Gevorg Vartanian is the only intelligence agent of the soviet foreign intelligence service, who has been awarded with the Hero of the Soviet Union Medal when he was still alive. His name is listed among the best 100 intelligence agents of all times and peoples. Gevorg Vartanian was born February 17, 1924 in Nor Nakhichevan (currently Rostov-on-Don). His father was a Soviet intelligence agent as well and was sent to Persia (presently Iran) on 1930, where he worked for 23 years under a cover of a wealthy merchant. Gevork Vartanian was not even 16 when he went into intelligence. In 1955, he graduated from the Institute of Foreign Languages, Yerevan. He is primarily responsible for thwarting Operation Long Jump, concocted byAdolf Hitler, headed by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and led by Otto Skorzeny, which was an attempt to assassinate Stalin,Churchill, and Roosevelt at the Tehran conference in 1943.

The first tip-off about the planned attempt came from Soviet intelligence agent Nikolai Kuznetsov, under the alias of Wermacht Oberleutnant Paul Siebert, from Nazi-occupied Ukraine. Kuznetsov got a drunk SS officer named Ulrich von Ortel to tell him about the attempt. Although the scheduled date of the operation was not known, the fact that it would take place was confirmed.

According to Vartanian, he had been assigned to recruit agents beginning in 1940. He and his seven recruits had identified Nazi spies. However, in the autumn of 1943, they were given a different task, security for the upcoming conference. Six German radio operators had been sent to Tehran as an advance team for the assassination. Eventually, Vartanian and his men managed to find where the commando unit was hiding.

From then on, the radio messages to Berlin were intercepted by Soviet and British intelligence. However, one of the Germans managed to send a coded message "we are under surveillance". The operation was getting off track and the main group led by Skorzeny never went to Tehran.

Gevorg Vartanian has met with Churchill's granddaughter and been congratulated for his great service to the Allies. It was revealed that his identity was kept secret until the year 2000, when he finally received full credit for putting a stop to the assassination plot.

"Daily Mail" British news agency has referred to the demise of legendary Armenian intelligence agent who foiled a Nazi plot to assassinate Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Armenpress reports.

Gevork Andreyevich Vartanyan, codenamed Amir, ensured the safety of the three leaders by exposing a plot to kill them at the historic 1943 Tehran conference of the "Big Three" Allies, the newspaper writes.

He was just 19 at the time but he led a group of young Soviet agents to disrupt a German plot codenamed Operation Long Jump to wipe out the leaders of Britain, the USSR and the US.

As his death was announced he received an immediate accolade from the Kremlin signifying his standing as one of Moscow's greatest-ever agents.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev lauded Vartanyan as a "legendary spy, a true patriot of his country and an extraordinary personality." In a letter of condolence to the agent's family, he said of Vartanyan - some of whose espionage achievements remain secret to this day: "He participated in stunning special operations which have gone down in the history of our foreign intelligence."

"Everyone in foreign intelligence will remember Gevork Andreyevich for his overwhelming love for the motherland and his fidelity to his duty," added a spokesman for the SVR, Russian foreign intelligence.

Despite saving Churchill, one of his most famous operations was to infiltrate a British spy academy for Russian-speaking agents in Iran in 1942, learning the identities of agents who London planned to send undercover to the Soviet Union, and exposing the network.

After the war, the agent - whose father was also a Moscow intelligence operative - and his wife Goar, herself a noted spy, worked undercover for three decades in many countries engaged in crucial work for the KGB. Even today the SVR refuses to divulge his role, admitting merely that he worked in "extreme conditions" and "complicated circumstances".

When Vartanyan finally came in from the cold he held an emotional meeting with Celia Sandys, Churchill's granddaughter, in Moscow in 2007. The pair toasted "the great troika - Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt" with Armenian brandy. "It is thanks to them that we live in peace today," he told her, adding that Stalin "was sending Armenian brandy to Churchill by the case" and that the British wartime leader "was very fond of it."

The legendary Russian-born spy was the son of an Iranian factory owner of Armenian origin. His father took the family back to Iran in the 1930s as part of a mission decreed by Stalin.

He enlisted his son who was working undercover by the age of 16, the Daily Mail runs.

Legendary Soviet spy Gevork Vartanian, who helped foil a Nazi plot to kill Allied leaders in Tehran during World War II, has died in Moscow aged 87.

Operating in Tehran during World War II, he tracked German commandoes who had arrived to attack a summit attended by Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill.

Realising they were being followed, the Germans called off the attack.

