Drone team: Russia’s plan to arm Iran

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1:28The Economist.

1:34Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Jason Palmer. And I'm Rosie Blore.

1:44Today on the show, we learn about the thousands of merchant seamen stuck in the Gulf and pay tribute to Craig Venter.

1:58But first...

2:08There are many reasons why America's war on Iran has been failing. One is the effectiveness of Iranian drones. Now, a confidential document obtained exclusively by The Economist from a trusted source reveals new information, exposing Russia's proposed arming of Iran against American forces. The Economist has seen leaked Russian intelligence documents that outline a new level of support that the Kremlin is prepared to give Iran, which would have involved killing Americans and repelling an American amphibious invasion of Iran. Shashank Joshi is our defense editor. The documents that we've seen describe a proposal from Russia to provide Iran with 5 ,000 short-range fiber-optic drones, which are the kind used in Ukraine to very good effect, as well as an unknown number of longer-range satellite-guided drones and training to use both kinds.

3:12Until now, we knew Vladimir Putin's government had provided intelligence that had helped Iran target American forces in the Middle East, but we didn't know it had also proposed sending relatively innovative weapons in big enough numbers that could have really inflicted considerable casualties on America and on Allied forces had there been some kind of land operation. You say that this is a proposal. Do we know if it's actually been put into play? We don't and here I should be really clear. This document is a 10-page proposal prepared by the GRU, that's Russia's military intelligence service, for presentation to Iran.

3:55We can't authenticate it ourselves. We don't have direct evidence to confirm it was passed to the Iranians, whether any of these drones actually reached Iran, or if the promised training program begun. But we have seen some indications fiber optic drones have been used by Hezbollah, which is the Iran-backed militia in Lebanon. The document is undated. It was probably drafted, we think, within the first six weeks of this war when Russia thought there was a very real chance of Donald Trump attempting a ground operation, perhaps to send ground troops to seize Hog Island, that oil terminal that we've talked about on the show before.

4:32We have been able to examine the 10 pages, but we don't know whether this was an active plan that was actually implemented. We knew, didn't we, that Russia was giving Iran some kind of support. So exactly how surprising is this? It's not shocking, but it is significant. We know that Russia had provided a limited amount of support, intelligence, for example. We know there's a defense industrial relationship between these countries. You know, we've talked about Iranian-designed Shaheed drones and their transfer to Russia and the way that Russia has improved upon them in the course of the war in Ukraine.

5:06We discussed that, I think, just a month ago, didn't we, Rosie? And there's a good working relationship between the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guards in Iran, and the GRU in Russia. That goes back a long way. Russia intervened in Syria. It was operating on the ground in proximity to Iranian proxies. There was that relationship. Then there was a relationship over Ukraine. And so this, to me, fits with evidence that is emerging across the region of closer military cooperation between the two sides. But it would still be, I think, an escalation. It would still be something that the Russians would have to be careful with because they know it could result in a pretty sharp reaction from the American government.

5:47Explain to me why the fiber optic drones are such a game changer, how they would actually shift the dynamics of the war. Well, if you take a step back, let's think about the drones used in Ukraine, whether that's for reconnaissance, whether that's for strike missions. Most of these are controlled by sending radio signals to the drone. Some of them are controlled by sending satellite signals as well. But the point about fiber optic drones is that you can have a long tethered cable along which you channel that data. And so the advantage is they're extremely accurate. They can fly a long way, you know, 40 kilometers.

6:24And most importantly of all, these are essentially unjammable because there's no radio signal to jam. Everything's going down this big fiber optic cable. And that idea of a tethered missile isn't new. The Egyptians used Soviet-made wire-guided anti-tank missiles called SAGAs in the Yom Kippur War in 1973. They inflicted very heavy losses on Israel. So wire-guided munitions go back to the Second World War, I think, perhaps even a little bit before that. But the fiber-optic element is new. It has been extremely successful in Ukraine. The most skillful Ukrainian operators can weave these things even through a dense forest to get to the other side.

