TEHRAN (Agencies)
Iran's Revolutionary Guards arrested a spy network linked to Israeli intelligence who tried to gather information on Iranian nuclear and military programs, the guard's chief said on Monday.
"The intelligence bureau of the Revolutionary Guards Corps has recently discovered a spy network linked with the Israeli Mossad," Mohammad Ali Jafari said on state radio.
"This network sought to gather important information from the Guards' military section, the country's nuclear centers and some security officials," he said.
"Very good information as well as equipment that this network were supplied with have been discovered and people will be informed of the evidence in the near future," he said.
Jafari did not specify how many people were detained or where and when the group was arrested.
A semi-official news agency, Mehr, said those arrested had confessed that they had received training in Israel for carrying out assassinations and bombings.
Iran's official news agency IRNA also reported on Saturday that a group of four "terrorists" with "Zionist equipment and methods" had been arrested in western Iran and said they were planning to carry out assassinations. It did not say when they were detained.
Iran said on Saturday it had hanged an Iranian telecoms salesman convicted of spying for arch-enemy Israel and warned that a "more serious intelligence war" had begun with the Jewish state.
Tehran does not recognize Israel and tensions have flared since the 2005 election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly said the Jewish state is doomed to vanish and branded the Holocaust a "myth".
Israel, which along with the United States accuses the Islamic republic of seeking atomic weapons, has never ruled out a military action to halt Tehran's nuclear drive.
Tehran insists its nuclear program is only aimed at producing electricity and angrily points to Israel's widely believed status as the sole, if undeclared, nuclear weapons power in the Middle East.
Iran says it would retaliate for any military strikes launched by Israel or the United States. |
