Iran arrests hundreds in spy crackdown across several cities

Iran’s police chief, Ahmad Reza Radan, said on Sunday that authorities had arrested 500 people accused of leaking information to “hostile entities”.

Radan said that about half of the cases involved “serious incidents”. He added that suspects had allegedly provided precise coordinates and information used to target specific sites, as well as filming locations of air strikes and sending the footage to parties outside the country.

Iranian media also reported a wave of arrests across several provinces on Sunday, including in the country’s north-west.

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The Tasnim News Agency quoted a regional prosecutor’s office as saying that 20 people had been detained on suspicion of sending details about Iranian military and security assets to Israel.

Arrests were also reported in areas that have so far remained away from the main theatre of military operations. The same agency said 10 people were detained in north-eastern Iran, with some accused of gathering information about economic infrastructure and sensitive sites. 

A local branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ intelligence service stated that “as the ‘Zionist enemy’ (Israel) and the United States are attempting to invade Iran, they are also activating mercenaries and spies to carry out riots as the next step,” the state-linked Tasnim News Agency reported, according to Reuters.

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