Senior Israeli official warns strike possible if Iran talks collapse

Their accounts document a sprawling overseas network operating under direct orders from the Supreme Leader’s office and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence arm well out of step with common diplomatic practice.

“Every embassy has a list. People to watch. People to engage. People to silence,” an Iranian former diplomatic employee told Iran International.

“It’s not foreign policy—it’s field execution,” another told Iran International. “The people sent abroad are on assignment, not appointment.”

Their account outlines a foreign service shaped not by diplomacy but by ideology, surveillance and illicit finance.

According to these individuals—whose names are withheld for their safety—Iran’s diplomatic missions double as intelligence gathering hubs tasked with tracking dissidents, surveilling student communities and delivering cash and equipment under the protection of diplomatic immunity.

UK authorities detained eight men in May, including three charged under the National Security Act for surveilling Iran International journalists on behalf of Tehran between August 2024 and February 2025.

It was not clear whether the charges related in any way to the Iranian embassy in London.

Iran’s foreign ministry denounced the charges as politically motivated, but former officials say such actions are core to the Islamic Republic’s overseas agenda.

Iran’s embassies maintain the outward structure of any diplomatic mission—ambassadors, attachés and advisers—but according to the sources, the roles often serve as cover.

“A person listed as a translator might actually coordinate funds for proxy groups,” said one of the former diplomats. “Titles are just for appearances.”

In one high-profile case, Iranian diplomat Asadollah Asadi used his status to transport explosives intended for an opposition rally in Paris. His 2021 conviction in Belgium exposed how far such dual roles can go.

Another ex-staffer recalled colleagues arriving in Istanbul and Baku with briefcases of undeclared dollars. “They know no one will search their bags,” he said.

Cultural attachés, especially those linked to the Islamic Culture and Communications Organization, are said to organize religious events abroad that double as screening grounds for potential recruits.

Germany shuttered the Islamic Center of Hamburg in July over its ties to Tehran and what the Interior Ministry called promotion of extremism and antisemitism.

The diplomatic corps itself, sources say, is dominated by the sons of clerics and system insiders.

“Your father is a Friday prayer leader? Your uncle is close to the Supreme Leader? You’re in,” said one.

Posts rarely align with professional background; language skills and experience are often secondary to loyalty.

Though often expelled or exposed, the structure endures. Loyal staff are rotated across continents with little interruption.

“Each post is a mission. If you complete it to the system’s satisfaction, you’re held in reserve for the next,” one former diplomat said.

The network’s reach is enhanced by front organizations. The Imam Khomeini Relief Foundation has been linked to Hezbollah financing. The Iranian Red Crescent has faced accusations of being used by Quds Force operatives for weapons transport. IRGC members have admitted posing as aid workers during the Bosnian war.

IRIB outlets—Press TV, Al-Alam, Hispan TV—have functioned as propaganda arms and intelligence fronts. France expelled one of their journalists in 2011 for spreading state messaging.

The Iranian Red Crescent and the IRGC officially denied these remarks, saying that any such actions were unauthorized and not representative of their organizations.

Despite the rhetoric of resistance, many live in luxury. One former ambassador’s Paris residence cost over €40,000 per month.

“They send their kids to secular schools while preaching Islamic values,” said another. Leaked records show senior envoys receiving up to $12,000 monthly, with generous stipends and ceremonial budgets.

“It’s both reward and insulation,” an ex-diplomatic employee said. “The system buys loyalty with luxury—and distances them from the reality of ordinary Iranians.”

What emerges is not a diplomatic corps, but a global extension of Iran’s security state—trained, titled, and deployed to safeguard the Islamic Republic, not represent it.

Mohsen Langarneshin, a 32-year-old network security engineer, was executed in Ghezel Hesar Prison on April 30 on charges of “waging war against God” and “spreading corruption on Earth,” according to the judiciary’s media outlet Mizan.

Beyond vague headlines in state-controlled outlets, few details of his background and case were publicly available. But rights activist Ryma Sheermohammadi and sources close to Langarneshin told Iran International that the case was fabricated, his trial deeply flawed and confessions he made were extracted under torture.

Iranian authorities were so keen to round up suspects amid serial Israeli intelligence breaches, Sheermohammadi said, that they accused him of being involved in the death of a top missile general they have publicly insisted died by accident.

“This case was manufactured,” Sheermohammadisaid. “He was executed on charges of espionage without a shred of material evidence. The case was built entirely on forced confessions extracted under extreme physical and psychological torture.”

“Mohsen was an easy target for them. They tortured him to gain confessions out of him and he didn’t even tell anyone and fell for their lies that they would spare his life if he complied,” a source close to Langarneshin told Iran International.

Accidental blast

According to Sheermohammadi, Langarneshin was accused of involvement in three high-profile incidents: the 2011 explosion that killed the architect of Iran’s missile program Brigadier General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the 2022 assassination of Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei in Tehran and a 2023 bombing at a munitions factory in Isfahan.

Tehrani Moghaddam, a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), played a central role in developing Iran’s long-range missile arsenal and was widely regarded as the father of Iran’s missile program.

In 2011, he died alongside over a dozen others in a blast west of Tehran - a huge blow to Iran's military establishment but one officials conceded was an accidental detonation during weapons testing.

“At the time (of Tehrani Moghaddam's death), Mohsen was just 19 years old and had no known link to the incident,” Sheermohammadi said.

Sheermohammadi also dismissed allegations tying Langarneshin to the 2022 assassination of Quds Force officer Sayyad Khodaei.

