IRAN'S REVOLUTIONARY guards ratcheted up the war of nerves with Israel yesterday by claiming to have broken a spy network run by Mossad, the Israeli espionage agency.
The guards' commander-in-chief, Maj Gen Muhammad Ali Jafari, said they had arrested Israeli-trained agents and seized high-tech communications equipment.
On Saturday, Iran announced it had hanged a businessman who allegedly admitted spying for Israel.
Maj Gen Jafari said the latest group arrested had confessed to having been trained in Israel to carry out assassinations and bombings. He did not specify how many people had been held.
He told semi-official news agency Mehr that the group had sought information about the revolutionary guards, military intelligence officials and Iran's nuclear programme, which Israel and the West fear is designed to produce an atomic bomb. Mossad had provided money to buy cars and equipment, said Maj Gen Jafari, who pledged to release further details about the network at a later stage.
"The arrested people confessed that they have been specially trained in Israel for bombings and assassinations," he said. "The enemies should know that spy networks cannot collect information in Iran and reach their aims."
While Iran routinely accuses Israel and the US of spying against it, yesterday's allegation was the latest in a string of such claims in recent days.
Ali Ashtari (45), whose execution was announced on Saturday, was arrested in 2006. He was the manager of a company selling communication and security equipment to the Iranian government.
The Iranian authorities said he had admitted during a trial last June to spying for Mossad for three years. He was convicted of passing sensitive information on military, defence and research centres to Israel. Iranian prosecutors claimed he had been recruited to intercept the communications of officials working on military operations and the nuclear programme.
Israel has denied all knowledge of the case. News of Mr Ashtari's execution was accompanied by an apparent confession, broadcast on state television, in which he urged others not to "repeat the mistakes that I made".
Similar allegations have been made against a prominent Iranian blogger, Hossein Derakhshan.
Jahan News, a website close to Iran's intelligence services, reported that he had been arrested last week. Maj Gen Jahan said Mr Derakhshan had confessed in custody to spying for Israel.
Mr Derakhshan, who recently returned to Iran after eight years in exile in Britain and Canada, twice visited Israel in 2006 and 2007 on a Canadian passport, saying he wanted to build bridges between Iran and Israel.
But he later became a bitter critic of Israel and a fervent supporter of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. - ( Guardianservice)