The ring was led by a senior agent code-named Hamdi, an Iraqi of Iranian extraction who owned a shop in Baghdad’s Shurja souq, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
A network of indigenous operatives recruited by Hamdi collected information on the Iraqi economy and Iranian dissidents based in Iraq, which was passed on to MOIS officers based in the Iranian embassy in Baghdad.
One of these officers, Hossein Jomeh, oversees the embassy’s surveillance and intelligence collection on members of the Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin, based in a camp northeast of Baghdad.
Hamdi used his cover of being a merchant to travel frequently to the Islamic republic. MOIS officers also used Hamdi’s network as a conduit for handing out money to their Iraqi agents and smuggling sensitive materials to Iraq.
