Iran’s diplomat faces charges of running European spy network
A senior U.S. State
Department official told reporters that Iran routinely uses embassies to plan
terrorist activities.
Aug.10, 2018 - Intelligence
reports and opposition groups are disclosing how the Iranian regime is behind a
wide-scale spy network throughout Europe aiming to obtain technology to advance
its ballistic missile program, weaken and disrupt the measures of opposition
groups and ultimately carry out targeted assassinations.
Asdollah Assadi, an Iranian
diplomat, was recently arrested in Germany for his leading role of
orchestrating a plan to bomb the June 30th Paris rally in support of the main
Iranian opposition coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI),
according to opposition sources at a Brussels press
conference on Wednesday.
The Iranian
regime’s Supreme National Security Council ordered the Paris attack back in
January and a senior Intelligence Ministry official, Reza Amiri Moghadam, head
of the Foreign Intelligence and Movements, handed over all controls over the
plot to Assadi in March.
Home-made TATP
explosives were seized from an Iranian-Belgian couple in Antwerp before they
reached the rally where high-profile figures such as Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now
the lawyer of U.S. President Donald Trump, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich,
former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and others took part.
German domestic
intelligence reports have frequently indicated how Iran’s agents are spread
throughout their soil. Following the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the focus of
Iranian regime’s activity apparently shifted from nuclear proliferation to
procuring rocket and missile technology.
Assadi has a very
suspicious past, especially considering his previous mission at Iran’s Baghdad
embassy after the 2003 war, from where he was ordered to Vienna where the post
evolved into becoming the Iranian regime’s “nerve center” for the mullahs’ spy
network focusing on Europe, according to the NCRI.
“The station of
the MOIS in Vienna, located on the third floor of the embassy, is the
headquarters and the coordinator of the MOIS stations and agents in Europe,”
the coalition said. “According to statements of various officials of the
regime, the government of Austria and the Iranian regime have extensive, yet
low profile relations. This has created a very suitable situation for setting
up the main station of the MOIS in Europe.”
The NCRI report
goes on to identify other station heads in Berlin and Paris, adding they are
among the “most important” outposts under the Vienna bureau’s supervision.
Despite the
Iranian regime’s denials, German prosecutors are concluding that Assadi is
linked to the Iranian intelligence apparatus and was focused on observing and
combating opposition groups.
Tehran has
increased its use of diplomatic cover to pursue assassinations and other terror
plots in the Green Continent, according to a report titled “Iran’s Deadly
Diplomats” in the August publication of West Point’s Combating Terrorism Centre
Sentinel journal.
The piece reads
how two Iranian diplomats were expelled from the Netherlands in June following
the assassination of an Iranian Arab activist. Albania arrested two Iranian
officials in March for their role in surveillance on the PMOI/MEK’s New Year
celebrations held near the country’s capital, Tirana. Police raids on Iranian
operatives in Germany were also carried out in
January.
 |
| Iranians demonstrate to demand the extradition of Iran diplomat-terrorist |
“The Assadi arrest is therefore just the most recent alleged example of Iranian state-sponsored terrorism in which Tehran uses visiting government officials or accredited diplomats to plot,” the West Point report added.
Source:
Comments
Post a Comment