Gevork Vartanian, 87, a fabled Russian spy

MOSCOW

- Gevork Vartanian, a former Soviet intelligence agent who helped derail a Nazi plot to assassinate allied leaders at a 1943 conference in Tehran, has died. He was 87.

President Dmitry Medvedev sent condolences to Vartanian's widow, Goar, who worked with him on intelligence missions abroad and helped cement their fame as a storied spy couple.

The Foreign Intelligence Service, which goes by the Russian acronym SVR and is a successor to the KGB, said that Vartanian, whose father was a Soviet agent in Tehran posing as a merchant, began working for Soviet intelligence when he turned 16. He played a role in foiling a Nazi plot to assassinate Soviet leader Josef Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill when they met in Tehran in November 1943.

Adolf Hitler ordered operation "Long Jump" after Nazi intelligence learned of the conference. Vartanian's group shadowed an advance team of Nazi agents, who arrived to set the ground for the mission, helping to uncover the plot.

The SVR said that, acting on orders from Moscow, Vartanian also joined a British intelligence school in Tehran and obtained information about its graduates sent to the Soviet Union, allowing Soviet authorities to catch them.

The SVR said that Vartanian and his wife worked as intelligence agents in several countries between the 1950s and 1986, but didn't name them. They got married several times in different places as part of their cover.

The ITAR-Tass news agency said that they worked in Iran, Italy, France and Greece, among other nations.

Vartanian received the highest Soviet award, the Hero of the Soviet Union medal. After retiring in 1992, he helped train young intelligence agents, the SVR said. His wife also has been honored with medals.