Behind the thriller of radio broadcasts in Persian, the return of an previous spy method | EUROtoday

It is a male, nearly robotic voice that begins every of its radio transmissions by repeating “Attention” in Persian thrice in a row. Then comes a collection of numbers… typically for over an hour. It’s the identical chorus, nearly day by day – besides that the figures change – for the reason that first day of the Israeli-American offensive towards Iran, February 28.

“It’s twice a day, at a fixed time, on a short radio frequency. It’s extremely intriguing because it’s been a very long time since there has been what looks like a new ‘numbers station’, and it’s not something we expect to discover in 2026”, assures Maris Goldmanis, the administrator of the “numbers-stations” web site, and a connoisseur of those technique of communication which date again to the Cold War.

Remnant of the Cold War

“Number stations” had been broadly utilized by intelligence providers such because the CIA or the KGB to ship coded messages by radio to their brokers in enemy territory. They had been immortalized in American popular culture by the collection The Americans which tells the day by day lifetime of Soviet sleeper brokers put in within the United States.

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“It’s a one-way means of communication used to send messages to a small number of rather large agents,” explains Tony Ingesson, an intelligence specialist at Lund University in Sweden and writer of a examine on “stations of numbers”. Each agent is meant to have a time slot and its personal decryption key to decode the sequence of digits and numbers broadcast.

With the tip of the Cold War, and the evolution of technique of communication, these “number stations” started to collect mud and be filed away within the folklore of the CIA-KGB conflict.

However, no less than 28 are nonetheless thought of lively, that means they ship coded messages on occasion. “The Russians still seem to use it, the Cubans too. There is also one which broadcasts from Poland which I have often listened to and the Taiwanese also seem to use it,” explains Tony Ingesson.

Jamming try

But seeing a brand new one seem on the very second when a serious battle erupts marks the unbelievable encounter between the world of espionage of yesteryear and trendy conflict. Enough to excite the small world of aficionados of those “number stations” who get misplaced in conjectures. Who operates it? Where does V32 emit – the title given to it – and what for?

“Initially, we wondered whether this was an operation against the regime in place in Iran or a ‘station of numbers’ operated by the Iranian authorities to put their agents infiltrated in the West on alert to, potentially, prepare them to commit terrorist attacks,” summarizes Aviva Guttmann, specialist in intelligence providers on the University of Aberystwyth (Wales).

But shortly after its debut, V32 underwent a jamming operation by an actor utilizing the identical methods that allowed Iran to dam the published of different radio stations, reminiscent of Radio Farda in 2018.

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In different phrases, this “station of numbers” didn’t please the Iranian authorities. “They probably believe that this is a way for a foreign intelligence service to get in touch with opponents in Iran. By jamming the signal, the authorities probably want to indicate that they are aware of what is going on,” explains Aviva Guttmann.

It was undoubtedly not an try and completely silence these broadcasts as a result of “number stations are known to be particularly difficult to block”, underlines Maris Goldmanis. A couple of days later, V32, actually, reappeared on one other frequency.

The resilience of this implies of communication most likely explains partly why it made its reappearance because of this conflict. “The Internet no longer works in Iran and other means of communication are monitored or can be intercepted. In this context, it is a suitable emergency solution”, judges Maris Goldmanis.

Intox or essential coded messages?

“It would not be the first time that intelligence services have reverted to old technologies to overcome the limitations of new ones. Thus, Russian intelligence services are once again resorting to the typewriter, simply to avoid computer hacking,” explains Aviva Guttmann.

Another benefit of “number stations” is that the agent to whom the message is meant “does not have to carry compromising material with him. All he needs is a radio, slightly modified but which resembles a traditional radio”, underlines Tony Ingesson. In nowadays of smartphones and computer systems that report all communications, this generally is a assure of safety for the undercover spy.

Impossible, in any case, to know who opened the previous junk cabinet. Geographically, “triangulation techniques seem to indicate that the signal would come from Western Europe, somewhere between Switzerland, Italy and Germany or in Cyprus”, notes Maris Goldmanis who specifies, nonetheless, that these are conclusions to be taken with a pinch of salt.

The intelligence service of one of many belligerents – the CIA for the United States or the Mossad for Israel – can use European installations for this sort of mission, consider the specialists interviewed. But what in regards to the host nation? “The longer this number station transmits, the more likely it will be that there will be tacit agreement from the authorities of the country from which the signal is transmitted,” assures Aviva Guttmann.

According to the professional, V32 may additionally very nicely represent an enormous misinformation from the American or Israeli providers. Perhaps in actuality, she is broadcasting in a vacuum however that the CIA or the Mossad “want to believe that they are activating their infiltrated agents in Iran in order to add an extra worry to the authorities in the hope of creating a sort of panic”, she explains.

But if that is actually the good return of “number stations”, these numbers that everybody can hearken to on quick waves most likely characterize, in line with the specialists interviewed, “essential information such as the location of safe hideouts or to transmit mission orders”.