7:06And there's been this mad rush by both Russia and Ukraine to get the fiber optic spools they need to make these things. So they've tried to get them in China. They've run out of supplies. This is a really, really capable kind of weapon. And so that's why it's so significant. And you also talked about another kind of drones, the long range satellite guided drones. So these are drones equipped with Starlink terminals. And some of our listeners may have Starlink terminals to give them internet at home. This is the company owned by SpaceX, whose CEO is Elon Musk. And it provides internet using a very big constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit.

7:44Russia and Ukraine have used Starlink. Russia had been using drones equipped with Starlink terminals to attack Ukrainian air defenses and logistics hubs in other sites. And it was pretty effective. What happened earlier this year was that Elon Musk denied Russia's armed forces access to Starlink by effectively blocking all the terminals active in Ukraine, because the terminals know where they are, of course, except for those on a so-called whitelist that is approved by Ukraine's government. So that was very restrictive, but it was a way of blocking Russia from using these things. The Russian proposal suggests that some of these drones could be diverted and used in the Middle East, which would have fewer restrictions.

8:27There's no geofencing, as they call it. And the document speculates that Starlink connectivity would eventually be cut off in due course, but that it could still inflict what they call disorder on American forces in the interim. And what about the plan for Russians to train Iranians how to use these weapons? Well, these things are not always immediately easy to use, right? And in fact, at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the White House said that Iran had sent trainers to Crimea to help Russia operate Iranian-designed drones. So this would kind of be full circle. And what the document proposes is recruiting drone operators from among an estimated 10 ,000 or so Iranian students studying in Russian universities.

9:09It says that other communities that could be tapped are people from the Tajik ethnic group, and they speak both Russian and a version of Persian, which is the language, as well as the Alawite minority from Syria. And you may recall that among the Alawites in Syria, there was a great deal of support for the Al-Stade Assad regime. And therefore, that was particularly a strong link to the Russian military in Syria. And the document says all these people could be screened for loyalty, for religious extremism. This document was written at a time when the main threat facing Iran was an amphibious assault, an American amphibious assault or an airborne assault, perhaps, to open the Strait of Hormuz, seize Hog Island.

9:51And it notes that American landing craft would be particularly vulnerable to drone attack because of their slow speed. In fact, there's a diagram that illustrates how Russian-trained Iranian drone operators could attack a landing flotilla by launching swarms of five or six drones from hidden positions some 15 to 30 kilometers away. And although we now hear the American government saying the offensive phase of the war is over. It seems relatively unlikely we will see a major ground operation. The prospect of this very, very clearly was a source of concern to Russian officials earlier in the conflict.

10:29Shashank, we're talking about this almost as though it's just about the tech. It's about how war is waged. But doesn't it also represent a shift in the geopolitics as well. We've been debating for years now the strength, depth, significance of what some people call the crink, right? China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. You can call it many different things. And there's been a debate how serious this is. Russia hasn't given Iran all that much help, right? It hasn't helped Iran to substantially rebuild its air defenses since they were smashed by Israel last year. And Russia has many pressing military needs of its own.

11:07But I think what this shows is that many of the most significant transfers that we may see between these countries will be not in terms of big defense platforms or in the realm of ships, submarines, planes. It will be in the realm of lessons they have learned from their respective conflicts. Russia in Ukraine, Iran in the Middle East, North Korea from its involvement in Kursk in Russia. and those lessons will flow between them. There are learning communities that exist in these countries and some of that may be around, for example, Russia telling Iran how it has learned to make faster, quieter, more effective Shahid drones that originally came from Iran.

11:53Some of that may be equally this transfer of fiber optic drones. Some of it may be from China passing on to Russia, what it's learned about submarines. That, I think, is going to be a real challenge to the West in the coming years. And this, I think, is a window into what that cooperation might look like on the ground, in the moment, on a really, really serious matter of war and peace. Terrifying stuff. Shashank, thank you very much. Thanks, Rosie.

