Now Iran sentences ‘CIA spies’ to death as tanker crisis rocks Middle East
Iran has captured 17 people it claims were spies working for the CIA and some have been sentenced to death, Iranian media has reported. State television quoted the Iranian intelligence ministry as saying it had broken up a “CIA spying ring”.
A ministry official said some of those arrested had been sentenced to death, the country’s semi-official Fars news agency reported. A state TV statement said: “The identified spies were employed in sensitive and
vital private sector centres in the economic, nuclear, infrastructural, military and cyber areas... where they collected classified information.”
The announcement comes amid deteriorating relationships between Iran and western nations including the US and UK. Yesterday, Theresa May chaired an emergency security meeting to discuss how to respond to Iran’s seizure of a British-flagged tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.
It is not immediately clear if the arrests are linked to claims by Iran last month of having dismantled a “big spy network” tied to the CIA. In June, the Iranian intelligence ministry said it had identified the spies after discovering an online communication system used by the CIA to operate the network, according to a report on the state-run IRNA agency.
Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, dismissed Iran’s claims yesterday, while declining to comment on any specific cases. “The Iranian regime has a long history of lying ... I would take with a significant grain of salt any Iranian assertion about actions that they’ve taken,” he told Fox News.
A documentary broadcast over the weekend by the state-owned Press TV detailed the “mole hunt” to catch the 17 alleged spies. The programme on the English-language channel suggested the CIA set up a network inside Iran using “fake companies” which offered US visas and an “ideal life abroad” to Iranian.
It said those companies were used to recruit agents, who then collected information for the US. The programme interviewed one of the alleged CIA spies, who said a man named Steve from the US embassy in the United Arab Emirates offered to give him money to set up a business in Tehran to monitor the country’s trade. The “moles” recruited by the CIA were given “training courses on espionage” abroad, the documentary suggested. The programme described the CIA operation as an “undeclared war”.