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Close Call: Iranian Terrorists, Israeli Targets slept under same roof

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Pistols with silencers and a narrow escape: 8 Iranian agents targeting Israeli tourists and diplomats were arrested in Turkey.

By World Israel News Staff

New details of the Iranian plot to kidnap and murder Israelis in Turkey last month were revealed over the weekend.

According to a report Sunday by the Daily Sabah, a Turkish daily, a total of eight Iranian agents were arrested at three different locations last month, when Turkish authorities foiled an Iranian plot to carry out retaliatory attacks on Israelis.

The planned attacks came following the assassination of the deputy commander of an elite unit in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, which Iran blamed on Israel. Khodaei was said to have been planning attacks against Israelis.

All eight of the cell members arrested were part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the report said.

Turkey was already aware of the Iranian cell’s presence in the country prior to the arrests, the report added, possibly after being tipped off by Israel.

The Iranian terror cell had planned to murder two different groups of Israeli tourists with shooting attacks in Istanbul, the report said, and to kidnap Israeli diplomats, including the former Israeli consul-general in Istanbul, Yosef Levi Sfari, who now serves as director of the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s mission in the Caribbean.

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The report said that Sfari and one group of the tourists targeted by the Iranian agents were staying at a hotel near Istanbul’s Taksim Square just before the June arrests.

Several Iranian terrorists involved in the plot checked in the very same home, forcing Turkish authorities to quietly evacuate the Israeli visitors to another hotel.

During their stay at the hotel off of Taksim Square, one member of the Israeli tour group broke down crying in the hotel lobby, after learning that Iranian agents were planning a terror attack against the group.

Sunday’s report revealed that three pistols equipped with silencers had been confiscated during the Turkish crackdown.

The report also released images taken from closed circuit television systems in the hotel, showing one of the Iranian agents.