Iran Claims It Arrested Israeli-Linked Sabotage Team
Iran claimed on Saturday that it had arrested all members of a sabotage team sent by Israel through the Iraqi border, following months of mysterious attacks.
Iran claimed on Saturday that it had arrested all members of a sabotage team sent by Israel through the Iraqi border, following months of mysterious attacks.
A short announcement from the Intelligence Ministry said, “A network from the spy agency of the Zionist regime who were sent to the country for terrorist operations” were identified and arrested.
"This network's members were in contact with (Israel's) Mossad spy agency through a neighbouring country and entered Iran from (Iraq's) Kurdistan region with advanced equipment and strong explosives,"
Since March, Iran has at least three times made similar claims without presenting any evidence or information about what investigators discovered from the persons allegedly detained.
The last instance was on June 14, when the state broadcaster released a video claiming that criminals who were working for Mossad and planning kidnappings and assassinations were arrested. The report called these individuals “thugs and hooligans” and claimed they were involved in a wide range of criminal activities including human and weapons trafficking before being recruited by Israeli agents.
The intelligence ministry’s announcement came two days after Iran International in an exclusive report on July 21 said that Israel’s Mossad had captured a senior Revolutionary Guard official on Iranian soil and interrogated him about weapons shipments to Iran’s proxies in the region. After the interrogation the man was released.
Iran International had obtained video of the interrogation showing a man introducing himself as Yadollah Khedmati, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) Logistics, says he regrets his involvement in shipping weapons to Iran’s proxy groups in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen and urges other IRGC officials to avoid engagement in such activities.
Iranian government media on Saturday confirmed the report, saying that criminal elements had indeed detained the IRGC officer.
Since mid-2020 a series of high-profile mysterious attacks hit Iran’s nuclear and military installations around the country, widely believed to have been Israeli sabotage operations. In November 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a key figure in Iran’s controversial nuclear program was assassinated in a complex operation on the outskirts of Tehran. His killing resembled more a Hollywood thriller, with a heavy, remotely controlled gun mounted in the back of a pickup truck that fired on Fakhrizadeh’s car on a highway.
In May, several IRGC officials were killed or died in suspicious circumstances, prompting Tehran to blame Israel, which has never officially taken credit for these operations.
In June, a major reshuffling of IRGC intelligence and counter-intelligence leadership took place, widely attributed to reported Israeli infiltration and the inability of Iran’s security bodies to deal with the situation.
The intelligence ministry’s announcement can be an attempt to show that Iran is not hapless in the face of repeated acts of sabotage. It can always detain criminals and showcase them as spies or saboteurs with no follow-up information later, as has been the case over the years.
The announcement did not say how many people were arrested and did not divulge their nationality. The network planned "acts of sabotage and unprecedented terrorist operations in sensitive locations", its statement said, without giving details.
A video from a CCTV camera was released on media showing a car, which apparently was following Majid Abdolbaghi’s vehicle as it went into the parking lot, stopped in front of a building, as one man started shooting with a handgun from the front seat and another one got out of the car and started shooting from behind the car. According to reports Abdolbaghi succumbed to injuries after he was taken to hospital.
The Metropol twin towers collapsed on May 23 burying more than 80 people under the rubble, with about 42 bodies recovered. Soon after the collapse it became apparent that the owner and builder, Hossein Abdolbaghi, was a powerful and politically well-connected businessman who had disregarded regulations and building codes, backed by officials, who might have had their own financial interests.
Following the incident, Iranian media initially reported that Abdolbaghi, who was reportedly connected to Iran’s top security official Ali Shamkhani, had been arrested, but the government later announced that he had died in the collapse. The public did not believe the claim and many said that he escaped and corrupt officials, who had allowed him to violate building regulations, wanted him to disappear.
In June, reports came out that a physician who refused to cooperate in the alleged coverup had died mysteriously.
Earlier in the week, Iran’s prosecutor general issued an indictment against 20 people accused in the case of the Metropol incident.
The new campaign began with an Instagram story by reformist activist and sociologist Mohammad Reza Jalaeipur on July 20 when he urged religious women who wear the hijab by choice to oppose the government's pressure on other women to comply with forced hijab.
Jalaeipur’s story went viral and tens of thousands of hijab-wearing women either shared his story or posted their own pictures with the hashtag “I wear the hijab but am against morality police patrols”.
The campaign which is a separate initiative from the anti-hijab campaign launched earlier this month by women’s rights activists has angered many hardliners.
Meanwhile, in a statement Friday, fifteen prominent Iranian figures who are usually referred to as “religious intellectuals”, some of whom have a background in Shiite seminaries condemned the government policy of compulsory hijab and suppression of women.
They also urged religious scholars to display solidarity with Iranian women and condemn forced hijab and tools of suppression such as morality police’s hijab enforcement patrols.
However, hardliner clerics did not mince words in their Friday sermons, calling those who campaign for freedom of choice traitors.
Jalaeipur, a practicing Muslim, has long been speaking against the government's policy of forcing all women to abide by the prescribed hijab rules and argues that imposing these violates the rights of the majority citizens who are against compulsory hijab.
“When are you going to accept that the policy of compulsory hijab has failed and when exactly are you going to revise it?” Jalaeipur had challenged the authorities for a response in a Telegram post on June 27.
Iran’s government which is now fully controlled by hardliners has adopted a harsher than usual approach amid economic crisis and hardship for tens of millions. Government and military officials have warned the population a disobeying hijab rules and the morality police hijab enforcement patrols have detained many women, sometimes violently, on the streets.
The government also designated July 12 as the Hijab and Chastity Day this year and celebrated it with gatherings of women with full hijab at stadiums and other public venues.
Hundreds of thousands have supported the anti-hijab campaign on social media in the past few weeks. Many women have shot videos of themselves with uncovered hair in public places and posted the videos on social media with the ‘No2Hijab’ hashtag to display civil disobedience in reaction to the government’s harsh treatment of women for hijab.
Several activists have been arrested for their defiance of the hijab rules in July including Souri Babai-Chegini, a civil activist who published a video of herself removing her hijab, and Nazi Zandieh, a twenty-one-year-old student who also supported the anti-hijab campaign.
Officials usually insist that complying with hijab rules is “the demand of the majority of Iranians”.
Several surveys in the past few years, including a survey by Gamaan polling agency in the Netherlands, show that more than 50 percent of all Iranians and 75 percent of citizens in larger cities including the capital Tehran, oppose the compulsory hijab rules.
Results of surveys conducted by Iranian government agencies are usually not made public but according to Mehdi Nasiri, the former managing director of the hardline Kayhan newspaper, a survey carried out by the ministry of Islamic guidance in 2015 showed that more than 70 percent of Iranians did not agree with compulsory hijab.