An influential Iran parliamentarian has said that the country has arrested 12 agents of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the country’s official IRNA news agency reported. Parviz Sorouri, who sits on the powerful committee of foreign policy and national security, that the alleged agents had been operating in coordination with Israel’s Mossad and other regional agencies, and targeted the country’s military and its nuclear programme.
“The US and Zionist regime’s espionage apparatuses were trying to damage Iran both from inside and outside with a heavy blow, using regional intelligence services,” Sorouri was quoted as having said on Nov 23. “Fortunately, with swift reaction by the Iranian intelligence department, the actions failed to bear fruit,” Sorouri said.
This current announcement follows the unravelling by Lebanon’s Hezbollah of a CIA spy ring in that country. Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said in June on television he had unmasked at least two CIA spies who had infiltrated the ranks of the organisation. Though the US Embassy in Lebanon officially denied the accusation, American officials conceded that Nasrallah wasn’t lying and that Hezbollah had subsequently methodically picked off CIA informants.