian infiltration efforts proves successful, those outcomes could pose risks to Western security, global stability, and both the lives and political prospects for those Iranian activists who are working to change their country into something that is no more a danger to the world and more in line with the interests and values of democratic nations.

This latter threat is evident from some of the specific topics that the newly-outed campaign had sought to address. The Daily Beast reported that some of the shuttered accounts had “targeted opponents of the Iranian government, including the Mujahedeen Khalq exile group, or MEK, which advocates the overthrow of Iran’s clerical government.”

It bears mentioning that the MEK, known in English as the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), is also recognised as a driving force behind the anti-government protests that have been springing up all across Iran over the past several months, ever since the outbreak of a nationwide uprising at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018.https://bit.ly/2LDLUjG