Iran Is Increasing Its Military and Cyber Activity, Report Says

Photo Veterok/Shutterstock.com

After a big drop in April, Iran’s conventional military activity is up. Cyber operations never slowed down.

Few countries were hit as hard by the COVID-19 pandemic as Iran, which has seen more than 114,000 confirmed cases. But in recent weeks, open-source intelligence gleaned from Persian- and Arabic-language sources, as well as commercially available location data from mobile devices, suggests that Iranian military activity did not drop off as severely as civilian activity, according to data analytics company Babel Street. Both types of activity picked back up in May, and Iran’s support for offensive cyber operations and proxy forces in Yemen and Iraq didn’t show any signs of waning at all.

Babel Street’s analysis drew on commercial telemetry data, or CTD, gleaned from things like apps that collect users’ locations. They compared the data year-on-year in March, April, and May at facilities in Bushehr and the Strait-of-Hormuz port of Bandar Abbas, including air bases, naval bases, and the Bushehr nuclear facility. 

In a report released Thursday and obtained exclusively by Defense One, they found that civilian activity dropped more than 90% during parts of March and April, as measured from data collected at the Tehran Grand Bazaar and elsewhere. Military activity dropped 30% to 50% compared to last year.

“Unlike the example from Tehran Grand Bazaar, activity never appears to have fallen below 25% of 2019 levels, even during peak [COVID-19] countermeasures from 20 March to 17 April,” they write. 

Activity rose in the two weeks preceding May 11, they say. 

That April drop will likely affect Iran’s military readiness, said Mark R. Quantock, a retired Army major general who is Babel Street’s executive vice president for strategic accounts.

“Any time you reduce significantly military activity, you’re going to have an atrophy of capability...In terms of flight hours, for example, if you don’t have pilots up, consistently, those skills do in fact atrophy,” Quantock said. “I think the thing to watch is…how much longer do these activity levels stay suppressed and then continue to adversely impact—from an Iranian perspective—on their readiness in terms of training and operations.” 

The virus hasn’t hurt Iran’s asymmetric capabilities, including offensive cyber-operations aimed at regional and Western adversaries, or reduced its support for proxy forces in Yemen and Iraq, the report said. 

Iran’s focus on arming, funding, and inciting proxy forces and conducting cyber attacks allows the regime to pursue specific objectives while protecting the military from detection and from the coronavirus. “Iran’s model for regional influence is tailor-made for a pandemic,” said McDaniel Wicker, Babel Street’s vice president of business development. “We’ve seen increases in cyber activity by [Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps] linked accounts both in Arabic and in Persian, working to get out their messaging, to push some of their proxies toward violence in Iraq.”

The report is based on social media platforms, blogs, web forums, message boards, and other sources in Arabic, Persian, and other languages. 

Reuters last week reported Iranian cyber activity aimed at drugmaker Gilead, which is working on a therapeutic for COVID-19. 

Quantock and Wicker emphasize that CTD data is best understood in the context of other data, both open source, like blogs and news sites, as well as classified or clandestine data to which the intelligence or military community would have exclusive access. 

“The CTD information is just one of the data sources we use to create that picture, that story,” said Quantock.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.