A mysterious numbers station broadcasts during the Iran war

“Surprise him! Surprise him! Surprise him!” A man’s voice announces, before continuing to list a series of numbers in no clear order, slowly and rhythmically. After nearly two hours, calls came: “Attention!” At the Persian station, to resume again hours later.

The broadcast has been running twice daily on the shortwave frequency since the beginning of the broadcast The US-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28.

according to Priaman organization that tracks and analyzes the global military and intelligence use of shortwave radio, using established radiolocation techniques, It was broadcast I heard it for the first time with the start of the American bombing of Iran. It has since been operated on the 7910 kHz shortwave frequency like clockwork – at 02.00 UTC and again at 18.00 UTC.

Over the weekend, Beom said so Potential has been identified Broadcast origin. Using multiplexing and triangulation techniques, the group tracked the signal to a shortwave transmission facility within range US military base in BöblingenSouthwest of Stuttgart, Germany.

The site is located within a restricted training area between Panzer Kaserne and Patch Barracks, where technical operations are likely associated with the US Army’s 52nd Strategic Signal Battalion, which is based nearby.

This limitation narrows the scope, but does not reveal who is behind the transmissions or who they are intended for.

The two-hour broadcast is divided into five to six segments, each lasting up to 20 minutes. Each begins with “Tavajoh!” before moving on to a series of numbers in Persian, sometimes interspersed with an English word or two. Five days after the broadcast, radio jammers were heard trying to block the frequency. The next day, the transmission switched to a different frequency — 7842 kHz.

Radio communications experts believe the broadcast is likely part of a Cold War-era system known as number stations.

Return numbers

Number stations are shortwave radio programs that play a series of seemingly random numbers or symbols, like those heard now in Iran. “It is an encrypted radio message used by foreign intelligence services, often as part of a complex operation carried out by intelligence agencies and militaries,” says Maris Goldmanis, a Latvian historian and avid researcher of number stations.

Number terminals are commonly associated with espionage. “For intelligence agencies, it is important to communicate with their spies to gather intelligence,” says John Seaver, a former US intelligence officer who served for 28 years in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. “This is not always possible in person due to political constraints or conflict. This is where number terminals come in.”

While the use of number terminals can be traced back to World War I, they gained popularity during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. As espionage became more sophisticated, governments used automated voice transmissions of encrypted numbers to communicate with agents, Goldmanis says. Number terminals were widely used during this period, often as Morse code transmissions and, in many cases, as two-way communications, with agents reporting using their shortwave transmitters, he adds, citing declassified KGB and CIA documents.

“Nowadays, you have many satellite and encrypted communications technologies,” says Seaver. “But during the Cold War and even before that, governments had to find ways to do it without anyone noticing, and broadcasting encrypted messages was one way to communicate your assets confidentially.”

Seaver adds that the apparent randomness of the numbers means that they can only be understood through a code book. “No one can understand or understand what he is saying unless you have a codebook that can give you hints to decode the code,” he says, noting that such systems must be set up and coordinated in advance.

A signal without a sender

While the possible origin of the signal is now clearer, its purpose and intended recipient remain unknown.

Because the broadcasts are encrypted and designed to be secret, these details could remain unclear for years, Goldmanis says. The structured nature of the transmission – its fixed schedule and consistent use of frequencies – also suggests that it is part of a planned process.