[Lonesome in Massachussets]

The Iranians, or Persians, if you will, whom I have known are about as subtle as a sledgehammer and as smooth as caustic soda. Ahmadinejad is their president, for God’s sake. Monarchist, Islamist, Marxist, hedonist, they are all as transparent as glass and deep as a mud puddle.

[Rockingham]

Yet Iranian intelligence snookered the CIA in a long running double agent operation that, at a critical moment, led US intelligence to falsely conclude while George Bush was in office that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program.

Similarly, like the Iranians, the Cold War Soviets were notorious for bad accents, bad suits, and poor personal grooming, they penetrated every Western intelligence agency with often devastating consequences. Crude does not necessarily mean ineffective.