Zero truth, says Trump as Iran convicts 17 CIA ‘spies’

IRAN claimed yesterday that it had captured 17 people it accuses of spying for the CIA and had sentenced several of them to death, in a sign Tehran was hardening its position in its stand-off with Western powers.

Those taken into custody worked on “sensitive sites” in military and nuclear facilities and as contractors in the private sector, an Iranian intelligence official told a press conference in Tehran.

The head of counter-intelligence at the Iranian intelligence ministry, whose identity was not revealed, did not say how many of those arrested had received the death sentence or when the sentences would be carried out.

The 17 suspects had been identified as Iranians who were said to have acted independently of each other and had been arrested in the 12 months up to March this year.

Such arrests of nationals accused of spying for foreign governments are not unusual – Iran said in April it had uncovered 290 US spies in recent years – but the timing has raised concerns.

Responding to the reports via Twit- ter, President Donald Trump wrote: “Zero truth. Just more lies and propaganda (like their shot-down [US] drone) put out by a religious regime that is badly failing and has no idea what to do.

“Their economy is dead, and will get much worse. Iran is a total mess.”

Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, dismissed Iran’s announcement, saying the regime had a “long history of lying”.

Tehran said some of the alleged spies were recruited after falling into a “visa trap” set by the CIA for Iranians seeking to travel to the United States. “Some were approached when they were applying for a visa, while others had visas from before and were pressured by the CIA in order to renew them,” said the counter-intelligence chief. An Iranian television documentary, broadcast yesterday, purported to show a CIA officer recruiting an Iranian man in the United Arab Emirates.

The semi-official Fars news agency released excerpts from the documentary, including what it said were pictures of the alleged US agents who recruited the spies as well as the business cards of State Department officials.

The announcement came as Nazanin Zaghari-ratcliffe, the British-iranian aid worker detained in Tehran on espionage charges, was transferred back to a Tehran prison from a hospital psychiatric ward, where she had been held incommunicado for a week.

Her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said Mrs Zaghari-ratcliffe’s mother and her daughter, Gabriella, were allowed to visit her in Evin prison on Sunday, and that he had spoken to her by phone yesterday for a few minutes. Mrs Zaghariratcliffe said she was chained to a bed day and night in a room measuring 6.5 feet by 9.8 feet and told her husband she had threatened to hurt herself.

He has expressed fear that the standoff with Iran will further harm his wife’s case.