The National Security Agency spied on Iranian leaders meeting in New York City in 2007, and will likely do it again this week.
According to a top-secret report obtained by NBC News, the NSA bugged the hotel rooms and phones of then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his 143-member delegation when staying in New York City for the United Nations summit in 2007. The NSA will probably do it again this week, when foreign leaders like Iranian President Hassan Rouhani are in the city during this year’s U.N. General Assembly.
The report shows that teams of five or six analysts were on duty for 19 hours a day to peer into Iran’s communications, and monitor in-person conversations, Skype calls and video conferences.
A former intelligence analyst called it a “full court press.”
“At a general level, [the Iranians] have always felt such bugging would take place, but have probably been unaware of the scale of it,” said Banafsheh Keynoush, a San Francisco-based Middle East analyst who was Ahmadinejad’s official translator in New York. “I don’t believe personally that much intelligence that would make the Iranians uneasy could be gathered from these events, because the Iranians would likely mindfully not engage in secretive conversations while in the U.S.”
The news comes just weeks after Iran, the U.S. and five other world powers finally agreed to a deal to put limits on Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. Since the agreement was reached, Iran has thrown some jabs at the U.S. that it is done negotiating with it for a long time.
