By David Davidian

The following fictional Red Cell scenario is intended to stimulate alternative thinking and challenge conventional wisdom, tying together events in operational fiction with national realities

The smartphone earthquake tracker app reported an event slightly higher than a three on the Richter Scale, occurring someplace south of Iran’s Caspian shoreline. There were no reports of injury or property loss. Aftershocks followed this earthquake. Such are regular occurrences across the many seismic faults that crisscross the Lesser Caucasus Mountain range; a confluence of the Arabian Plate and Iranian Block pushing away the Anatolian Block and Russian Platform at the Greater, or otherwise known as the Northern Caucasus. An unprecedented event was occurring with reverberations lasting long after this apparently minor seismic event.

Active tectonics north of the Arabian plate (Avagyan et al. 2005)

Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) highest security class, the Black Level, demonstrated its prowess in ushering in Armenia’s Samson Option, providing Armenia with an “if you killed me, you would die a worse death” deterrent. With this benign smartphone earthquake alert, NSS’s Black Level will face a new, unprecedented challenge that began ironically.

Three weeks earlier, a delegation with members of Armenia’s new, crack diplomatic corps, intelligence, and counter-intelligence personnel, met with a group of Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG) technologists. The meeting was a typical post-Armenia II conference. Armenia’s national reorganization was proceeding reasonably well after the adoption of competing Grand Strategies was imposed upon existing Armenian ruling structures. The ability to enact an Armenian Samson Option was much more than a coup d’état, for it cowed even the most arrogant Armenian oligarch into submission. Armenia ceased to be the constant victim of big-power politics. Not only has the world changed after Russia dismantled Ukraine’s Bandarists, forcing the occupation of about three quarters of Ukraine, having left much of Galicia and Lvov under Polish protection, but Russia was in no mood to play games with wounded globalists in whatever form. With Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia now members of BRICS, the world once again is, at least, bifurcated. Russia and Iran have engaged in vigorous diplomacy, much to the dismay of those hoping to dismantle Iran’s nuclear and military programs. Last year’s reports claim the inevitability of Iran going nuclear. Recently, Iran quietly requested Russian help securing its northern borders from covert operations against Iranian interests. In 2015, Russia took almost 11,000 kg of Iran’s enriched uranium as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran.

In the meeting with IRG technologists, the Armenians understood that a breakthrough had been achieved associated with the Iranian nuclear program. They were also told that certain regional powers had planned a series of false-flag operations in Iran, referring to the culprits as those speaking different language families than us. This was a rather crude way of saying Semitic and Altaic in such an official setting. However, it was clear from the term “breakthrough” that Iran was signaling it was able to announce it had nuclear weapons. In addition, the IRG stated Iran appeared to be in a race. It was unclear what the race was. It probably was not in reference to a regional nuclear arms race, but instead was referring to the effects of the false-flag operations. True, some of the stolen spent fuel from Armenia’s Metsamor nuclear power station ended up in Iraqi Kurdistan. Still, the Kurds could not do much with this spent fuel and were not in competition with Iran. It remained for Armenian diplomats and intelligence officers to decipher. Claims of false-flag operations are made on a weekly basis by Iran. However, Azerbaijani and Turkish agents were imprisoned in Iran after the “Speak your mother tongue” operation ended. Armenian intelligence had to wait for changes in the situational status, although signals and human intelligence data were streaming in. Armenian intelligence knew, for sure, that international intelligence services must have tried to infiltrate this IRG meeting even though it took place deep underground, someplace north of Tehran, with participants heavily vetted. Yet, there was no reaction by any intelligence-controlled mainstream media.

Armenian intelligence knew from Russian technical experts who participated in the joint Russian-Iranian Persepolis program there was a decade-long debate within Iran’s nuclear weapons community. The debate was over whether computer simulations of nuclear weapon designs were good enough or whether live tests were required. Live tests or simulations really weren’t the issue because the computer codes were more than accurate if the weapons were designed to specifications. Instead, the debate was whether an announcement of nuclear capability was ever enough or a demonstration was too much. The joke among these scientists was, unfortunately, it could not be halfway between these extremes. Time would tell.

The earthquake alert was immediately followed by a highly encrypted text message directing specific Black Level agents to meet in pre-specified locations across Armenia. It was announced that weeks earlier Armenian seismic experts had provided Iran with exhaustive analysis of the 1988 Spitak Earthquake. The request was considered odd, for Iran must have had credible information about that earthquake, furthermore it was not directly associated with fault lines in Iran. It appeared as if Iran was looking for people who may have worked on Soviet tectonic weapons.

Armenian technical intelligence concluded with well over ninety percent confidence that something very odd occurred as part of this 3.2 magnitude earthquake. While the original earthquake was not under question, a third 2.2 magnitude aftershock appeared bizarre unless there was an unknown fault formation associated with the Iranian Block or this was an extraordinary seismic event. The Armenian seismologists stated that while the initial earthquake and second aftershock generally were well within the expected patterns, the third aftershock appeared abnormal. Even worse, the subsequent aftershocks seemed to be as expected. The seismologists described the two categories of waves created during earthquakes. P or compressional waves are the vibration of the rock in the direction of propagation. P waves travel fastest and are the first to arrive from the earthquake. The others are S or shear waves, where rock oscillates perpendicular to the direction of wave propagation. Earthquakes strongly excite the transverse motions of S waves, producing a distinct radiation pattern, typically weak P waves and strong S waves. Explosions, however, have strong P waves and weak S waves. One way to determine the difference between natural earthquakes and explosions is the ratio of P-wave to S-wave energy measured from the seismographs. Explosions have higher P to S ratios than earthquakes. The third aftershock had a very high P to S ratio, meaning even though it appeared at first to be the third aftershock of a mild earthquake, it either was a new type of seismic phenomenon or a massive explosion, some 4km deep, fifty-five minutes after the initial earthquake.