He also managed to infiltrate British intelligence, exposing a network of secret agents in the USSR.

Vartanian did so by getting accepted on a British training course for spies in Tehran.

His wife was a Soviet spy, too, and after the war they worked as a team for the next 30 years.

Gevork Vartanian retired from Russia's foreign intelligence service, the SVR, in 1992.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev described him as a true patriot and a remarkable person.

Father's footsteps

Vartanian was born on 17 February 1924 in the south Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, into the family of an Iranian national of Armenian extraction.

Continue reading the main story
“
Start Quote
Like sappers, underground agents err only once”
End Quote
Gevork Vartanian

Speaking in 2007
In 1930, the family moved to Tehran where the father, Andrei, served as a Soviet agent under a business cover.

Following his father, Gevork became a Soviet agent in 1940 at the age of 16.

Codenamed Amir, his task was to root out German and British spies.

British intelligence was training Russian-speakers in Tehran to serve as spies in Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Vartanian underwent training, then passed on information on the British school to Moscow.

As a result, British-trained spies sent to the USSR were either captured or recruited as double agents.

Camels and guns

In the winter of 1943, the leaders of the USSR, US and Britain met for a summit in Tehran to decide their strategy for victory over Hitler.

It was held in the Soviet embassy after Stalin alerted Roosevelt to a Nazi plot to assassinate them.

At the time, Tehran was full of refugees from war-torn Europe, and Nazi agents were active among some 20,000 Germans living in Iran, Vartanian recalled in an interview for Russia's Ria-Novosti news agency in 2007.

He recounted how he had tracked down Germans, including field station chief Franz Meyer who disappeared.

When finally located, Meyer was found to have "grown a beard and dyed it, and was working as a grave-digger at an Armenian cemetery".

From 1940-41, Vartanian and his colleagues reportedly exposed 400 people linked to German intelligence.

In 1943, the Soviet agents located the landing party sent by the Nazis for the assassination plot, six radio operators who were "travelling by camel and loaded with weapons".

"We arrested all the members... and made them make contact with enemy intelligence under our supervision," Vartanian said.

"We deliberately gave a radio operator an opportunity to report the failure of the mission."

Reflecting on his 45 years in espionage, much of it alongside his wife, he said: "We were lucky - we never met a single traitor.

"For us, underground agents, betrayal is the worst evil. If an agent observes all the security rules and behaves properly in society, no counter-intelligence will spot him or her. Like sappers, underground agents err only once."

Vartanian was born in Nor Nakhichevan (currently Rostov-on-Don). His father was a Soviet intelligence agent as well and was sent to Persia (presently Iran) in 1930, where he worked for 23 years under a cover of a wealthy merchant. Gevork Vartanian was not even 16 when he went into intelligence.[2] In 1955, he graduated from the Institute of Foreign Languages, Yerevan. He is primarily responsible for thwarting Operation Long Jump, concocted by Adolf Hitler, headed by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and led by Otto Skorzeny, which was an attempt to assassinate Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt at the Tehran conference in 1943.[3]

Operation Long Jump In 1942, Adolf Hitler decided to set the operation in motion. After careful planning and deliberation under the personal supervision of Security Police Chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Hitler sent his special commando agent, Otto Skorzeny, along with six other men to rendezvous at Tehran, Iran and spearhead the operation. The plan entailed the capture and/or assassination of Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt.

The first tip-off about the planned attempt came from Soviet intelligence agent Nikolai Kuznetsov, under the alias of Wehrmacht Oberleutnant Paul Siebert, from Nazi-occupied Ukraine.[4] Kuznetsov got a drunk SS officer named Ulrich von Ortel to tell him about the attempt. Although the scheduled date of the operation was not known, the fact that it would take place was confirmed.

According to Vartanian, he had been assigned to recruit agents beginning in 1940. He and his seven recruits had identified Nazi spies. However, in the autumn of 1943, they were given a different task, security for the upcoming conference. Six German radio operators had been sent to Tehran as an advance team for the assassination. Eventually, Vartanian and his men managed to find where the commando unit was hiding.[5]

From then on, the radio messages to Berlin were intercepted by Soviet and British intelligence. However, one of the Germans managed to send a coded message "we are under surveillance". The operation was getting off track and the main group led by Skorzeny never went to Tehran.

