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According to Iranian media, the Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday announced the arrest of several foreigners, including a British diplomat, for acts of espionage, such as taking photographs in an area where military maneuvers were taking place or gathering information in the desert. rock samples. For its part, London has denied the arrest of one of its diplomats in Iran.
The Revolutionary Guards – Iran’s ideological army – have arrested foreign diplomats accused of “espionage”, Iranian news agency Fars and state television reported on Wednesday (July 6).
“The Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence service has identified and arrested diplomats from foreign embassies spying on Iran,” Fars news agency said. The agency said one of them, a Briton, was “expelled from the country after apologizing”.
But state television claimed that the British diplomat, called Giles Whitaker, had been expelled from the “area” where the diplomats were arrested in central Iran.
In London, the Foreign Office denied the arrest of one of its diplomats in Iran. “The press reports about the arrest of a diplomat are completely false,” a spokesman said.
The nationality, number and date of their arrests were not immediately known of the other arrested diplomats.
“Intelligence campaign” in the desert
A television video shows footage of a man talking in a room, billed as Giles Whitaker. Giles Whitaker took over as the UK’s Deputy Ambassador to Tehran in 2018.
State television accused the British diplomat of being “involved in intelligence operations” in “areas” where military maneuvers along with missile tests were taking place.
According to television, British diplomats “are among those who visited the Shahdad Desert (…) as tourists. As the pictures show, this man was taking photographs (…) in the prohibited area, where a The military exercise was going on at the same time.”
According to the Fars agency, those arrested took rock samples exclusively in the desert for “espionage” purposes.
Israel raised a finger
Television has implicated Iran’s arch enemy Israel in these cases. “Obviously, Israel wants to open a file on the potential military dimension of Iran’s nuclear program, using third-country nationals attached to Western embassies.”
State television also showed pictures of another arrested man, posing as “Masiej Waljak, head of the department of microbiology at the Nicolaus-Copernicus University in Poland”. “This university is linked to the Zionist regime,” she said in reference to Israel.
The same source said Maciej Walzak, whose nationality is not specified, “entered Iran with three others within the framework of scientific exchanges, but he went to the desert region of Shahdad as a tourist.” He “taken rock samples there”.
Another arrested man is presented by television as “Ronald, the husband of the cultural adviser to the Austrian embassy”. He is accused of “sampling the rocks” and “filming a military field in Tehran” in a village in the Damghan region east of Tehran.
AFP. with