On March 2, just days after the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran, Greek authorities arrested Samir G., a 35-year-old Georgian citizen, on suspicion of spying for Iranian intelligence at the Souda Bay naval base in Crete. The USS Gerald R. Ford had entered the bay on Feb. 6 and became heavily involved in operations against Iran.
Samir G. flew from Germany to Athens on Feb. 5 and immediately traveled to Crete, paying $20,000 in cash for a villa overlooking the bay. Greek intelligence documented him photographing the USS Gerald R. Ford. He spoke Persian in the villa and opened every conversation with the code phrase: “Ice cream in Crete is good.” Greek Vice Adm. Yannis Egolfopoulos told local media this was a professionally managed network activity directly connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Samir G. is a resident of Gardabani in Georgia’s Kvemo Kartli region. He studied at a Shia madrasa in Marneuli and spent two years deepening his religious education in Qom. Qom is the Iranian clerical hub where the Union of Georgian Students pipelines recruits from Georgia’s Shia community into Iranian regime networks.
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There is a serious problem here.
Indeed, a recent Hudson Institute report documented Tehran’s systematic expansion of influence inside Georgia, noting that it has become a recruiting ground for Iranian operations against the West. There is evidence for this claim: A U.S. federal court in New York convicted Georgian national Polad Omarov for his role in an IRGC plot to assassinate Iranian American journalist Masih Alinejad on American soil. In Azerbaijan, another Georgian national was arrested for an IRGC-linked plot to kill a local Jewish leader.
Iran did not gain this influence overnight. Instead, as the Hudson report notes, Tehran spends considerable resources boosting its influence among Georgia’s Muslim minority population. Georgia’s 2014 census recorded 233,024 ethnic Azerbaijanis, approximately 80% of them Shia Muslims. It seems that the investment has paid off for Tehran.
At its core of Iran’s influence operation in Georgia sits Al-Mustafa International University. Sanctioned by the U.S. as an IRGC-Quds Force intelligence enabler, the university operates three campuses across Gardabani, Marneuli, and Tbilisi. That’s just the start. The Ahl Al-Bayt World Assembly, founded under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s direct personal supervision, runs four madrasas, multiple charitable foundations, and youth organizations that pipeline Georgian students to Qom for clerical training. The report notes that pilgrimage participation grew from 200 Georgians in 2022 to 1,000 in 2025, with the IRGC using these trips for recruitment. Iran-linked charitable foundations move funds through opaque channels, pro-Iranian media outlets saturate the Azerbaijani-speaking population with anti-American content, and over 12,800 Iranian businesses are registered in Georgian territory. Imports from Iran reached a record $285 million in 2024.
The Georgian government claims it wants to be friends with the Trump administration, but its tolerance for this Iranian malfeasance suggests otherwise.
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze traveled to Iran twice in 2024, attending former President Ebrahim Raisi’s funeral alongside Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. He also attended Masoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration. When U.S. and Israeli strikes hit Iran in 2025, Georgia’s deputy foreign minister visited the Iranian Embassy to sign a condolence book. Following the 2026 war, the Georgian government again extended condolences to Iran, expressing grief over the death of the supreme leader. In February 2026, the Tbilisi TV Tower was lit with the colors of the Iranian flag to mark the Islamic Revolution’s anniversary as Iran’s government was killing citizens in the streets.
The economic picture is equally concerning. An investigation found that 72 companies registered in Georgia had imported Iranian oil and petroleum products between 2022 and 2025. Among them were companies linked to Georgian Dream donors, state tender winners, and public officials. Sadly, the Georgian government’s response to the mounting evidence of Iranian collusion has been to go after those shedding light on it. After the Hudson Institute published its findings, the prime minister described the co-author of the report, Giorgi Kandelaki, as a traitor and suggested even a legal response to him might not be appropriate.
Against this backdrop, American officials are visiting Tbilisi for what my sources describe as discussions around a potential review of the relationship. This is partly within the framework of the Trump administration’s TRIPP initiative for the South Caucasus. Washington wants to include Georgia in its regional strategy. Georgia was once America’s chief partner in the region, has access to the Black Sea, and could play a critical role in the renewed Silk Road. All of this makes sense. For more than a decade, however, the governing Georgian Dream party has paid only lip service to Western partners while working with American enemies. It has helped Moscow evade sanctions while signing a strategic partnership with Beijing. Washington’s willingness to overlook that ambiguity enabled it.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced a reckoning, and Tbilisi sided with the Kremlin, fomenting fear at home of war. When Georgians protested after the government told them it would not pursue European Union integration (synonymous to belonging to the West in the country), the government beat them, jailed opposition leaders, and dismantled pro-American civil society under legislation modeled on Russian law. Today, it keeps cracking down on freedom of expression and assembly. Now isolated and paying an electoral price for it in a society that overwhelmingly supports Western integration, the Georgian Dream wants to get back into Washington’s good graces without fundamentally reversing course on domestic or foreign fronts. Tbilisi is likely to try to engage in window dressing. But the Trump administration must ask itself what it’s getting in return.
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The Iranian infiltration documented here, layered on top of long-understood Russian influence, is the direct product of decisions Tbilisi made. Dismantling those networks would require Georgian Dream to dismantle the architecture that keeps it in power. The regime and the course it has chosen are inseparable. For that to change, the Georgian government would need a Road to Damascus moment. Instead of persecuting its pro-American opponents, it should go against actual enemies of Georgia and the U.S. That’s unlikely to happen.
The American bureaucracy does have a tendency of doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. Washington’s stronger bet, on both moral and pragmatic grounds, is to stand firmly behind those inside Georgia who remain America’s real partners.
