Iran claims 17 arrests of spies linked to U.S.

A Revolutionary Guard speedboat circles the oil tanker Stena Impero in the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas in this photo released Monday. Iran seized the British-flagged vessel last week.
A Revolutionary Guard speedboat circles the oil tanker Stena Impero in the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas in this photo released Monday. Iran seized the British-flagged vessel last week.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Iran said on Monday that it had arrested 17 Iranian citizens on charges of spying for the United States and had already sentenced some to death.

President Donald Trump called it "another lie" from Iran, adding that his interest in negotiating with the country is waning.

Iran has previously claimed, without elaboration or supporting evidence, to have broken up U.S. spy rings. In June, Iran said it had executed a former Defense Ministry employee convicted of spying for the CIA. In April, it said it had uncovered 290 CIA spies inside and outside the country over the past several years.

At a news conference Monday in Tehran, an official who identified himself as a director of counterespionage in the Intelligence Ministry described the arrests over the past few months of people he said had been trained by the CIA, but he did not name them. He also gave few details of their alleged spying.

The official declined to give his name, and he did not say how many of those arrested had been sentenced. It is rare in Iran for intelligence officials to appear before the media, or for any Iranian official to give a news conference without identifying himself.

The official said those taken into custody worked on "sensitive sites" in military and nuclear installations.

He said the 17 people had "sophisticated training" but did not succeed in their sabotage missions. Their spying missions included collecting information and installing monitoring devices, he said.

He said some were staff members at the targeted facilities and that the rest were working as consultants and contractors. The official said the CIA had promised them U.S. visas or jobs in America but that some of the agents had turned and are now working with Iran against the United States.

The official also handed out a CD with video of what Iran said was a foreign female spy working for the CIA. The disc included the names of several U.S. Embassy staff members in Turkey, India, Zimbabwe and Austria who Iran said were in touch with the recruited spies.

TRUMP RESPONDS

Trump, in a Twitter post, called the Iranian claim about the spies "totally false."

"Zero truth. Just more lies and propaganda," he wrote, calling Iran "a Religious Regime that is Badly Failing and has no idea what to do."

Later, in an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump called Iran a "very mixed up country" with high inflation and a restive population.

"They have a lot of problems," he said. "So, whatever it is, I'm just going to sit back and wait" to see whether Tehran is going to agree to negotiate new limits on its nuclear program and other activities.

The president again criticized the 2015 nuclear accord negotiated under President Barack Obama, calling it a "disaster."

"And instead of being respectful and thankful -- which, frankly, they should have been to the United States and to President Obama for making that ridiculous deal -- instead of being respectful, they put their finger up in the air," Trump said, showing his thumb. "They put their finger up in the air, and they disrespected the United States. They shouldn't have done that. That was a big mistake.

"One of the best things I've done is terminate that ridiculous deal. If they want to make a deal, frankly it's getting harder for me to want to make a deal with Iran because they behave very badly. They're saying bad things."

Critics say Trump's decision to pull out of the nuclear deal and his subsequent use of economic sanctions have set the stage for Iran to lash out at the West.

The president on Monday also appeared to confirm news reports that the USS Boxer used an electronic jamming device to down an Iranian drone, rather than shoot it down with a missile or another conventional weapon.

"The drone came down, you know how it came down, with a new technology that's actually quite amazing," Trump said. The U.S. military last week refused to say what kind of weapon it used against the drone.

Iran has said that it did not lose a drone. Trump called that a lie, saying the U.S. warship had destroyed the drone near the entrance to the Persian Gulf.

The U.S. has not provided any proof or public evidence of a destroyed drone, but Trump said evidence was available.

"It's called 'take a look at it on the ocean floor,'" Trump said. "Just go down there. Take your scuba gear and go down there."

POMPEO CASTS DOUBT

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also dismissed the Iranian claim. In an interview with Fox News, he said that "the Iranian regime has a long history of lying" and blamed it on the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"It is part of the nature of the ayatollah to lie to the world," Pompeo said. "I would take with a significant grain of salt any Iranian assertions about actions that they have taken."

Pompeo noted that Iran last week seized a British-flagged vessel, and he urged other countries to help keep sea lanes secure.

"The responsibility in the first instance falls to the United Kingdom to take care of their ships," he said, adding, "The United States has a responsibility to do our part, but the world's got to take a big role in this, too."

But he attributed the Iranian seizure of the ship to the fundamental character of the Iranian government.

Iran's retaliation against the West "isn't because of the American sanctions," Pompeo said. "This is because the theocracy, the leadership in Iran, their revolutionary zeal to conduct terror around the world for now four decades continues."

"This is a bad regime," he added. "They have now conducted national piracy, right? A nation-state taking over a ship that is traveling in international waters."

As in the past, he appeared to call for comprehensive changes to the Iranian government.

"I am ultimately convinced," Pompeo said, "that the Iranian people will get the leadership behavior that they so richly deserve."

SEARCHING FOR SPIES

A running battle to root out U.S. spies is a staple of the news media in Iran. The country's English-language Press TV recently broadcast a documentary about what it called a successful "mole hunt" for CIA agents.

According to a BBC report, the Iranian intelligence minister, Mahmoud Alavi, said in the documentary that the spy hunt had resulted in the CIA "crumbling like a house of cards." The documentary argued that Trump was making "wrong and bizarre" decisions about Iran and suggested that the reason may be "a lack of access to reliable intelligence."

A fictional Iranian television series called Gando, which reached its conclusion this month, chronicled the exploits of heroic counterintelligence agents battling a villainous American spy working undercover as a journalist.

The director and producer have reportedly said that the series is based on the case of Jason Rezaian, a reporter for The Washington Post who spent 18 months in an Iranian prison on charges of espionage. He and U.S. officials denied the allegations.

In a post on Twitter, Rezaian said the resemblance was only superficial.

"Besides being fat, bald and wearing glasses, there is no similarity to me or anything that has happened in my life," he wrote on June 25.

Iranian news agencies also reported last month that Iran had executed a man arrested two years earlier, Jalal Hajizavar, who was accused of being a spy for the United States. He was said to have been a former employee of the Iranian Defense Ministry's Aerospace Industries Organization who had been fired years earlier.

The semiofficial news agency Fars said that Hajizavar had "explicitly confessed that he had collaborated with the CIA and spied for the United States in return for money." It also reported that his spouse had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for cooperating with him.

The Iranian fear of U.S. spies is founded in history. U.S. intelligence agencies have used cyberweapons to disrupt Iran's nuclear program. And in 1953, the CIA orchestrated a military coup that removed an elected prime minister, enabling Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to stay in power until he was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Information for this article was contributed by David D. Kirkpatrick of The New York Times; and by Aya Batrawy, Nasser Karimi, Deb Riechmann, Robert Burns and Brendan Farrington of The Associated Press.

photo

AP/JACQUELYN MARTIN

President Donald Trump waits to welcome Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday at the White House. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump referred to Iran as a “very mixed up country” that has “a lot of problems.”

A Section on 07/23/2019

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