British Universities Help IRGC Develop Drones
Scientists at some of Britain's top universities helped Iran develop drones and fighter jets in spite of sanctions against the regime.
Scientists at some of Britain's top universities helped Iran develop drones and fighter jets in spite of sanctions against the regime.
The revelations were revealed in the UK's Jewish Chronicle newspaper, sparking outrage among lawmakers.
A government spokesperson said Britain would not "accept collaborations which compromise our national security" while David Lammy, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said the investigation by the JC was "deeply troubling" and called for an urgent investigation into sanctions violations.
Meanwhile, Alicia Kearns MP, chair of the Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs said: “This is a horrifying collaboration, one that I fear risks breaching sanctions in place around sensitive and dual-use technologies.”
At least 11 British universities are involved, including Cambridge University and Imperial College London, whose staff are producing at least 16 studies that could be used by Iranian military forces.
In addition to its ban on military and "dual-use" technologies being exported to Iran, the UK has recently imposed new sanctions against Iranians supplying Russia with kamikaze drones that are being used in Ukraine.
According to the Jewish Chronicle, Tehran funded researchers in Britain working on improving drone engines in a project that boosted altitude, speed, and range.
Another British university partnered with Iranian counterparts to test sophisticated new control systems for jet engines, aimed at improving their "maneuverability and response time".
A number of MPs have requested details about how the research, including projects which could boost the technology being sold to Russia in its war in Ukraine, was conducted under the nose of the government's supposedly tough sanctions regime.
The device was showcased as “the first product of the quantum processing algorithm” on the sidelines of a meeting on "Quantum Processing" at the Navy’s Imam Khomeini Maritime University in Noshahr, in the northern province of Mazandaran last week.
Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, the Coordinating Deputy of the Islamic Republic’s Army and the former Commander of the Navy, officially unveiled the device after he delivered a speech about the country’s advances in modern technologies.
Describing quantum and plasma technologies as the leading fields in future wars, he said, “In order to deal with future threats, it is necessary to pay attention to new and ground-breaking technologies.”
The controversy ensued after people started publishing photos of the exact processing board, which apparently is a low-cost development board by US-based hardware and software company Digilent, that has been in the market for about $600. The name of the brand and the model (ZedBoard Zynq-7000 ARM/FPGA SoC Development Board) is clearly seen on the board that was advertised as the achievement of the Army.
In the description of the device, state media said it is “a system to counter navigation deception in detecting surface vessels using the quantum algorithms.” There is in fact no quantum component, such as a quantum circuit or processor, in the device. Therefore, if the device does not have such a processor, it cannot use an esoteric quantum algorithm, a step-by-step procedure, where each step can be performed on a quantum computer.
A few days after the ceremony, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said, “In the era of artificial intelligence, quantum, and the Internet, it is not possible to work with the same tools as 40 years ago. The tools must be relevant to the times.”
Ali Akbar Salehi, the former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), repeatedly talked about developments in Iran’s quantum technology sphere and also inaugurated Iran’s first large laboratory dedicated to quantum physics in 2021. “The Atomic Energy Organization began work on quantum technology in 2016 and it is responsible for monitoring scientific developments throughout the world and prioritizing high tech technologies”, he said, but almost no tangible results were announced by the lab.
Using modern technology terminology has always been a propaganda tactic by the Islamic Republic’s officials, the latest of which was Iran’s so-called “hypersonic missile,” a descriptor that is convoluted with technical inaccuracies – to say the least.
Famously, in April 2020, soon after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed it had developed a "breakthrough" super-device that could detect people infected with coronavirus within 100 meters. IRGC Commander-in-chief Hossein Salami unveiled the device, which consisted of a handheld detector, an antenna, and a dish-like part that could detect the virus “with a reliability rate of around 80 percent” and promised its mass production.
Such claims are predominantly seen in military contexts in Iran but they have also become a laughing stock since President Ebrahim Raisi took office. He is known to have only elementary school education apart from Islamic seminary courses.
Earlier in the year, a university professor’s uninformed claim that the Python software program can 'predict the future' has caused new embarrassment for the government in Iran, in a scandal that was named ‘Python-Gate.’
Reactions to Former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif's five-hour appearance in a chatroom on Club House June 6, and the statements he made about the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal, relations with the United States, as well as Russia’s and China's role in Iran's foreign policy and a few domestic political issues have given way to varying interpretations of why he chose to speak and the timing of his move.
Among many of his points, Zarif insisted that former President Donald Trump had invited him to the White House but superiors in Tehran had not allowed him to go.
On social media, the move has been interpreted as a kickstart in Iranian reformist's campaign for the March 2024 parliamentary and 2025 presidential elections. However, most social media users who commented on Zarif's move have said that he is a front for former Presidents Mohammad Khatami or Hassan Rouhani.
Iranian political analyst Mehdi Mahdavi Azad told Iran International TV that "It is unlikely Zarif would run in any elections, and it is even more unlikely that he would be allowed to run for a key elected position." He added that unlike his previous interviews, Zarif repeatedly blamed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for Iran's foreign policy failures particularly in the nuclear issue.
A moderate-conservative newspaper in Tehran issued a call Thursday as a sign of support for the former foreign minister to have Zarif publicly debate hardliners on the nuclear issue and foreign policy.
Political analyst Kambiz Ghafouri wrote in a tweet that Zarif is an obsolete political figure both inside Iran and on the international scene. Ghafouri opined that Zarif's renewed appearance in politics will inevitably be in a comical form.
Meanwhile fact-cheking organization Fact Nameh highlighted ten false statements Zarif made during his Club House appearance. These included his assessment of Saudi Arabia's military budget being seven times higher than what Iran spends on its military. Another one of his false statements was that there are no non-elected permanent positions in the Iranian government.
Former lawmaker Ezzatollah Yousefian-Molla told reporters in Tehran that Zarif is his own man and that he is not acting as a front for anyone else. He said: "Zarif believes himself to be as big as, if not bigger than all other politicians in Tehran."
Yousefian-Molla said with a high degree of certainty that Zarif wishes to take run in the next presidential election and wishes to send a message to potential voters that he has done nothing wrong during his tenure as foreign minister.
Nonetheless, what Zarif said was controversial and he might be pushed to explain some matters to clear himself of accusations that will come from hardliners, Yousefian-Molla argued.
The first attack on Zarif came quickly and from nowhere other than the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard’s mouthpiece Javan newspaper.
In a strongly-worded commentary Wednesday morning, Javan newspaper characterized Zarif's move as a media controversy aimed at defending his performance as the former Foreign Minister. Javan wrote that "What Zarif did was playing with words, an attempt that will get him to nowhere." The daily further accused Zarif of "ridiculing the ideas of faithfulness, hope and idealism, and the philosophy of resistance."
Javan charged that some of Zarif's allies are now in jail on charges of embezzlement or have been hanged for espionage. The daily further asked how Zarif expected to get results from negotiating with the United States while he believed that "The United States can destroy all of our military capability with only one bomb?" Javan was referring to a remark Zarif had made in the distant past.
The IRGC's newspaper also accused Zarif of letting down the nation and leaving them in shallow waters in the hands of those who could hunt them down. The daily advised Zarif not to be "modest in front of the enemy and arrogant in front of the Iranian nation."