Given that the IRG told Armenians, cryptically, they had a breakthrough in their weapons program, and a nuclear detonation could fully explain the third aftershock, the Armenians were rapidly reaching an actionable conclusion. Only a handful of individuals in the Armenian security infrastructure knew that Iranian military intelligence had contacted what remained of the old Soviet KGB in Armenia, inquiring if they knew anybody who may have worked on a rumored Soviet tectonic weapon. The Iranians were not interested in creating such a weapon but in obtaining any abandoned documents or other related research that may exist. The Iranians worked with a team from the NSS’s Black Level in this effort. During the early 1990s, those able to purchase privatization rights to major research facilities in Armenia eventually sold their contents to the Iranians based on weight without bothering to ascertain their actual worth to the new Armenian state. The Iranians went through everything they purchased and found trace documents on tectonic weapons research. There were only two people in Armenia who had information on this program. One worked in a Soviet research laboratory engaged in general earthquake research, and the other in a Soviet military laboratory in the Tian Shan mountains, near the Kyrgyz-Kazakh border. The first person stated a laboratory existed in Abkhazia, but it was a seismic listening post, although he didn’t work there. He still had some now declassified documents on earthquake research. The second scientist worked in the Tian Shan military laboratory and engaged in directed energy and magnetic hydrodynamic systems; the former pumping energy into the atmosphere, the latter into the earth’s surface.

When it became clear what had transpired in Iran, Armenian Prime Minister Chalabyan met within two hours of the third aftershock in an undisclosed location with the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ali Khamenei. Khamenei told Chalabyan, 

“Indeed, Iran had drilled nine different shafts, each almost 4km deep at different locations along active major and minor fault lines just south of the Caspian Sea. We placed medium yield atomic bombs, approximately equivalent to ten kilotons of TNT, dialed into each device and waited for almost a month and a half for a minor earthquake to occur, allowing us to synthesize what appeared to be an aftershock. We have received inquiries from Azerbaijani, Japanese, and Italian seismic stations for further information. We have held them off but cannot do so forever.” 

Chalabyan asked, “Why are you telling me this?” Khamenei said, “Armenia will announce to the world that Iran has detonated their first nuclear device.” Khamenei continued, “We also know that even though Moscow and our Foreign Ministry have warned Azerbaijan to cease its covert operations in Iran, they are increasing. Baku believes if Iran begins to falter, they can capture land in Iran’s northwest. The third aftershock will take less than a day for its universal acceptance as a man-made event. With the world on edge, we would like your permission to station Armenian-speaking Iranian soldiers along the existing Armenian-Azerbaijani-Turkish borders. We will have our regular soldiers on our common border. We have already discussed this with Russian President Putin.” Chalabyan was speechless but held his own, knowing that the Southern Caucasus would be forever a region transformed. 

As the Iranian Supreme Leader exited gracefully, Chalabyan sat in his chair staring at the floor. Simultaneous thoughts were circling his mind. He thought about what the previous incompetent Armenian government would have done, if anything, in this situation. Was Armenia’s role in this announcement only to send the strongest message to Azerbaijan and Turkey, and if not, what must Armenia do on the international stage? Wait, wait, Armenia has nuclear power as a friendly neighbor! How does Armenia address the devastating Turkish and Azerbaijani reactions? Has Iran supplanted Russia in the Caucasus, are they partners, and if so, to what relative degree? Will this historic opportunity be used against Armenia? How might Armenia use all to cement a geopolitical footprint? Most importantly, it struck him that the new dynamic diplomatic corps would have its work cut out as soon as he returned to the capital, Yerevan. 

As the mainstream media continued to flood websites with their well-crafted disinformation, the Armenian Foreign Ministry posted a simple announcement, heard around the world, in three languages.

Իրանի Իսլամական Հանրապետությունը միջուկային սարք է պայթեցրել:

The Islamic Republic of Iran Detonated a Nuclear Device.

Исламская Республика Иран взорвала ядерное устройство.

Within minutes, Iranian and Armenian Foreign Ministries were coordinating messaging with Armenia “graciously” conferring with states having no or poor relations with Iran. Chalabyan’s cell phone rang – it was the Georgian Foreign Ministry.

As Armenia’s Foreign Ministry web server was crashing due to thousands of requests per second, Turkish and Azerbaijani leaders were in multiple discussions on many levels. They both were confronting the end of Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman designs. The “One nation, two states” claim of Turkey and Azerbaijan was disintegrating by the second. Turkey’s role as NATO’s attack dog with sights on Russia and Iran was dashed. With foreign reserves draining and subsequently frozen were decimating the Turkish economy. Turkey pulled all its armed forces out of Azerbaijan as civil strife exploded across Turkey. With their wealth in foreign shell companies, Azerbaijani oligarchs were fleeing Baku by the plane loads.

Iran confirmed Armenia’s announcement. As a state with centuries of experience in international diplomacy, Iran unambiguously stated it would never use its nuclear weapons on a first-strike basis against any country.

Yerevan, Armenia

Author: David Davidian (Lecturer at the American University of Armenia. He has spent over a decade in technical intelligence analysis at major high technology firms. He resides in Yerevan, Armenia).