DamavandTec be Damned

It’s summertime! And SPND employees have been enjoying some work from home following the wholesale destruction in June of the organization’s Tehran headquarters, various research laboratories, explosive testing facilities, chemical/biological weapons research base, and entire senior leadership team. It’s certainly not been a summer to remember for the organization.

Particularly when pesky leaks of SPND’s ostensible secrets seem to keep happening.

You might have seen the recent news media investigation into covert visits last year by SPND officials to Russia, a story which we’ve since learned was first broken in 2024 by Anonymous Ukraine. The core of the story was the exposure of an SPND front company named DamavandTec (شرکت فناوری های بین الملل اندیشه دماوند), which SPND has been using to arrange scientific visits to Russia in support of nuclear weapons-related research and procurements.

The geniuses behind DamavandTec reportedly committed some extreme OpSec fails in their rush to cosy up to naïve scientists in Moscow. The DamavandTec delegation travelled on sequentially numbered passports (not at all suspicious); and were accompanied on their visits by a MODAFL security goon (hello, Amir Yazdian!) who was reportedly already well-known to Western intelligence services. They also took along some of SPND’s most notorious personnel, including our old favourites Rouhollah Azimirad (روح الله عظيمي راد, national ID: 0057925429) and Javad Ghasemi (جواد قاسمی, national ID: 0069065756). Top-shelf clandestine missions these were not: less GoldenEye, more Goldmember.

The brains (perhaps better described as vacant cranial space) behind DamavandTec has been revealed as a guy named Ali Kalvand, thanks to Anonymous Ukraine. Kalvand and DamavandTec popped up on Ukraine’s radar because Kalvand apparently spent time studying in Kyiv before trying to become a sort of fixer between Iran and Russia.

Kalvand has some spicy connections. Anonymous Ukraine also pointed out that his wife, Laleh Heshmati (لاله حشمتی, national ID: 2298440093) is herself chairperson of a US-sanctioned company (MKS International or شرکت مکث بین الملل, now working under the name of Max Group International) which has worked to obtain equipment for Iran’s ballistic missile programme. And now that Kalvand is working as the world’s worst travel agent for people like Rouhollah Azimirad and Javad Ghasemi, it’s clear that he’s moved into the orbit of SPND.

We think Kalvand deserves more recognition than a 10 x 10 pixel photograph in a fancy newspaper stuck behind an expensive paywall. So, we’re pleased to reprint the below photos of Kalvand on one of his earlier trips to Russia. In these shots he’s accompanied by Tarbiat Modares University nuclear physicist Ali Bakouei* (علی باکویی, national ID: 384117341), who was also one of the DamavandTec travellers last year. (Bakouei, for the record, is either SPND himself or part of Iran’s technology-stealing intelligence outfit known as CPDI, formerly CITC/TCO – but that’s another story).

Here they are:

We don’t think we’ll see either of these guys traveling overseas again for a while.

Enjoy your work from home, guys!

*Not to be confused with the similarly-named Ali Bakouei Katerimi (علی باکوئی کتریمی, national ID: 5789706236), also of SPND, who was killed in June.