An unprecedented leak of Iranian intelligence documents shows Iran often outmanoeuvred the US in the battle for dominance in Iraq by recruiting abandoned CIA sources and reportedly getting access to American spy equipment.

Around 700 pages of files documenting the Iranian ministry of intelligence’s operations in Iraq were leaked to The Intercept website, the first time that the Islamic Republic has suffered a public leak on this scale.

The documents, written mainly in 2014 and 2015, reveal the scale of Iran’s influence in neighbouring Iraq and how its intelligence operatives tried to capitalise on the US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 for its own ends.

A major tactic was to recruit Iraqis who had once worked for the CIA but were cast aside after the US withdrawal, leaving the sources without an income and terrified for their lives.

CIA handlers nicknamed one Iraqi man “Donnie Brasco”, after a legendary FBI undercover operative who infiltrated the New York mafia. But the man switched sides to Iran in 2014 and was recorded in the Iranian files as “Source 134992”.