Iran Sentences “CIA Spies” to Death. Trump Calls it Propaganda

Iran has arrested 17 Iranian nationals who were spying for the CIA, an Iranian official has claimed. 

Speaking at a news conference on July 22, the official identified himself only as the director of counterespionage for Iran’s intelligence ministry. He said verdicts against the spies had been issued, and that some of them would face execution. The New York Times reported that some of the accused had already been executed, whereas the Guardian reported that some of them had been “sentenced to death.”

The official told reporters: “On June 18 it was reported that the Ministry of Intelligence had succeeded in identifying and arresting a spy network ... the identified spies had jobs in sensitive and vital sites or in the private sector as contractors or consultants.” He defined the “sensitive and vital sites” as areas related to the economy, the nuclear program, the military and the internet. “The spies worked as [independent] cells and had no communication with each other,” he said. “Each of them were in contact with a CIA officer.”

At the same time that the press conference was taking place, Fars News Agency, an affiliate of the Revolutionary Guards, published a documentary video (in Persian) with the title “Hunting Spies.” In the video, the intelligence ministry claims that it had identified the CIA officers in foreign countries and had captured their activities to recruit Iranian spies on video. The video features images of these alleged CIA officers, although some of their faces are blurred. Parts of the video, it says, were filmed in various countries including Austria, Thailand and Dubai. “This documentary was made based on the intelligence ministry’s strike on CIA’s espionage networks in 2018,” the opening credits declare. “Pictures of spies have been blurred for security reasons.” Nevertheless, a few hours later, Fars News Agency published videos and pictures of the individuals it claimed were CIA officers [Persian link].

The video shows the alleged spies confessing to the same crimes that the ministry’s director of counterespionage referred to in the press conference.

“Some of these individuals were ensnared by the CIA when they requested visas to the US,” said the official. “They were offered visas in exchange for espionage. Others were deceived by the CIA because they wanted to keep or to extend their various kinds of visas.” And the documentary video Fars published shows some of the alleged spies confessing in front of the camera, stating that they had been given the offer to spy while they were at US embassies with the intention of obtaining visas.

Recruiting Spies through Social Media 

“The CIA also created fake companies so that it could do intelligence work with Iranian nationals under the guise of hiring Iranian specialists or acquiring equipment from outside of Iran,” the Ministry of Intelligence official said. He added that another recruitment method the CIA had used was to instruct its officers to recruit at scientific conferences in European, African and Asian countries. In certain cases, he said, CIA officers sent emails or messages via social networking sites, identified themselves as US intelligence agents and invited people with accounts on these platforms to cooperate with them.

“With the changes in the White House and the ascendency of warmongers like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, the CIA was again given the task of spending a huge budget and using all its capabilities to recruit and train new spies inside the country in order to spy on sensitive sites in Iran,” the narrator of the “Hunting Spies” video says. “But the Iranian intelligence community, who knew about CIA officers outside Iran, put hunting the spies on its agenda...This changed Intelligence Ministry policy from being defensive to offensive. They knew that offense is the best defense and started to surveil CIA intelligent bases and officers outside Iranian borders.”

The video often cuts to Mahmoud Alavi, Iran’s Minister of Intelligence, who claims: “At different junctures the intelligence ministry has stricken deciding blows on the American intelligence service. This time as well we were there from the beginning.”

Tools of Espionage

“All the individuals in this espionage network had been trained through complex courses on how to securely communicate inside and outside Iran by using special espionage equipment provided by CIA officers,” the intelligence ministry’s director of counterespionage told the press conference. He said that necessary and sophisticated espionage tools and money were often hidden inside emptied-out stones, which were placed in various urban locations, parks or mountainous areas. The spies then picked up the stones, and broke them in order to retrieve the equipment and the money. The “Hunting Spies” video purports to recreate scenes that show how this was done.

The spies, said the intelligence ministry official, were trained how to withstand interrogation if they were arrested, but when they realized that the intelligence ministry knew about their plot “it did not work” and “all the members of this espionage network confessed to their connection to the CIA.”

At the press briefing, he also handed out a CD with a video recording of an alleged foreign female spy working for the CIA. The disc included names of several US embassy staff in Turkey, India, Zimbabwe and Austria who Iran claims were in touch with the recruited Iranian spies.

Shortly after the announcement, US President Donald Trump tweeted: “The Report of Iran capturing CIA spies is totally false. Zero truth. Just more lies and propaganda (like their shot down drone) put out by a Religious Regime that is Badly Failing and has no idea what to do. Their Economy is dead, and will get much worse. Iran is a total mess!” Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, dismissed Iran’s announcement that it had captured 17 alleged spies. “The Iranian regime has a long history of lying,” Pompeo said on Monday, July 22 in an interview on Fox News.