“In the 2022 assassination of Colonel Sayyad Khodaei, Mohsen was accused of conducting surveillance using a motorcycle,” she said. “But he was living in Isfahan at the time, not Tehran, and there is extensive documentation — CCTV footage, phone records, vehicle ownership — proving his absence from the crime scene.”

Langarneshin was also accused of being involved in a 2023 bombing in Isfahan. “But Mohsen had already moved to Tehran well before the incident,” she said. “Again, workplace footage and telecom records confirm this. Another individual was arrested and executed for that very bombing, which raises serious questions about duplicated or fabricated charges.”

Langarneshin had previously worked under contract as a network security engineer at Imam Hossein University, a US-designated military-linked institution controlled by the IRGC that trains specialists in cyber defense, intelligence and missile technology.

“Mohsen had a brief professional association with Imam Hossein University — an IRGC-affiliated institution,” Sheermohammadi said. “That link gave intelligence agencies just enough of a pretext to cast suspicion on him, years later.”

But she said his affiliation ended after 2019 protests which started over fuel price hikes but quickly turned political. They were quashed by authorities with deadly force.

“Mohsen made a principled decision to resign from the university following the bloody crackdown on protesters in November 2019,” she said. “He could no longer, in good conscience, be affiliated with institutions tied to state violence. That act of integrity may have marked him as politically unreliable in the eyes of the regime.”

Sheermohammadi believes Langarneshin was ultimately targeted not for what he did, but his profile fit what investigators were seeking in a defendant.

“The intelligence services were under pressure to deliver ‘results,’ especially in cases involving alleged foreign plots,” she said.

“Mohsen’s international travel history, financial independence through his car business, and technical expertise all made him an easy target — someone who could be cast into a ready-made narrative of espionage, even when the evidence said otherwise.”

Call from Evin Prison

In a recorded phone call from Evin Prison, a copy of which was obtained by Iran International, Langarneshin described being psychologically tortured in a Ministry of Intelligence safehouse the night of his arrest.

His captors, he said, threatened him with flogging, forced him to write false confessions and later filmed him admitting to his alleged crimes based on their cues.

“They told me to say I bought a motorbike, mounted a camera on it and went to film,” he said in the call. “That was very odd — there was never any mention of what kind of motorbike it was or where it came from. I never did that. They made me say it anyway.”

After resisting, he said he was blindfolded, chained in a schoolyard, and filmed again. “They said, ‘This video is for before your execution. If you read the confession we wrote, maybe we’ll change your sentence to life imprisonment.’”

Judge Abolghasem Salavati of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court—referred to by dissidents as the “hanging judge” for his record of issuing numerous death sentences in politically sensitive cases—and upheld by the Supreme Court.

All three retrial requests were rejected — the last one dismissed within two days and without explanation.

His father, Massoud Langarneshin, released a video the day before the execution, calling the case “full of flaws, ambiguities and questions.” His mother also confirmed she had her final visit with Mohsen that same day and appealed for help.

Several human rights groups including Norway based rights group Iran Human Rights (IHR) condemned the hanging, which IHR said took place alongside several other prisoners," said IHRNGO Director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam.

“We must raise the cost of these extrajudicial killings for the authorities through strong international reactions and widespread protest.”

Sheermohammadi said Iranian authorities refused to tell Langarneshin family where he was buried and had forced them to delete all their social media posts.

“Mohsen’s family is being forced into silence by intelligence agents. They have been told not to speak to the media about Mohsen. Only if they obey the conditions set by the intelligence agents are they willing to disclose his burial site,” another source told Iran International.

After eleven days of uncertainty, Sheermohammadi confirmed that Langarneshin had been buried in Behesht Zahra cemetery in south Tehran, alongside other executed political prisoners.

The Iranian negotiating team has been instructed not to proceed with any talks that include proposals to halt or reduce uranium enrichment to zero, Iran International has learned.

According to information obtained by Iran International, a formal directive was issued to the delegation ahead of the fifth round of indirect negotiations with the United States in Rome.

The order said any discussion of ending enrichment is off-limits, and negotiators are required to reject such proposals outright.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s televised interview, aired the night before the talks began, was part of this coordinated approach.

The appearance, organized in consultation with the Supreme National Security Council and the sanctions negotiations committee, aimed to publicly reinforce Tehran’s red lines and manage expectations over a possible failure of the Rome talks.

The messaging also sought to frame the US as responsible should the talks collapse, by emphasizing Iran’s refusal to abandon what it views as its core nuclear rights.

According to information obtained by Iran International, a formal directive was issued to the delegation ahead of the fifth round of indirect negotiations with the United States in Rome.

The order said any discussion of ending enrichment is off-limits, and negotiators are required to reject such proposals outright.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s televised interview, aired the night before the talks began, was part of this coordinated approach.

The appearance, organized in consultation with the Supreme National Security Council and the sanctions negotiations committee, aimed to publicly reinforce Tehran’s red lines and manage expectations over a possible failure of the Rome talks.

The messaging also sought to frame the US as responsible should the talks collapse, by emphasizing Iran’s refusal to abandon what it views as its core nuclear rights.

Iran has asked Oman to intervene and help persuade the United States to ease its hardline position in the ongoing nuclear negotiations, two diplomatic sources in Tehran told Iran International.

Iran’s foreign ministry recently sent a message to Omani officials, urging them to implore Washington to soften its demands, the sources told Iran International on condition of anonymity.

“Given the dependency of Iran’s financial markets—currency, gold, and stocks—on the outcome of the negotiations, the message emphasized that a diplomatic compromise is possible if the United States moderates its position,” one source said.

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