TEHRAN – China has been in the crosshairs of the United States ever since it achieved a rarely seen economic growth in modern times, something that Washington is working its butt off to stop, or at least slow down.

Just recently, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote a lengthy article accusing Chinese President Xi Jinping of pursuing an “unbridled ambition” to “mold the existing world order into a system of global governance controlled by Communist China through its prophesied future supremacy in all forms of international power.”

In the article for National Interest, Pompeo warned that “China, therefore, represents the greatest threat that America has faced in the modern era, for no other nation that has contested the United States has possessed China’s relative economic power or population.”

The U.S. has sought to use everything in its power to counter China. But little is known about the many ways Washington is using to “create chaos and havoc” across China. 

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has resorted to a multilayered, multi-pronged scheme to destabilize China and derail its One Road One Belt initiative, the Tehran Times can reveal.

In a January 11 article, the Tehran Times briefly pointed to Imad Zuberi, an American spy who used his business cover to approach world leaders and the international business elite in a bid to spy for the U.S.

After more than a decade of spying for U.S. intelligence agencies, Zuberi was sentenced in February last year to 12 years in prison for alleged offenses ranging from tax evasion to foreign-influence peddling and campaign-finance violations.

The Tehran Times has learned that Zuberi was deeply implicated in spying for the CIA in China. He was operating under the supervision of a high-ranking CIA officer called Rob Kee, who is the former Station Chief of Afghanistan, Head of Near East Desk, and the Western Region Station Chief in Long Beach. 

The CIA instructed Zuberi to undertake a variety of activities ranging from approaching some powerful people on Capitol Hill to establishing contacts with Muslim leaders of the Chinese Muslim minority as well as the members of the China Communist Party (CCP). 

Under directions from Kee, Zuberi got close to a number of Congressmen, including Senator Lindsey Graham. The main reason for this was to use these people for “media propaganda purposes.” He succeeded in using Graham for such purposes. 

Another reason was to push for a Congressional mandate to go against China as a country and its One Road One Belt initiative.

Zuberi’s mission against China also included incitement against Chinese living in Muslim Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, North Africa, and Afghanistan. 

The CIA figured that one way to derail the One Road One Belt initiative is to use propaganda to exploit the Chinese internment of Muslims using media outlets in America and beyond. The underlying reason for that was that the Chinese BRI project is running through several of the 59 Muslim countries. 

Zuberi played a pivotal role in executing this strategy. On instructions from Kee, he traveled to China to visit mosques in several cities in China in order to find Muslim leaders. 

Using his connections in the Persian Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) and Turkish halal food companies supplying Chinese Muslims with that kind of food, Zuberi socialized well with Chinese Muslims. 

He collected locations, photos, and names of leaders of Uyghur Muslims, Hui Muslims, Xidaotang Muslims, and Yihewani Muslims as well as major mosques in the regions of Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Ningxia, Gansu, and Qinghai. Zuberi sent all the information he collected to Kee. 

He also paid money to his assets in China from his own bank accounts and was instructed to not disclose to his assets that he was paying them on behalf of the CIA. In other words, the CIA wasn’t willing to have its Chinese assets knowing they were being exploited by it. 

Zuberi returned to Long Beach with all the information he collected from China and met with CIA China experts to review information. At Langley, he thoroughly discussed his espionage activities in China. He also provided the CIA with information not only related to Chinese Muslims but also to members of the CCP whom he helped bring to America, namely Las Vegas. 

So, what was all that for? Zuberi himself answered this question. He said the idea was to create chaos and havoc across China. Zuberi explicitly said that the CIA was seeking to replicate its fomenting of Hong Kong in other places in China. According to Zuberi, the CIA destabilized Hong Kong to undermine Beijing’s authority in the city. 

Zuberi noted that U.S. senators and House representatives went to Hong Kong or accused China of creating a civil war in the city and killing innocent people when in fact the U.S. and CIA were doing this.

This isn’t new to the CIA. It has long been involved in malign activities across the world. 

In the recent unrest in Kazakhstan, many observers pointed the finger of the blame on the U.S. which has been keeping an eye on Kazakhstan due to its long borders with Russia. This has been raised in a recent private meeting of General Frank McKenzie, the outgoing commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). McKenzie said in the meeting that “when you are doing business in Kazakhstan you’ve got to recognize that Kazakhstan has a land border with Russia that is as long as our border with Canada. So, geography is destiny for playing with central Asia states.”