13:01Transcription by CastingWords Bedos, sits down with Rahm Emanuel, who's a fixture of the Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations and a former mayor of Chicago. He's spent decades at the high-stakes center of democratic power. Now he's got his sights on the presidency. He joins us in Los Angeles to discuss the party's path for the next election. If you're a digital subscriber, you already have access to Insider. Nothing extra to sign up for. And if you're listening for free, you can watch extended clips from Insider via the link in the show notes.

13:48The Strait of Hormuz

14:02Oi, oi, oi, oi, oi! Missiles regularly fly above their heads, and sometimes they crash down around them. One of them actually hit a fuel tanker just a few metres away from them, which caught fire and exploded. On another occasion, debris from a missile overhead actually sunk a ship just in front of them. Joshua Spencer is our Asian news editor. Captain Khan and his crew have actually tried to get through the Strait of Hormuz three times, but the Iranians have turned them back every time. He's just one of around 20 ,000 seafarers who've been stuck in the Gulf and remain so as the war in Iran drags on.

14:42And what more do we know about those 20 ,000 seafarers? One person described seafarers to me as the ultimate key workers. They're people who crew the ships that carry 85 % of all traded goods by volume. So everything from clothes, fertilizer, food, energy, all the things that we need to keep living, these sailors are responsible for carrying around the world. Most of them actually come from Asia, where I'm based, mostly from lower-income Asian countries, such as the Philippines, India, Bangladesh. But they're increasingly exposed to wars and conflicts, things that they have no part in and they're unprepared for.

15:19And so for those seafarers stuck in the Gulf, what is life like on board nine weeks into this? Pretty awful. I think the first big thing to mention is the physical harm and danger. At least 10 seafarers have actually been killed so far. One crew member I spoke to actually witnessed a missile hit his ship just a few meters away from him, killing someone else that was on board. So they are really on the front lines of this war. But what about when they're not directly in the firing line and just subsisting? It varies a lot, right? Some of the ships that are in the Gulf, the owners of those ships have signed up to an agreement that guarantees their workers double pay and also a right to be repatriated from the region.

15:56And for some of these crews, actually, they're kind of happy to be getting the higher pay and having a sort of slightly reduced workload. Not everyone is right in the firing line. Some of them describe being bored, playing basketball or volleyball on deck and so on. But for most of them, really, there is an increasing hardship and difficulty. Even for the people who were covered by the agreement that I mentioned earlier, they're facing shortages of food, of fresh water. A captain of a ship that I spoke to told me that he has to pay$50 for a ton of water now, where he used to pay$2 before the war started.

16:26So his crew have started rationing it when they shower or when they're preparing food. But really, the sort of biggest hardship across all of them is a sort of mental strain and the uncertainty. And they never know what's going to happen when they wake up. They're reading the news headlines, just like the rest of us are, and are kind of completely hostage to events. And even actually leaving the Gulf is a risk in itself, because a lot of these seafarers are working contract to contract. So if they leave the Gulf, they actually don't know where the next job is coming from. So there's no good options for them.

16:56But I would imagine nevertheless that a lot of those sailors would like to get out of the Gulf. Is there a plan to get them out en masse? There have been some suggestions. Donald Trump announced a plan last week to guide stranded vessels out of the straits called Project Freedom, although details were relatively light. Later in the week, though, the president then said he was going to pause this plan as he tried to negotiate with Iran over a permanent end to the war. so at the moment that plan hasn't really taken force properly and actually even if some sort of deal to reopen Hormuz is struck it's not going to be a sudden journey out for the seafarers that's partly because legally they can't abandon their ships so they can't just leave them there without finding a replacement and as you can imagine not many seafarers are volunteering or sticking up their hands to be going into a war zone and relieving them off the ship and then even if seafarers do manage to get to dry land, say the Gulf countries in the Middle East, difficult to get on flights, which are really expensive, and there's not many of them.

