NAIROBI, Kenya – When the Ethiopian intelligence agency recently discovered a cell of 15 people it said was investigating the UAE embassy, along with a cache of weapons and explosives, it claimed to have foiled a major attack with the potential to sow the chaos in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
But the Ethiopians omitted an important detail about the alleged plot: who was behind it.
The only clue was the arrest of a 16th person: accused of being the leader, Ahmed Ismail was arrested in Sweden with the cooperation of “African, Asian and European intelligence services”, said the Ethiopians.
Now, American and Israeli officials say the operation was the work of Iran, whose intelligence service activated a sleeping cell in Addis Ababa last fall with orders to collect intelligence also at the United States and Israeli embassies.
They say the operation in Ethiopia is part of a broader effort to pursue easy targets in African countries where Iran can avenge painful high-profile losses, such as the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, allegedly killed by Israel. in November. and General Qassim Suleimani, the Iranian spy master killed by the United States in Iraq just over a year ago.
Citing Western intelligence sources, Rear Admiral Heidi K. Berg, director of intelligence for the Pentagon command in Africa, said Iran was behind the 15 people arrested in Ethiopia and that the “mentor of this frustrated conspiracy”, Mr. Ismail, had been arrested in Sweden.
“Ethiopia and Sweden collaborated to stop the plot,” said Admiral Berg in a statement.
Iran has denied the charges. “These are baseless allegations only provoked by the malicious media of the Zionist regime,” said a spokeswoman for the Iranian Embassy in Addis Ababa. “Neither Ethiopia nor the Emirates said anything about Iranian interference in these matters.”
The United Arab Emirates angered Iran when it normalized relations with Israel in September as part of a series of deals brokered by the Trump administration in its final months and known as the Abraham Agreements.
A spokesman for the Ethiopian police, who quoted only two of the 15 people arrested, declined to say why Ethiopia did not nominate Iran for the conspiracy. Several diplomats said Ethiopia, as the diplomatic capital of Africa and the seat of the African Union, tries to avoid being publicly involved in sensitive issues involving major powers.
Even so, Ethiopia’s National Intelligence and Security Service said a second group of conspirators was preparing to attack the Emirate Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan. A Sudanese official confirmed this report.
A senior United States defense official linked the prisons in Ethiopia to a failed Iranian plan to kill the US ambassador to South Africa, reported by the politician in September. American and Sudanese authorities agreed to discuss the matter on condition of anonymity because of their diplomatic and intelligence sensitivity.
Still, much about Ethiopian prisons and Iran’s supposed role has remained unclear. Ethiopian police have not yet formally charged the 15 suspects in the plot, only two of whom have been identified. Israeli officials say that only three of them can be real Iranian agents, with the others having been caught in the Ethiopian network.
And the arrests in Ethiopia take place at a time of heightened political sensitivity in Iran and the United States, while the Biden government considers its stance on Tehran and the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran should be revived than President Donald J. Trump canceled in 2018.
To increase pressure on President Biden, Iran’s intelligence minister suggested last week that his country could try to obtain nuclear weapons if American sanctions were not lifted soon.
Although Admiral Berg confirmed several details about Iran’s role in prisons in Ethiopia, other military and diplomatic officials in Washington refused to discuss the matter.
In contrast, officials in Israel, whose government is openly hostile to any thaw between Washington and Tehran, highlighted the alleged plot as further evidence that Iran is unreliable.
Despite all its efforts, Iran has yet to deliver on its promises of revenge for its high-profile losses, as well as a missile attack on American forces in Iran in January 2020, days after the death of General Suleimani.
Any plan to target the United Arab Emirates, as suggested by prisons in Ethiopia, would be a curious choice, given its potential to undermine Biden’s alleged nuclear diplomacy with Iran, said Aaron David Miller, foreign policy expert at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Other analysts, however, said that the United Arab Emirates are at the top of Iran’s list of enemies and that the embassy in Ethiopia could be an indisputable target at a time when Ethiopia is distracted by a war raging in the Tigray region. since November.
“Africa is a relatively easy place to operate and Ethiopia is concerned with other issues,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who now works at the Brookings Institution.
The obscure episode looked set to become the latest in a series of cat and mouse episodes between Iranian and Israeli agents on African soil in recent years.
During the 1990s, Iran maintained close ties with Sudan under the autocratic ruler Omar Hassan al-Bashir and, in the following decade, managed to dock its warships in Eritrea.
Israel struck back in 2009 with air strikes against a convoy of smuggler trucks in Sudan to prevent weapons supplied by Iran from reaching the Gaza Strip, US officials said.
But Iran’s ties to the Horn of Africa have withered in recent years, and the involvement of Israelis and Emirates has increased.
The Emirates helped mediate a historic peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2018, and it is now Emirate warships that are docked in Eritrea’s ports.
In November, after a call between Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, a team of Israeli drone pilots arrived in Ethiopia to help eliminate the locusts that plague the country’s farmers.
Weeks later, Yossi Cohen, head of Mossad, Israel’s secret intelligence service, met with his Ethiopian counterpart to discuss what they called “counterterrorism operations”.
In other parts of Africa, Israeli intelligence officials say they often warn friendly countries about suspected Iranian activities.
In Kenya, two Iranians arrested in 2012 and charged with possession of 15 kilograms of explosives are now serving sentences of 15 years in prison. Kenyan officials said the men were members of the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran. Their lawyers said they were questioned by Israeli intelligence while in custody in Kenya.
Four years later, in 2016, Kenya deported two Iranians who had been arrested in front of the Israeli Embassy with video footage of the facility. Iran said the men, who were traveling in an Iranian diplomatic car, were university professors.
Iranian agents are suspected of attacking or preventing attacks in countries like Georgia, Thailand and India. On February 4, a Belgian court deprived an Iranian envoy of his diplomatic status and sentenced him to 20 years in prison for organizing a failed bomb attack on an Iranian opposition rally in France in 2018.
That failed plan and another in Denmark led the European Union in 2019 to impose sanctions on Iran’s external espionage service, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. Israeli officials say the same agency orchestrated the operation in Ethiopia.
Sofia Hellqvist, a spokeswoman for the Swedish Police Authority, referred questions about the arrest of Ismail, the alleged leader, to the Ethiopian authorities.
A United Arab Emirates spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Given the stakes, it was not clear why the Iranians were at risk of a rapprochement with the Biden government by setting up an operation now.
Farzin Nadimi, an Iranian armed forces expert at the Middle East Policy Institute in Washington, said Iran may want to send a message to Biden government officials that “unless they reach an agreement with Iran quickly, that’s it. they get: a dangerous neighborhood. “
Declan Walsh reported from Nairobi; Eric Schmitt of Washington; Simon Marks from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv. Rick Gladstone contributed reporting from New York.