Later years Vartanian was awarded with the Hero of the Soviet Union medal. He met with Churchill's granddaughter and was congratulated for his great service to the Allies. Vartanian has been interviewed many times. Al Gurnov of Russia Today interviewed Vartanian on the eve of the Victory Day parade, which was broadcast on May 9, 2008. It was revealed that Vartanian's identity was kept secret until the year 2000, when he finally received full credit for putting a stop to the assassination plot.

He is said to have headed the operation the prevented a Nazi Germany plot to assassinate Josef Stalin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill when they met in Tehran, Iran in 1943.

Vardanyan’s name is mentioned in the list of best 100 spies worldwide.

He is also known for his Italian missions that he completed together with his wife Gohar Vardanyan.

Teheran 43: Spy Ring (English subtitles). Part 2/2 (1/7).

This story starts in 1980 in Paris as the memories of Andrei Borodin, a Soviet agent, take the action back to 1943 during the Teheran meetings of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill.
A high-ranking Nazi officer developed a plan to assassinate the three world leaders in order to undermine the Allied forces. He commissioned the German agent Max Richard to carry out his plan, but it failed miserably due to the quick action and thinking of Andrei.
While in Teheran, Andrei met a French woman, Marie Louni, living in the city and they had a brief but intense affair. Nearly four decades later, the Nazi officer has been captured - but not for long. Freed by terrorists, the officer is hunting down the German agent who failed to carry out the planned assassinations...

==================
Crew:
Screenplay by Alexander ALOV, Vladimir NAUMOV, Mikhail SHATROV
Derected by Alexander ALOV, Vladimir NAUMOV
Director of Photography Valentin ZHELEZNYAKOV
Production Designers Eugeny CHERNYAEV, Vladimir KIRS
Costume Designer Lidia NOVI
Music by Georges GARVARENTZ
The music score was composed by Mieczyslaw WEINBERG
The song "Une Vie D'amour": Lyrics by Charles AZNAVOUR; Music by Georges GARVARENTZ
Sound Engineer Rolan KAZARYAN

Cast:
Igor KOSTOLEVSKY as Andre
Natalia BELOKHVOSTIKOVA as Marie Louni / Nathalie
Alain DELON as Foche
Curd JURGENS as Legraine
Armen DZHIGARKHANYAN as Max
Albert FILOZOV as Schoerner
Nikolai Grinko as Yermolin
Georges GERET as "Dennis Pew"
Claude JADE as Francoise
Gleb STRIZHENOV as Simon
Vsevolod SANAYEV as innkeeper
Nartai BEGALIN as driver
and others

Awards:
* The Golden Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival in 1981.

? Coproduction of MOSFILM (USSR), PRO DIS FILM AG (Switzerland), MEDITERRANEE CINEMA (France), 1981.

==================
Wikipredia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teheran_43
Internet Movie database:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081609/
==================
English subtitles by Maria KURCHATOVA LOPES PEREIRA.

You can download the subtitles here:
http://subs.com.ru/page.php?id=17513
and here:
http://www.opensubtitles.org/en/subtitles/3676232/tegeran-43-en
==================
If you like Russian culture and you want to see Russian films, cartoons (with English subtitles) and other video (music and other stuff for the pastime), please visit my channels on veoh.com:
http://www.veoh.com/users/birubir
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Une vie d'amour
Remplie de rires clairs
Un seul chemin
Déchirant nos enfers
Allant plus loin
Que la nuit
La nuit des nuits

Une vie d'amour
Que l'on s'était jurée
Et que le temps a désarticulée
Jour après jour
Blesse mes pensées
Tant des mots d'amour
Que nos c?urs ont criés
De mots tremblés, de larmes soulignées
Dernier recours
De joies désaharmonisées

Des aubes en fleurs
Aux crépuscules gris
Tout va, tout meurt
Mais la flamme survit
Dans la chaleur
D'un immortel été
D'un éternel été

Une vie d'amour
Une vie pour s'aimer
Aveuglément
Jusqu'au souffle dernier
Bon an mal an
Mon amour
T'aimer encore

Et toujours

a life of love
filled of clear laughters
only one way
taring our hells
going further
that the night
(will be) the night of nights

a life of love
which we had sworn on ourselves
and that the time disarticulated
day after day
wounds my thoughts
so many words of love
which our hearts screamed
of trembled words, of underlined tears
last recourse
unharmonized joys

paddles in flowers
at the gray twilights
all goes, all dies
but the flame survives
in the heat
of an immortal summer
of an eternal summer

a life of love
a life to love
blindly
till the last breath
good year bad year
my love
to still love you

and always (and forever)