U.S.-Iran Nuclear Talks a Magnet for Spies

Bugs, wiretaps, hotel spies, code-breakers, secret agents will be dispatched to find out what the diplomats say in private.

If history and tradition hold, U.S. and Iranian spies will be hard at work trying to crack the secrets of the other side’s diplomatic strategies during the nuclear talks set to open Saturday in Oman.  

Each side’s espionage operations will range from efforts to bug meeting places and hotel rooms, to eavesdropping on diplomats’ phones, to piercing coded messages between delegates and their ministries back home, to bribing restaurant waiters to report on loose talk over dinner out in cosmopolitan Muscat, the capital.

Nobody should be surprised by that, said two knowledgeable former senior U.S. officials.

“This is standard operating procedure,” said one, a longtime veteran of Middle East intelligence operations, speaking on terms of anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject.  “And, you know, we do it with everybody,” he added.  

“I remember that we did this during the Panama Canal treaty negotiations,” he said. “We did it through a variety of Central America peace talks …We did it with the Russians all the time.”

Another former top intelligence official said the same, calling the talks “a spy versus spy kind of situation.”