Security Official in Tehran Sees ‘Intensifying Intelligence War’
Washington Post Foreign Service
TEHRAN, Nov. 22 — Iran has executed a man convicted of spying for Israel in an “intensifying intelligence war” between the two countries, a high-level Iranian security official announced Saturday at a rare news conference.
Ali Ashtary, a businessman who sold communication and security equipment to Iranian security organizations, was arrested in 2007 and found guilty in June of spying for the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, the semiofficial Mehr News Agency quoted the official as saying.
The official, who heads the counterespionage unit of the Intelligence Ministry but was not identified by name, said Ashtary was put to death Monday morning. The Associated Press reported that he was hanged.
The case “shows a new dimension and intensifying of the widespread intelligence fight between us and the Israeli intelligence service,” the official reportedly told a select group of local reporters.
Israel has repeatedly said it is prepared to attack Iran over its nuclear program. Israel and the United States say Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran, which does not recognize Israel, maintains that its nuclear program is meant only for energy purposes.
The counterespionage official said the Mossad is using satellite television advertisements and Internet chat rooms to recruit Iranians in order to obtain information about Iran.
Pars TV, one of the dozens of Farsi-language opposition satellite television channels that broadcast from California, is running advertisements offering $10 million for information about a missing Israeli airman, Ron Arad, whose plane was shot down in 1986 over Lebanon. The ads urge Iranians to call or fax if they have information about his case.
“Some people inside our country who were trying to make some money got in touch with that organization. But they fell into the intelligence operation created by the Zionist regime,” the official said. “Those people were changed into pawns in the hands of the Mossad, but they didn’t have any news on the Israeli pilot. Neither do we. They were used by Mossad to gather information.”
Offering insight into Iran’s international intelligence operations, the official said that four people had been “identified and arrested” in the neighboring Kurdish region of Iraq, where anti-Iranian militant groups are active.
“This team had gadgets and weapons made by Israel and intended to assassinate people who were not officials of the country. But now they are important for us,” he said, adding that the targets were not politicians or other members of Iran’s leadership. “Because we control the borders and have operations there, this group was arrested before they could carry out any action.” His comments were carried in the semiofficial Fars News Agency.
Iranian officials accuse Israel and the United States of supporting several militant separatist groups inside and outside their country. One of the groups is a splinter of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which regularly attacks Turkish troops. Both militant organizations operate from the mountainous areas along the Iraqi-Turkish border. Since 2003, dozens of Iranian troops and insurgents have died in raids in the area.
On Tuesday, at the start of a trial in Tehran, three men confessed to involvement in the bombing of a place of worship in the central city of Shiraz in April. Iranian officials have said the United States and Israel were involved in the blast, which killed 14 people.
Ali Akbar Heidarifar, representing Tehran’s prosecutor general, called for death sentences in the attack, which also wounded 200, the official IRNA news agency reported.
“I was brainwashed by the Iranian monarchy association to act against Islam and the system and told I had to save the people,” Mohsen Islamian, one of the defendants, reportedly said, referring to an unknown opposition group.
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