Two Men Arrested In Washington Tried To Get Close To Secret Service
Two men, one with an Iranian name were arrested in Washington on Wednesday for posing as federal agents and giving expensive gifts to Secret Service personnel.
Two men, one with an Iranian name were arrested in Washington on Wednesday for posing as federal agents and giving expensive gifts to Secret Service personnel.
There was no reference in the media to the nationality status of the suspects, whether they were American citizens or legal residents, nor any reference to their possible overseas connections.
One of the men was identified as Arian Taherzadeh, an Iranian-sounding name, while the second individual named Haidar Ali could be of a different Middle Eastern or Southwest Asian origin.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents stormed an apartment building where Taherzadeh was said to have several apartments, offering free of rent to Secret Service agents he had befriended, posing as a Homeland Security undercover investigator.
At least one Secret Service agent assigned to First Lady Jill Biden’s detail was a target of the suspects, who gave or offered expensive gifts to federal agents for yet unexplained reasons.
The conspiracy began in February 2020, according to the Washington Post. This coincides with the killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard general Qasem Soleimani in a US airstrike in Baghdad in January 2020, for which Iran has vowed retaliation against former American officials such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Whether the suspects have any connection with Iran could be speculative at this point before US authorities release more information on the case.
On January 6, 2021 the commander of Iran's Qods (Quds) Force Esmail Ghaani was quoted by Iranian media as saying that "revenge [for Soleimani] has started from day one and you will not have peace even in your own homes...and it cannot be ruled out that we take revenge in your own home."
FBI documents submitted to the US District Court show anti-terrorism agents are involved in the case, requesting search warrants for the suspects’ social media accounts and signing the criminal complaint.
Dozens of federal agents were seen in and around the apartment building on Wednesday, some carrying seized evidence presumably from the apartments belonging to Taherzadeh.
The suspects were fully set up to impersonate federal agents with an official-looking SUV and Tehrazadeh offered his targets gifts, such as weapons and generators, use of vehicles and apartments.
The complaint filed with the court said that four Secret Service personnel were placed on administrative leave on April 4. Both suspects are scheduled to appear in US District Court on Thursday and remain in custody.
The investigation began March 14, according to media reports, when accidently the men were brought to the attention of a US Postal Service inspector visiting the building in question. Residents identified the suspects as federal agents to the inspector, which led to the discovery that they were impersonators.
"This sad incident which was perpetrated by one of the deviant agents of American [-made] Takfiri groups will cause evermore unity and solidarity of those who love Islam and the Islamic Iran and will tarnish deviant groups," Raisi said in a statement Wednesday.
Iranian officials use Takfiri as a vague umbrella term to refer to Sunni dissident groups and individuals in Iran and abroad, alleging that they are organized by western powers and Wahhabis.
A man who officials said Tuesday was a "foreign national" stabbed three clerics in the north-eastern city of Mashhad in Khorasan-e Razavi Province. One of the victims has died and two others who were seriously wounded have been hospitalized.
On Wednesday, Tasnim news agency close to the Revolutionary Guard said the suspect is Abdullatif Moradi, an Afghan of Uzbek ethnicity who entered Iran illegally through Pakistan one year ago. The report also confirmed that six other suspects are under arrest for collaborating with the suspect. Two of the detainees are Moradi’s brothers, Tasnim said and added that they were Takfiri extremists who believed the blood of Shiites must be spilled.
Raisi tasked the intelligence ministry with investigating the rare incident which happened on the third day of the holy month of Ramadan in the courtyard of the shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth imam of Shiites, despite the usual heavy security measures in the compound. Such measures would normally prevent anyone smuggling a knife into the massive shrine complex.
Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf in parliament on Wednesday condemned the attack and indirectly confirmed that the assailant was of Afghan nationality.
"This incident should not destroy friendship and brotherhood between nations," he said, adding that many Afghans, presumably Afghan Shiites, had fought alongside Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) and in Syria in the past 10 years.
Mashhad has a very large Afghan community most of whom are Sunnis. Afghans mostly live in poverty-stricken neighborhoods of the city including where the assailant reportedly lived and the three clerics engaged in Shiite religious activities, the deputy of the Islamic Propaganda Organization said.
