Sweden’s Security Service disclosed in its 2020 intelligence report that the Islamic Republic of Iran seeks Swedish technology for its nuclear weapons program, The Jerusalem Post can reveal.
Iran, China and Russia are Sweden’s biggest security threats, according to the report.
A damning section states that “Iran also conducts industrial espionage, which is mainly targeted against Swedish hi-tech industry and Swedish products, which can be used in nuclear weapons programs. Iran is investing heavy resources in this area and some of the resources are used in Sweden.”
The revelations about Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons procurement activities in Sweden comes on the heels of a German intelligence document, which declared last week that Iran’s regime has not ceased its drive to obtain weapons of mass destruction during 2020.
The Swedish and German intelligence documents might add new glitches to the US calculus to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name for the Iran nuclear deal.
The US is indirectly negotiating with Iran’s regime in Vienna about reentering the accord, which permits Iran’s regime, according to critics, to enrich uranium for an atomic weapon within ten years.
The German and Swedish intelligence findings establish that Iran’s regime still seeks a nuclear weapons program. The JCPOA is only a temporary restriction on the Islamic Republic’s drive to join the club of nations with atomic weapons, argue critics of the 2015 deal.
The Trump administration withdrew from the 2015 JCPOA in 2018 because, the US government said at that time, the atomic deal did not prevent Iran’s regime from developing a nuclear weapon.
“Several countries engage in various forms of espionage and security-threatening activities against Sweden. Russia, China and Iran make up the biggest threat,” wrote the Swedish Security Service (In Swedish: Säkerhetspolisen).
The intelligence report added that the regimes “aim to strengthen their country’s economic, political status and military superpower.”
The 88-page document said Tehran mainly conducts observation of Iranian refugees and dissidents who are viewed as a threat to the clerical regime and wages industrial espionage against Sweden.
Iran’s regime uses its intelligence apparatus to engage in espionage, targeting dissidents in Sweden and Swedish industry.
In the section titled “Iran,” the Swedish intelligence agency writes that the Iranian regime maps critics of the regime with respect to opposition groups in Sweden who are judged by the Islamic Republic to “destabilize” the clerical regime.
Iran’s regime seeks information from Swedish universities and colleges and there are efforts to recruit staff from Sweden’s research community.
The Post reported in 2012 that the Swedish government sought to block robust EU sanctions on Iran’s regime in order to protect a business deal between Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson and Tehran.
The then-Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who has long championed diplomacy over sanctions as the method to deal with totalitarian regimes like Iran and Syria, went to great lengths to prevent the EU from forcing Ericsson to pull the plug on its contracts with Syria’s regime, according to a report in another Israeli paper in 2012.
According to the paper, Israeli diplomats, citing their European diplomatic counterparts, questioned whether Bildt had “personal interests” in Iran that were impeding his capacity to move forward with sanctions.