A Doha based academic has said Indian intelligence used members of India’s diaspora in Iraq during the 1980s to collect military information later shared with Israel. The claim was made by Dr. Muhanad Seloom, a security scholar, in an interview with Khaleej TV. It has not been confirmed by the governments of India, Iraq or Israel.
The interview clip was later shared by the Instagram, drawing wider attention to a decades old chapter of Cold War era spy history in the Gulf.
What did the spy actually claimed?
According to Dr. Seloom, the goal of the alleged spy activity was to obtain Israeli technology and use it against Pakistan. He said his account is based on conversations with a former senior officer of Iraq’s counter-espionage service. Dr. Seloom did not name this officer, and Khaleej TV has not released independent documentation to support the claim.
He said that in the 1980s, Iraq viewed Israel and the United States as its top security threats. This came after Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. India, by contrast, was seen as friendly and was placed “at the bottom of the list” of security concerns.
Why did Iraq reportedly suspect India?
Dr. Seloom said this perception changed after Iraqi officers monitoring diplomatic mail across all embassies “without exception” came across correspondence linked to India’s intelligence station in Baghdad. He said Iraq at the time hosted roughly 1.2 million Indian workers. The unnamed officer reportedly told him this discovery led Iraqi authorities to believe a number of informants and spies were embedded within that community.
These individuals were said to be working in fields such as medicine and at air bases, according to the account relayed by Dr. Seloom. He said even cleaners were reportedly tasked with collecting details on aircraft types and the type of concrete used on runways. Others were said to have mapped hangar doors where Iraq kept its aircraft, and to have profiled Iraqi officers by their sectarian background.
It is important to note that none of these specific details have been independently verified. They rest on a secondhand account, relayed decades after the events allegedly took place, from a source who has not been publicly identified.
What is Dr. Seloom’s background?
Dr. Muhanad Seloom is an assistant professor of international politics and security at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. He is also an honorary research fellow at the University of Exeter. His published academic work focuses on intelligence institutions, non-state actors and security in the Middle East, and he has written for outlets including Al Jazeera English and Foreign Policy.
His academic standing lends some credibility to the interview. However, credentials alone do not verify the underlying claim, which he himself has presented as an oral account rather than a documented finding.
Has India or Israel responded to the claim?
Neither the Indian government nor Israeli authorities have issued any statement on the claim as of this report. India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, does not routinely comment on historical operational matters. Israel’s Mossad also maintains a longstanding policy of not confirming or denying specific intelligence activities.
Given the absence of any official confirmation, the claim should be read as one scholar’s account of a private conversation, not as an established historical fact.
What is the background to India-Israel intelligence ties?
India and Israel have a long, if historically quiet, intelligence relationship. India recognised Israel in 1950 but delayed full diplomatic relations for decades, partly out of concern for reaction across the Arab world and its effect on Indian communities in the Gulf.
Contact between India’s Research and Analysis Wing and Israel’s Mossad is widely believed to date back to soon after RAW’s founding in 1968, reportedly authorised at the political level. Formal diplomatic relations between India and Israel were only established in 1992.
Since then, defence and technology cooperation between the two countries has grown substantially, particularly after the 1999 Kargil conflict, when Israel supplied military equipment to India on short notice.
Why this spy claim matters today?
Claims involving intelligence gathering by diaspora communities carry particular weight in the Gulf, where millions of Indian workers are employed across sectors from healthcare to infrastructure. Any allegation, confirmed or not, can affect how such communities are perceived by host governments.
It also comes at a time when regional security establishments are increasingly scrutinising foreign nationals with access to sensitive sites, following unrelated espionage cases involving Indian nationals elsewhere in the Gulf in recent years.
What happens next?
No formal investigation, government inquiry or documentary evidence has been publicly linked to this specific claim. Readers should treat the account as one interview based narrative pending any independent corroboration from official records or named sources.