Tudeh Party of Iran

The KGB is broadly in the ascendant.

It is in close communication with the Iranian Communist Party, and that is something we'll, we'll come onto.

So everything is really up for grabs, and the Ayatollah is still trying to establish full control over the country.

And as you sort of already hinted, these alliances are quite different, and the sort of vectors of allegiance, sort of if you like, are quite different from how they are today.

I mean, they also seem rather extraordinary characters.

They are.

I mean, the Iranian Communist Party, the Tudeh Party, the Party of the Masses, uh, is what that means in Farsi, was a long-established, very powerful, very well-organized Communist Party backed by the Soviet Union.

It was founded during the war, in fact, in nineteen forty-one.

So he was incredibly useful.

He was also able to explain that the Soviet Union was backing the Communist Party, the Iranian Communist Party, then still pretty powerful, growing, um, tolerated by the Ayatollah's regime at this point.

And what Kuzichkin revealed was hair-raising because he was able to tell McCreedy, the k- MI6 officer, not only were the Soviets growing in power in, in Iran, they were actually planning and had, you know, a blueprint for a coup, that they, they were seriously plotting to set up the Iranian Communist Party, i- uh, in an armed insurrection, overthrow the Ayatollah's fledgling government, and then get backing from the Red Army, which would then roll across the border.

Now, for the West, this was the nightmare scenario because if Iran fell to the Soviet Union, Moscow would have control of the warm water ports, the Strait of Hormuz, and the oil fields.

The Soviet Union would win the Cold War.

They've, they've just invaded Afghanistan.

It seems highly possible that they will, the next stage will be Iran.

And you've got people in the central committee in Moscow who are dead keen on this operation, you know, the, the, the backing the Iranian Communist Party, perhaps 30,000 members, heavily armed.

A Soviet double agent working for the KGB after the Iranian Revolution.

He was in Tehran, and he knew that the Soviets were working with the Iranian Communist Party, the Tudeh Party, to overthrow the fledgling Ayatollah's regime in 1981 in a plot that, if successful, would have almost certainly resulted in Soviet forces moving into Iran to support this new communist government as they had in Afghanistan, which in turn was a nightmare scenario for the Americans and a contingency for which they were planning to deploy nuclear weapons.

This is the story of how this spy cracked open the KGB for British intelligence, risking everything, and in doing so, changed the course of history.

Now, what makes this even more extraordinary is his reason for doing so, a deeply personal reason that had consequences far beyond himself.

They played a very careful game, the Soviets, of trying to curry favor with the new regime.

And the communists at this point, the Communist Party in Iran, was still tolerated by the Ayatollah.

They were allowed to operate openly, the Tudeh Party.

They were quite powerful still at this point, and that, again, is a critical part of this story.

These are, you know, some of them torturers and killers.

And one of his main jobs, I guess, is to build up contacts and presumably run assets inside the Iranian Communist Party, Tudeh.

Talk a little bit about that, 'cause I think, you know, in, in sort of the sweep of the revolution, we, we lose sight, to your earlier point, that there actually was a sort of underground Marxist opposition to the Shah.

There is, and it's, there was, and it's, and it's very fragmented.

Um, and the Soviets are trying to work out which horse to back.

Um, some of the Marxist groups are so wild and, and kind of uncontrollable, but they're pretty heavily armed, a lot of them.

But the key focus for the Soviet Union was the Tudeh party, which is the, which is the, the formal Communist Party of Iran.

Long and distinguished history, had been kicked out by the Shah.

And that is when our spy comes into it.

Because not only is this a fear in the West, there is actually a plot afoot to set up the Iranian Communist Party, the two-day party, in a coup to take over from the mullahs to establish a communist government and to send the red army in to back it up which was of course exactly what had happened in afghanistan this was on the drawing board and our spy agent redwood was the linchpin of the whole thing

Right.

So those are the stakes.

which was then being sent back to Britain in the diplomatic bag.

There was so much stuff coming into MI6 that at times the Soviet desk was almost completely overwhelmed by the amount of material they were getting.

But the most important thing, the absolutely critical thing that Kuzichkin revealed was this looming plot by the Soviet Union to take over Iran, to set up the two-day party, the Iranian Communist Party.

Then, as you say, Marcel, pretty powerful in Iran still.

He was very well established.

And he led, he wasn't a communist, but he had close affinities with the Tudeh Party, the Communist Party.

And this was right at the height of the Cold War.

And the Soviet Union was paying the Iranian Communist Party and its affiliates to overthrow it.

And he knew the area pretty well.

And he organized a resistance movement to Mossadegh to help protect the British investment.

And what was the American interest? To stop the Tudeh Party and Mossadegh, who was a democratic, we would call him a democratic socialist.

And they helped stage, they were trying to stage a coup.

Rep number 10004.

Even the Tudeh party that was, as we know, it was the Marxist, it was the Marxist-Leninist party that participated heavily in the Iranian Revolution.

After the, um, obviously, when the protests began and then it became hijacked, and then the war in Iran initiated, uh, the illegal war by Israel and the United States, even the Tudeh Party, who was expelled, uh, most of their leaders were expelled-

Mm

... and killed, uh, following the revolution by the Islamic leadership, they even stood by Iran and the sanctity, sanctity of Iran's sovereignty and, and their war against imperialism.