Prominent Iranian hardline cleric Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Supreme Leader's representative in Khorasan Razavi province, has warned that foreign powers are actively recruiting members of Iran's parliament as spies.
Alamolhoda made the allegations during a meeting in Mashhad with members of the parliament’s Basij on Tuesday.
The Basij is a paramilitary volunteer force under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that maintains a presence within nearly all Iranian state bodies, including the parliament.
He said that foreign intelligence agencies do not directly send spies into the parliament. Instead, he alleged, they identify lawmakers whose views align with their own and then recruit them through intermediaries.
"In the Islamic Consultative Assembly, people with different ideas and viewpoints enter," Alamolhoda said. "The enemy comes and evaluates these people to see which ones are close to their goals, and then recruits them through several intermediaries."
