Tuning In

Soviets set up a spy station

For three months the rumors had swept through Tehran: Soviet officers and Cuban troops were helping to patrol Iran's frontier with Pakistan to halt the flight of dissident Iranians. At the same time, well-informed members of Iran's Islamic Guards confided that the Soviet Union had established an intelligence-gathering network in the southeastern region of Iran that focused on neighboring Pakistan. Tehran's growing rapprochement with Moscow gave credence to the reports. The Soviets have been supplying Iran with arms for its war with Iraq, while KGB experts have been helping Iran's Islamic revolutionary government create an efficient intelligence and security force.

An effort to track down the rumors about Soviet agents operating in the southeast began in Chah Bahar, an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman commanding the approaches to the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The mysterious new tower that had been spotted near the town turned out to be no Soviet listening post. What had been mistaken for a spy installation was, in fact, a powerful 1,200-kilo-watt radio transmitter set up by the Iranian government to foment Islamic revolution abroad. Broadcasting in a dozen languages, the transmitter has been beaming subversive broadcasts to the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian Peninsula and parts of Africa.

The place to look for the Soviets, TIME has learned, is 300 miles north in a remote corner of Baluchistan, near Zahedan, where the Iranian, Pakistani and Afghan frontiers meet to form a triangular no man's land. For centuries, the mountainous border area had been controlled by fierce Baluchi tribesmen, who freely traverse the borders of the three countries. The area is also used by opium smugglers and roamed by packs of wild, emaciated desert dogs.

There, on the stark, sun-parched slopes of the Kuh-e Malek Siah Mountain, was the Soviet-Iranian listening post. Using helicopters, the Soviets had transported antennae to a spot near the summit of the mountain. At the foot of the peak were parked ten huge 24-wheel trucks. They were sophisticated surveillance stations equipped with electronic gear that receives signals from the equipment above. The writing on the spy trucks was in Russian letters. Near by were 30 Iranian army British-made Chieftain tanks.

Keeping watch over the Soviet spy vehicles were about 200 Iranian Islamic Guards, armed with West German G-3 and Soviet Kalashnikov rifles. Fair-haired, Slavic-featured Soviet officers, looking incongruous in Iranian army uniforms, moved back and forth between the mobile units.

Somewhere across the border, the Pakistanis are said to have their own listening post tuned to what is happening in Iran and. assuredly, the operations at the Soviet station. What is more, the Pakistanis reportedly have sent patrols into Iran to learn more about the flurry of activity, just as the Iranians are said to be sending their own scouts across the border. Early last December, two Soviet intelligence agents were killed during a chance encounter with a Pakistani intelligence unit patrolling the border. At about the same time, Salim Ahmed, a Pakistani spy who had ventured into Iranian territory, was captured by Soviet and Iranian patrols and executed in Zahedan on Dec. 20.

The establishment of the spy station by Soviet intelligence is a major coup for Moscow. Since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan two years ago, the Soviets have been worried about Pakistani training of anti-Soviet Afghan guerrilla forces on the Pakistan side of Kuh-e Malek Siah Mountain. To get permission to set up the station, the Soviets had to overcome the concerns of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's regime, which is ideologically committed to the struggle of the Muslim Afghan guerrillas against the Soviet occupation. Last October, however, the Soviets succeeded in persuading Tehran that the Pakistanis were training Afghan guerrillas with U.S. assistance, not only to liberate Afghanistan but to try to undermine the Tehran government. Fearful of Pakistan's increasing rapprochement with Washington and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Tehran agreed to let the installation be built.

The result was a deal that helps both the Soviet Union and Iran. The Soviet station tips off the Khomeini regime about attempts by Iranian refugees to escape into Pakistan. The same unit, and a similar one said to be operated by the Soviets in a nearby region of southern Afghanistan, enables the Soviets to keep track of traffic from Pakistan into Afghanistan, as well as to monitor closely the activities of the Pakistani armed forces, which are being re-equipped with sophisticated U.S. weaponry. sb

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