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Captured Mossad-backed cell aimed to blow up nuclear facility, Iran says

Tehran’s Intelligence Ministry says that it captured all members of the spy network.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Iranian media claimed Sunday that an alleged Israeli spy network the regime had just captured was at the advanced stages of a plan to blow up a nuclear facility in the country.

The ring had already hidden explosives at an unnamed site in Isfahan, which is home to several key Iranian missile and nuclear installations, the report said.

Tehran mouthpiece Tasnim News stated Saturday that the secret agents were planning to implement “unprecedented acts of sabotage and terrorist operations in certain sensitive areas by using the latest technology as well as powerful explosives.”

According to the report, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said that all members of the network were captured by the security services, along with “their weapons, explosives, as well as their technical and communication equipment.”

The ministry did not release the number of those arrested, nor did it state their nationalities.

A senior official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Yadollah Khedmati, said that the network’s members “were in contact with the agents of the Mossad spy terrorist organization.”

Israel’s intelligence organization has been accused numerous times by the Iranian regime of carrying out sabotage operations in the country, especially against its nuclear facilities, as well as killing its leading scientists. Israel typically does not comment.

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Before announcing the capture, Iranian state media indirectly confirmed that an IRGC missile engineer was assassinated last week, calling Thamardar Mutlak a “shahid.”

However, the Iranian National Congress, a U.S.-based opposition group, said that the authorities had specifically wanted to downplay the issue at this time and warned Mutlak’s family not to spread the news of his assassination.

The Islamic regime has arrested dozens of people over the past year, accusing them of working for the Mossad. Last month, a top general of the IRGC was arrested as an Israeli spy, and the organization’s longtime chief of intelligence, Hossein Taeb, was ousted.