On February 28, 2026 — the same day that Israeli and American forces launched their opening strikes against Iran — a quiet, deliberate voice appeared on 7910 kHz shortwave. It spoke in Farsi. It read groups of numbers. And then it was gone.It came back the next day. And the day after that. What shortwave listeners around the world were picking up was almost certainly a numbers radio station: a clandestine radio broadcast used by intelligence agencies to pass coded messages to agents in the field. The technique dates back to the First World War, and while the digital age has largely rendered it obsolete, the current disruption of internet connectivity inside Iran appears to have given this Cold War relic a second life.
The station has since been catalogued by the hobbyist monitoring community as V32 — and it may be the first newly identified voice numbers station in nearly a decade.
What Is a Numbers Station?
Numbers stations are shortwave radio station broadcasts — usually in a single sideband or AM voice mode — that read out strings of numbers or letters. To anyone without the corresponding codebook, the transmissions are completely meaningless. To the intended recipient, they carry operational instructions.
The encryption method used is the one-time pad: both the sender and receiver hold identical sheets of random numbers used once to encode and decode a message. The sheets are destroyed after use. The system is considered mathematically unbreakable, and because the recipient never transmits anything back, they cannot be located by direction-finding equipment. It is elegant, low-tech, and extremely hard to stop.
The Signal: What Listeners Are Hearing on 7910 kHz
The V32 transmission opens with a male voice — possibly synthetic or pre-recorded — saying “Tavajoh! Tavajoh!” (Attention! Attention! in Farsi), followed by groups of Persian numbers delivered at a consistent pace. Underneath the voice, listeners have reported a distinctive dual tone of approximately 620 Hz and 925 Hz, pulsing roughly every three seconds.
Confirmed technical characteristics documented by monitors include:
- Frequency: 7910 kHz USB (Upper Sideband)
- Scheduled transmission times: 02:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC
- Voice: Male, steady pacing, possibly digitally generated
- Subcarrier tones: Dual-tone beep every ~3 seconds beneath the voice
- Signal strength: Strong across southern and central Europe; also received in eastern North America with moderate fading
Listeners from Jacksonville (NC and FL), eastern Canada, and across Europe have all logged the signal. One recording, archived publicly, runs over 80 minutes from the 02:00 UTC transmission — suggesting this is a sustained operational broadcast, not a one-time test.
Who Is Sending It — and to Whom?
This is the question that has divided the monitoring community, and for now, there is no definitive answer.
The case for Iranian origin: Italian ham radio operator and shortwave enthusiast Lorenzo (IZ0KBA) was among the first to write about the signal in detail. He argues that the strongest reception reports come from Southern and Central Europe — exactly the propagation pattern you’d expect from a Middle Eastern transmitter. The 7.9 MHz region is well-established for military and diplomatic HF communications in that part of the world, and the voice cadence and structure are said to resemble previously documented Iranian utility transmissions. Under this interpretation, Iranian intelligence is passing orders to agents operating abroad.
The case against Iranian origin: Direction-finding results gathered by the Priyom.org tracking group point not toward Iran itself, but toward the Red Sea area. Adding weight to this interpretation: the transmissions have, at times, been subjected to jamming by Iran’s own bubble jammer — a technique Tehran has historically used to suppress hostile broadcasts. If Iran is running the station, why would it jam itself? This has led some analysts to speculate that the signal is being broadcast into Iran — possibly by Israeli, Western, or Gulf state intelligence — to communicate with assets inside the country while conventional internet channels remain disrupted.
Both scenarios are consistent with historical patterns of numbers station use during periods of regional conflict and communication blackout.
V32: A New Entry in the Spy Radio Catalogue
The hobbyist archiving community moved quickly. The long-running Numbers & Oddities archive catalogued the station as V32 using the ENIGMA classification scheme — a letter-number designation system that covers all known numbers stations. The formal ENIGMA2000 designation was assigned on April 4, 2026.
According to Priyom.org, which maintains one of the most comprehensive live tracking databases of clandestine signals, V32 may be the first new voice numbers station to be formally classified since a Vietnamese station went dark in 2016. That makes it a genuinely significant event in the shortwave monitoring world — not just a curiosity, but a documented addition to the global catalogue of active spy radio.
How to Listen and What to Log
For amateur radio operators and shortwave listeners who want to monitor V32 themselves, the key parameters are straightforward: tune to 7910 kHz USB at 02:00 UTC or 18:00 UTC. A basic shortwave receiver or SDR (software-defined radio) setup with a reasonable wire antenna should be sufficient, especially across Europe and the eastern United States.
If you log a reception, experienced monitors recommend noting the following:
- Exact UTC time and duration of transmission
- Signal strength and any QSB (fading) patterns
- Structure of numeric groups (3-digit, 4-digit, or 5-digit sequences)
- Any changes in voice, pacing, or the subcarrier tone
- Whether any jamming was observed
If you want to attempt transcription, the Farsi numerals are: 1 = Yek, 2 = Do, 3 = Se, 4 = Chahâr, 5 = Panj, 6 = Shesh, 7 = Haft, 8 = Hasht, 9 = Noh, 10 = Dah.
Numbers stations are a direct window into the tradecraft of intelligence services. Their reappearance on the HF spectrum — especially on a newly activated frequency, timed precisely to the outbreak of military conflict — is a reminder that when modern digital infrastructure is disrupted or compromised, older, simpler technologies don’t just survive: they become operationally essential.
The internet blackout inside Iran has apparently rendered covert digital communications impractical for at least some purposes. Shortwave radio, which requires no internet infrastructure, no SIM card, and no identifiable endpoint on the part of the receiver, fills that gap in a way that no app or encrypted messaging service can.
Whether V32 turns out to be Iranian intelligence directing overseas assets, or a foreign service broadcasting into a country at war, the signal is a reminder that the Cold War never entirely ended — it just moved to frequencies most people stopped listening to.
This post was compiled from monitoring logs, analysis by the Priyom.org tracking group, reporting by Seth Hettena (The After-Action Report, Substack), and the original technical observations of Lorenzo IZ0KBA. As this is an evolving situation, details may be updated as new reception data becomes available.
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