Tehran: Iran says it has arrested 17 Iranian nationals allegedly recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency to spy on the country’s nuclear and military sites, and that some of them have already been sentenced to death.
The arrests took place over the past months and those taken into custody worked on “sensitive sites” in the country’s military and nuclear facilities, an Iranian intelligence official told a press conference in Tehran on Monday.
He did not elaborate, say how many of them got the death sentence nor when the sentences were handed down.
The announcement comes as Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers is unravelling and tensions have spiked in the Persian Gulf region. The crisis stems from President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of Tehran’s deal last year and intensify sanction on the country.
The Iranian official did not give his name but was identified as the director of the counterespionage department of Iran’s Intelligence Ministry. Such a procedure is highly unusual in Iran; officials usually identify themselves at press conferences. It is also rare for intelligence officials to appear before the media.
The official claimed that none of the 17, who allegedly had “sophisticated training”, had succeeded in their sabotage missions. Their spying missions included collecting information at the facilities they worked at, carrying out technical and intelligence activities and transferring and installing monitoring devices, he said.
Read the article in The Sydney Morning Herald (AP,Reuters).