Former French counterintelligence agent Matthieu Ghadiri, who infiltrated the Iranian intelligence services, describes a system in which the Quds Force orchestrated the rapprochement between Hezbollah and the Polisario. Under this arrangement, the Lebanese Shiite movement trained the elite of Sahrawi fighters while handling part of the Polisario’s equipment and financing, as Algerian intelligence services retained political and security control over the separatist movement. In this first installment of the interview, he traces the origins of that relationship, from the Polisario’s first contacts with Ayatollah Khomeini’s inner circle to the mechanisms through which Tehran gradually extended its influence between Tindouf and the Sahel.
