How MI6 and its Soviet spy unleashed Iran’s reign of terror

Today's Quizle Q: Test your knowledge I n 1981, Ian McCredie, a young MI6 officer operating undercover in post-revolutionary Iran, recruited a priceless double agent: senior KGB officer Vladimir Kuzichkin. MI6 gave him the codename “Redwood”. Disillusioned by the Soviet regime, Kuzichkin was suffering from erectile dysfunction. In a desperate attempt to save his marriage he had turned to MI6 and offered to spy for Britain, believing the West had medicines that could cure him. Over the course of year, operating in deadly secrecy, Redwood provided McCredie with a mass of high-grade intelligence. His most important and most alarming revelation was a potential Soviet plot to overthrow the Islamist regime of Ayatollah Khomeini and replace it with Iran’s communist Tudeh Party. Most commented 1 Argentina calls for Hong Kong-style handover of Falklands Latin America 1,367 comments 2 Drone hits Ukraine’s ⁠SBU security service headquarters in central Kyiv Russia-Ukraine war 21 comments 3 US says Labour’s plan to boost BBC on social media is censorship US news 128 comments 4 Flavio Briatore makes McLaren bias claim after Pierre Gasly loses podium Formula 1 33 comments 5 The Times Saturday Quiz: September 5, 2026 Quizzes & Teasers 272 comments Kuzichkin described in detail what he called the Trojan horse in Iran: a communist underground military network with caches of weapons, money, a disciplined party organisation, a KGB sabotage plan and the strong support of the Central Committee in Moscow. McCredie warned MI6 that a second Iranian revolution was brewing, this time a communist coup backed by the USSR. At any moment, like Odysseus’s Greek warriors hidden inside the wooden horse within the walls of Troy, the communists could emerge and take over. Such a move would leave the Soviets in control of Iran’s oilfields and the Strait of Hormuz , the Cold War nightmare long feared by western intelligence services. Top stories 1 Top five 2027 cruise and tour packages to book with Times Holidays Promoted content But it could be averted. The threat could be stymied by going on the offensive with a bold operation that might stop the Iranian communists in their tracks, undermine the KGB and improve relations with the ayatollah’s regime, all at the same time. The plan would need American support. A Tudeh poster, circa 1979 UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP In the summer of 1982 Chris Curwen, MI6’s director of counter-intelligence and security (DCIS) and future chief of the service, flew to Washington for a private chat with CIA chief Bill Casey. His arrival coincided with a stark CIA warning: “We believe the Soviets are developing new strategic concepts for a military campaign in the Persian Gulf region … a Soviet conquest of all the country including the western part would take nine to fourteen weeks.” Advertisement Curwen outlined an operation that was daring, dangerous and would require absolute secrecy. Top stories 1 Would you wear a ‘personality coat’? India Knight road-tests the trend Fashion 2 The Times and Sunday Times Travel Awards 2026: vote to win £34,500 worth of prizes Inspiration 3 I’m a Bangkok regular and this is my favourite neighbourhood Bangkok 4 Forget rest and relaxation — high-stress holidays are all the rage Comment 5 The up-and-coming wine region you’ve likely never heard of Denmark MI6 and the CIA should jointly pass everything to the Iranians: the name of every Tudeh leader, every informant inside the government, every member of the military underground, every KGB officer and spy in Iran. A clandestine meeting should be arranged with Iranian intelligence officials where Kuzichkin would present the evidence in person. Vladimir Kuzichkin and his MI6 handler Ian McCredie, right COURTESY OF IAN MCCREDIE If successful, the plan could permanently thwart Soviet ambitions in Iran. Sharing such vital intelligence would be “a gesture of goodwill” to the ayatollah. It would show that the West was prepared to make common cause with the forces of Islam against the Soviets, as in Afghanistan. This was the kind of high-stakes gamble Casey relished. The operation would be run “off books”. The meeting must be conducted somewhere Kuzichkin, his handlers and Iranian intelligence officials could gather in absolute secrecy. That place was Islamabad. According to MI6, the plan to send Kuzichkin to Pakistan to brief Iranian intelligence was approved at the “highest levels of government” in the UK. Francis Pym, the foreign secretary, signed off on it. “The Foreign Office was enthusiastic and the Americans were the prime movers,” said the head of MI6’s Soviet bloc desk. Pym passed the submission up to Margaret Thatcher, with a note in the margin requesting the prime minister’s approval. On the morning of September 22, four men took their seats in the first-class cabin of a BA flight to Islamabad. MI6 officer Andrew Bright sat behind Kuzichkin, with “a blond, innocent-looking young man” alongside him: an SAS bodyguard granted special permission to bring a handgun on board. In the hold were two trunks full of documents, the complete Redwood files. Advertisement The Iranian delegation was waiting in a conference room at the headquarters of ISI, Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s formidable military intelligence service. Expressionless, they shook hands with Kuzichkin and the MI6 team. These senior officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) wore jackets with no ties, shirts untucked, in the approved revolutionary style. Uniformed Pakistani soldiers unpacked the trunks and laid out the Redwood files. “The Iranians were a disobliging group, taciturn and unsmiling, who took careful note of everything,” wrote one of the MI6 officers. Occasionally the Iranians interrupted to ask for clarification. They made no comment. They expressed no surprise, no gratitude. Only when Kuzichkin reached the subject of the Tudeh, and the KGB’s role in financing, arming and encouraging the communists, did the MI6 officers detect a shift in the body language of the Iranians, a new alertness. Kuzichkin described the Tudeh leaders, the underground military network, the couriers, the tradecraft of their meetings, the money trail, the responses and exhortations from the Central Committee, the personal oversight exercised by the International