How Iranian Informants Were Failed by the CIA

A man waits at a bus station as people walk past a closed shop in the center of Iran's capital Tehran on September 30 2022. (AFP)

The spy was minutes from leaving Iran when he was nabbed.

Gholamreza Hosseini was at Imam Khomeini Airport in Tehran in late 2010, preparing for a flight to Bangkok. There, the Iranian industrial engineer would meet his Central Intelligence Agency handlers. But before he could pay his exit tax to leave the country, the airport ATM machine rejected his card as invalid. Moments later, a security officer asked to see Hosseini’s passport before escorting him away.