Iran Says Busted ‘Mossad-Linked’ Sabotage Team Are Kurdish Separatists
Iran said Wednesday that “Mossad-linked sabotage team” arrested recently before bombing a "sensitive defense center" were members of an outlawed Kurdish rebel group.
Iran said Wednesday that “Mossad-linked sabotage team” arrested recently before bombing a "sensitive defense center" were members of an outlawed Kurdish rebel group.
The Islamic Republic’s intelligence ministry released a statement on Wednesday, claiming that what it dubbed as Israeli-linked agents, who earlier allegedly planted strong explosives at a facility in the central Iranian province of Esfahan, belong to “the Komala terrorist group.”
The ministry alleged that they were directly chosen by the group’s head Abdullah Mohtadi and were introduced to Mossad, adding that they had transferred vast amounts of equipment and explosives to Iran through Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.
Also on Wednesday, Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib claimed the ministry carried out “a number of successful operations” against Israel in recent months without disclosing any details.
About a week before Iran announced the major bust of the “Israeli-backed network”, the intelligence ministry had released a statement on July 13, saying it had arrested 10 armed members of a Kurdish separatist group in northwestern parts of the country. Extra details were added to the story bit by bit during the following days.
Iran has not introduced any evidence linking the detained person with Israel. Since May, several Revolutionary Guard personnel were killed or died in Iran and Tehran blamed Israel for the operations. In June, a large scale purge took place among IRGC intelligence cadres.
The Islamic Republic calls the Kurdish armed groups in the western provinces of Iran, "terrorist groups" or "anti-revolutionary." Generally, the Kurdish parties − including Komala and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) − favor Kurdish autonomy within a federal Iran.
In an article with a long historical background on violent terror acts by the Mojahedin Khalq organization, known as Mek in the 1980s, the IRGC mouthpiece insisted that Iran has the Islamic Republic has the right to self-defense and it would be justified if “it employs hard power against terrorists. The capabilities of Iran’s attack drones and ballistic missiles can be used to hit the center of the [Mek] in Albania without any legal impediment.
The article added that authorities in Tehran should issue the necessary warning to the Albanian government, which is hosting a few thousands MeK members, and follow it up with military action.
But Fars also mentioned “host governments”, where the MeK might have a presence, which could include France and others in Europe.
“If host governments refuse to expel and extradite the hypocrites (a term used by Tehran for the MeK), they should be threatened with reciprocal action…based on the doctrine of the Islamic Republic to fight security threats at their source,” the article said. It went on to cite the principle of “Responsibility to Protect” the nation and the UN Charter’s article 51, “which allows military action to preserve international peace and security.”
The Mojahedin were a revolutionary group engaged in opposition to the monarchy in the 1970s and carried out armed attacks. They fully backed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s decision to set up the Islamic Republic in early 1979 after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi left the country and Khomeini returned from exile. However, tensions rose between the group and the clerical regime taking shape, which led to mutual violence.
The MeK leadership fled to Iraq, which had attacked Iran in September 1980, and received protection from the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who helped them form a militia and fight against Iran. The Islamic Republic counts this as high treason, in addition to violent acts the group carried out inside Iran.
In 1988, the Islamic Republic carried out a decision blessed by Khomeini to kill around 3,000 members of the group serving their prison sentences. Many say this is equivalent to war crimes and a crime against humanity.
An Iranian diplomat who plotted to bomb a MeK rally in Paris was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in jail on terrorism charges by a Belgian court, and a former prison Guard was recently sentenced to life in Sweden for his role in the 1988 prison killings.
MeK members and sympathizers gradually migrated to Europe and North America where they formed a close-knit organization, sometimes likened to a sect, which increasingly changed its path as a terror group to a relatively rich lobbying organization in the West against the clerical regime. However, a few thousand members who had stayed behind in a camp in Iraq were transferred to European counties and Albania by the United States and the United Nations in 2016.
The same year the group opened an office in Albania and is generally referred to as an Albania-based organization. Until a few years before the move, MeK was listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, but as it became a lobbying and political entity, the designations were lifted.