17:56And also, it's hard to get visas to enter Gulf countries in the first place. So all of this sort of means that even if there is a reopening of the strait, it's not going to be an immediate quick fix for seafarers. One person in the industry that I spoke to said it could take six months for any sort of normality to return for them. And even the normality we've talked about on the show before is not such an easy life on board. Yes, it's not easy. It's a very dangerous and difficult job and it always has been. There's been famous films about seafarers being attacked by pirates of Somalia. That remains a risk for them, particularly off the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Guinea.

18:29And then there's been several recent hardships and disruptions to their lives, even before the war in Iran. So the biggest one was the pandemic, which was really, really tough for seafarers. One crew member that I spoke to actually spent 20 months aboard his ship without seeing his family, without going home during COVID. And he sort of had this feeling that he'd sacrificed his life and his social life and his family life for the benefit of the world economy, for the benefit of people like us that want our food and our energy to heat our homes. There's also been other issues such as unscrupulous owners have been abandoning ships more often than they used to without paying the wages of the seafarers on board.

19:06And then you've got other conflicts. So it's not just in the Gulf where the seafarers are threatened. You've also got the Houthis firing off missiles in the Red Sea, which has killed several sailors in recent months. And then you also have the Ukraine-Russia war. Some Russian missiles have actually hit seafarers in the Black Sea as well. So this is the sort of latest in a series of hardships. And is it the responsibility of the sort of home governments of all of these sailors to look after their welfare? The home governments definitely have a role to play. And I think they know that seafarers are quite an important political and economic force in their countries.

19:40They're not just earning money for themselves. They're actually remitting and sending money back home and adding quite a big slice of the country's GDP. So take the Philippines, which actually has 590 ,000 seafarers, which is the most of any country. They send about$7 billion a year back to the Philippines. Protecting seafarers' rights has become a kind of political issue in some countries. And there's even been a political party in the Philippines set up called ANCLA or ANCA Party. So you add to a difficult and dangerous job what is now quickly becoming almost a humanitarian situation in the Gulf.

20:13Yes, exactly. I think governments in Asia are aware of this. India's government, for example, is doing a lot to try and repatriate seafarers. Ministers are making public statements about this and being very clear that they're doing everything they can to get their stranded sailors back home. But really, I think it's not just governments in Asia that should be worried about the knock-on effects of this war on seafarers. I think it's governments all around the world, because even before this war, there was actually a shortage of qualified seafarers. As the Iran war kind of makes this an even less appetizing job to pick up, this is going to make it even more difficult for the world to ship its goods, to ship fuel, to ship clothes, to ship gadgets all around, and for us to continue trading as we have.

20:56Josh, thanks very much for joining us. Thank you, Jason.

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22:17I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood. Thus James Watson describes his collaborator in the unraveling of DNA's structure in the opening words of his book on that quest, The Double Helix. Geoffrey Carr is a senior editor at The Economist, and this week is standing in for Anne Rowe, our obituaries editor. Substitute Craig Venter into this sentence, and you have the measure of a man who, though not cricks equal as a scientist, was, in his own opinion, only a rung or two below him on the ladder of scientific merit. But he also felt that his worth was never fully recognised, because he was never quite a member of the club.

23:01That, perhaps, is what you get for growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, or, in his case, of the runways at San Francisco Airport. A beach bum slacker at high school, he was drafted into the Navy as a hospital corpsman during the Vietnam War. Only after a Damascene insight while attempting to drown himself off the coast of Da Nang to escape that conflict's horrors did he realise his vocation. If you want immortality, do something meaningful with your life. Illegitome known carborundum. The bastards tried. His PhD got him into the National Institutes of Health as a researcher at the Outer Fringes of the Genome Project, which had started under Watson's watchful eye in 1990.

23:47The next year, he published a neat idea for speeding the project up by tagging where genes sat on chromosomes. So neat that the National Institutes of Health wanted to patent the result, until, after a public storm during which Watson excoriated both Dr. Venter's technology and the whole idea of patenting human genes, they didn't.