By IANS,
Tehran: Iran’s intelligence ministry announced Saturday that it has arrested a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spy in the country.
The spy of Iranian nationality is a CIA analyst tasked with carrying out a “complex intelligence operation” and “infiltrating Iran’s intelligence apparatus”, Xinhua reported citing a ministry statement.
Iran’s Press TV said the spy had worked for the Military Intelligence Division of the US Army at military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Iranian intelligence officials identified the spy upon his arrival at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan. They monitored his actions after he entered Iran, and later arrested him when he attempted to start espionage activities in the country, the ministry statement said.
The statement accused the US of designing complicated plots to penetrate into Iran’s intelligence system in a bid to continue “hostile and all-out” intelligence operations against the country.
In November, an Iranian lawmaker had said the country was surrounded by Western spying centres near the Iranian border with neighbouring countries.
Zohre Elahian, a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Iranian parliament, said Israel’s Mossad, CIA and Britain’s MI6 has espionage centres, which were tasked with organising terrorist and intelligence operations against Iran.
Iran claims to have arrested a number of Israeli and US spies in the country over the past few years.