Iranian intelligence forces have identified and arrested a number of spies linked to foreign espionage services.
The deputy head of the Intelligence Ministry’s counter-espionage department announced on Tuesday that five teams of spies had been dismantled in the process, describing the arrests as the latest in a series of blows dealt to the “hegemonic system.”
The official said foreign intelligence officers, using various complex methods, were attempting to spy on Iran’s nuclear, political, economic, military and infrastructural projects.
They were operating under the auspices of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Israeli spy agency Mossad and those of some European countries involved in recent espionage cases and intended to conduct acts of sabotage in Iran, intensify cruel sanctions against the country, prevent the Islamic Republic from acquiring modern know-how and damage Tehran’s relations with friendly states, the official noted.
The official said those desperate attempts were thwarted thanks to the vigilance and intelligence command of the Iranian security forces.
The official delivered a warning to “those who have been deceived, traitors and covert and overt enemies of the Islamic Republic,” emphasizing that they will not be immune from Iran’s intelligence command in any location when it comes to the country’s national security.
The Intelligence Ministry’s official assured the Iranian nation that any enemy plot would be countered severely and rigidly.
Earlier on Tuesday, Judiciary Spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said five Iranian nationals were recently detained on charges of spying for Israel, Britain and Germany, adding that two of them have already been convicted.
In a stinging blow to Iran’s enemies, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry said on August 1 that it had arrested Jamshid Sharmahd, the ringleader of the US-based Tondar terrorist group.
In a statement, the ministry said Iranian security forces had managed to arrest Sharmahd, who directed “armed operations and acts of sabotage” in Iran from the US.
Sharmahd was the mastermind of a 2008 terror attack that targeted the Seyyed al-Shohada mosque in the city of Shiraz, killing 14 people and wounding over 200 others.