Department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the insistence that the Tudeh be run by the KGB. The Iranians conferred, sotto voce , before coming back with questions. Was a coup imminent? Where were the arms caches? How many armed men could the Tudeh muster, and with what weaponry? What, precisely, would a Soviet invasion in support of the Tudeh involve? The interviews continued for two days. At mid-morning on the third, the Iranians suddenly stood simultaneously, shook hands stiffly and departed. The Redwood haul triggered a debate among the different branches of Iranian intelligence and in the upper reaches of the revolutionary government. The IRGC favoured an immediate assault on the Tudeh, the arrest of its leaders for “treachery and espionage” and the dismantling of the communist underground network. A Soviet-backed coup could be launched at any moment. The revolution itself was at stake. The godless communists must be destroyed at once, and the KGB expelled. That view was shared by the president, Ali Khamenei . Advertisement Ali Khamenei in 1986. He would later become supreme leader KAVEH KAZEMI/GETTY IMAGES Others argued it would be better to watch, wait, keep the Tudeh under surveillance and attack when the moment was ripe. Yet the evidence of secret KGB–Tudeh collaboration was overwhelming, the information from Islamabad too voluminous and comprehensive to be ignored. There was general agreement across the Iranian intelligence community that the communists must be crushed; the question was when, how and how completely. Only the supreme leader could rule on a matter of such importance. On October 1, a meeting was held in Khomeini’s home. “You must take this matter seriously,” the ayatollah declared. The IRGC government was not an organisation known for its patience. On February 6, 1983, armed with Kuzichkin’s list of Iranian communist party leaders, members and contacts, they attacked. In the space of a few hours, 200 Tudeh party organisers were arrested, including 30 members of the Central Committee, and thrown into Towhid prison, known as Detention Centre 3000, a hellhole behind the ministry of foreign affairs. A Revolutionary Guard commander, Ali Shamkhani, an Iranian of Arab descent who had been partly raised in Los Angeles, was assigned to oversee interrogations. The torture began the next day. Having extracted confessions, the IRGC fanned out, arresting every Tudeh official, every party member, raiding every known address, cover business and meeting place, including the party headquarters. It knew exactly where to find the main conspirators: gathered at the safe houses, they were easy prey. On April 27, President Ali Khamenei triumphantly announced “the arrest of members of the Tudeh Party’s secret organisation and many of their key personnel”. The Iranian communist movement was torn up by its roots. Ayatollah Khomeini might have medieval attitudes, but he recognised compelling modern television when he saw it: he ordered that the broken conspirators confess on live television. The IRGC duly set about producing and filming one of the nastiest television shows ever screened. The Tudeh Party was abolished. Party members were ordered to surrender to the authorities. Hundreds turned themselves in. Lynch mobs dragged suspected communists from their homes and administered summary justice. The exact Tudeh death toll may never be known. The executioners were not counting. At least 6,000 and perhaps as many as 10,000 party members were arrested and imprisoned. A first wave of executions was followed by another, far wider, in 1988, in which somewhere between 4,000 and 12,000 people perished. Advertisement Khomeini issued a statement praising the Revolutionary Guard and security forces for “ridding Iran of the mottled snake”. Eighteen Soviet diplomatic personnel, mostly Kuzichkin’s fellow KGB officers, were declared persona non grata , accused of interfering in the internal affairs of Iran and kicked out of the country. Ali Khamenei and Ayatollah Khomeini, 1986 The Tudeh had been the last major opposition party left standing in Iran, and its elimination became central to the founding mythology of the modern Iranian state. Forty years later, the destruction of Iranian communism is still celebrated as a national triumph, the moment when the forces of righteous religion overcame the Marxist atheists once and for all. The role of western intelligence in bringing this about was carefully expunged from Iranian history. Sharing Redwood’s intelligence with Iran, it seemed, had produced exactly the result Casey and Curwen were hoping for: wrecking Iranian communism, confounding the KGB and averting a coup that could have skewed the course of the Cold War. How long can Iran withstand economic siege by the US? But, as the scale of the bloodletting became apparent, a queasiness set in. The brutality of the ayatollah’s anti-communist purge took many by surprise. MI6 and the CIA had expected a few heads to roll, a handful of arrests, pressure on the party. But show trials, televised confessions, lynch mobs, mass arrests and executions had not formed part of the calculation. Andrew Bright, the MI6 officer who accompanied Kuzichkin to Islamabad, was dismayed by the carnage they had unleashed. “I wished we had not done it,” he wrote. “The fate of those betrayed to the Iranians remains the only episode in my career about which, in retrospect, I remain troubled.” Advertisement MI6 and the CIA had expected to open a friendly back channel to Tehran by sharing intelligence. This aspect of the plan failed entirely. Gradually it dawned on western analysts that removing the last bastion of opposition in Iran had actually bolstered the regime’s strength. The KGB–Tudeh conspiracy gave the authorities a rationale for destroying all internal opposition. The eradication of the Tudeh made the ayatollah stronger, helping to reinforce a totalitarian religious dictatorship that has terrorised its people and destabilised the world ever since. ATTA KENARE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES The Redwood story can be read in sharply contrasting ways, as triumph or disaster. The recruitment, management and exfiltration of Kuzichkin was a superb example of successful agent-running. The information-sharing in Islamabad neutralised communism in Iran, averted a possible coup, opened a diplomatic chasm between Tehran and