Millions of Afghans have lived in Iran as refugees or economic migrants for many years and their numbers have been increasing considerably since the Taliban takeover of the government in Kabul last year. Officials say as many as 5,000 Afghans enter Iran on a daily basis through official borders now while a large number also enter illegally whose numbers are not known.
The Imam Reza Shrine assailant's motive for the attack is not clear. Immediately after the incident some social media users said they suspected a connection with the Saturday shooting of two Sunni clerics in front of aSunni seminary mosque in Gonbad Kavus. The two incidents could have been meant to cause strife between Shiites and the minority Sunnis in the country, they said.
The majority of people in Gonbad Kavus, the second-largest city of the northern province of Golestan, are Sunni Turkmens.
Deputy governor of Golestan Province, Mehdi Dehrouyeh, on Monday said a suspect was being interrogated in connection with the gun attack on Sunni clerics, adding that it was highly likely that there were "personal reasons" for it.
The ultra-hardliner Kayhan newspaper on Wednesday said the incidents in Gonbad Kavus and Mashhad could be part of a "plot" to cause Shiite-Sunni sectarianism.
"It appears that the incident in Mashhad yesterday was part of a security puzzle designed by conspirators to create a national security crisis and sedition through causing a division between the Iranian nation and foreign nationals and discord between Shiites and Sunnis," Kayhan wrote.
Iranian officials often refer to Afghan refugees and economic migrants living in Iran as "foreign nationals".
The prosecutor decided that Farhadi, a twice Oscar winning filmmaker, has violated the intellectual property rights of one of his students at a filmmaking workshop in Tehran and the court has issued a summons.
According to the prosecutor, Farhadi's latest movie, A Hero, has been made based on the core idea of Azadeh Masihzadeh's documentary All Winners, All Losers.
As Farhadi's movie has European producers and distributors, the case has stirred controversy in the international film journals such as Hollywood Reporter. Lawyers in Europe and Iran are still chasing the case.
Farhadi's lawyer in Tehran, Kaveh Rad, said on his Instagram page that both Masihzadeh and the man whose life story was used in the film had filed complaints that have reportedly convinced the prosecutor in Tehran that Farhadi is guilty.
However, Rad, strangely denied that the court has accepted the arguments of the young filmmaker and the prisoner whose personal story has been made public in Farhadi's movie, and according to him, has damaged his reputation.
Rad said that even if the first court finds him guilty another court might over-rule the verdict and restore Farhadi's right over his movie.
According to Masihzadeh in her interviews with Iranian and foreign-based media, she shared her idea with Farhadi in the classroom and told him that she was going to make a documentary about a man who found a large amount of money and returned it to the person who had lost it.
About a year later, Farhadi made A Hero based on the same story and according to Massihzadeh, refused to pay her for the idea or to give her credit for her story in the film's title. Massihzadeh said that Farhadi forced her to sign papers to withdraw her claim, but she was lucky enough to have witnesses.
She told the media that Farhadi refused to see her and listen to her afterwards as his film became internationally acclaimed and was welcomed at several film festivals in Europe and America. It was also nominated for an Oscar, but it was not shortlisted for the award. At the time, Farhadi filed counter-complaints against Massihzadeh's charges, but she told Khabar Online in Tehran that the prosecutor ruled out Farhadi's argument.
Massihzadeh, then made her documentary available on Youtube, where film critics had a chance to decide for themselves about the charge of plagiarism.
Some Iranians on social media have said that plagiarism is Farhadi's personal problem, but he should be accountable for whitewashing the Islamic Republic's crimes. Farhadi was criticized by critics for showing Iranian prisons in a very good and favorable light in his film.
He was also criticized during the Cannes Film Festival in France for turning a blind eye to major social and political events such as the downing of a civilian aircraft by the IRGC in 2020, while he had a good opportunity to name and shame the culprits at international forum.
In his defense, Farhadi denied being an accomplice of the regime, and claimed that his passport was confiscated at the airport when he was returning from film festivals abroad.
CORRECTION: In its version, this report had said Farhadi was "reportedly convicted". This was a reporting error for which we apologize.