The intelligence division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on Tuesday it had dismantled what it described as a spy network directed by US and Israeli spy agencies inside Iran.
The announcement comes in the wake of a broad campaign of arrests and executions that Iranian authorities launched after Israeli assassinations of nuclear scientists and hundreds of military personnel and civilians during a June war exposed deep intelligence lapses.
According to a statement published by the IRGC’s intelligence arm, the group had been “created by hostile services using deceived and traitorous elements to undermine the country’s security in the second half of this autumn.”
The statement added that the network was detected and taken down “after several rounds of surveillance, monitoring, and intelligence operations."
It said its members were arrested “through the vigilance of the anonymous soldiers of Imam Zaman,” a term Iranian authorities use to refer to IRGC intelligence agents.
In June, Iran’s parliament passed an emergency bill to increase penalties for espionage and collaboration with “hostile states,” allowing suspects to be tried under wartime conditions. The bill was later approved and sent to the president for implementation in October.
In September, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran said the country had executed 11 individuals on espionage charges this year, with at least nine carried out after Israel's military strike on Iran on June 13.
Rights groups, including Amnesty International and Iran Human Rights, have condemned the surge in executions, saying trials for alleged espionage often fail to meet international standards of due process.
Tehran maintains that it is acting within its laws to counter what it calls “organized intelligence infiltration” targeting its nuclear and defense programs.
In the aftermath of the 12-day war which culminated in US airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities, Tehran's intelligence forces arrested more than 700 Iranians accused of acting as agents for Israel.
The arrests targeted what authorities described as an “active espionage and sabotage network” that intensified operations after Israeli attacks which killed several senior Iranian military and nuclear figures.
The crackdown comes as Israel’s unrelenting strikes exposed deep cracks in the state’s command and control structures and intelligence competence, with critics accusing intelligence agencies of catastrophic failure.
“Where were our intelligence agencies with all their hefty budgets? How did they fail to detect the spies?” former senior lawmaker Gholam Ali Jafarzadeh Imanabadi asked in an interview in July.
“Commanders and nuclear scientists were murdered in their own bedrooms. The intelligence community must be held accountable.”
