Iran Arrests Two European Nationals for ’Fomenting Insecurity, Chaos’

By Staff, Agencies 

Iran’s intelligence ministry announced Wednesday that it has arrested two European nationals who had orchestrated a plot to foment chaos, social disorder, and insecurity across the country, pointing to growing involvement of European spy agencies in anti-Iran activities. 

In its statement, the ministry said “foreign conspirators” had sent two of their seasoned agents to Iran to implement a “hybrid project consisting of soft and hard methods [of warfare].”

It did not specify the nationality of the duo but said they had a mission to form and train a network of people inside Iran to acquire knowledge of the problems faced by the country’s working-class citizens and misdirect their demands by creating a destructive wave of chaos and instability within the country.

The ministry also issued a stern warning to foreign conspirators and their backers, both inside and outside the country, saying the European pair was being closely watched by Iranian intelligence forces for a long time before their arrest.

Their detention comes as Iran’s relations with some European countries, such as Sweden and Belgium, have strained in the wake of the jailing of Iranian diplomats, which Tehran has termed a travesty.

The support for anti-Iran terrorist groups in Europe and the US has remarkably grown in the Western countries, with many Western spy agencies actively involved in aiding and arming them.

The issue has largely been ignored by global rights watchdogs, who otherwise drumbeat about so-called “human rights violations” in the Islamic Republic.

The illegal imprisonment and trial of Hamid Nouri, a former Iranian judiciary official, is one such case that makes a sheer mockery of the Western standards of human rights and lays bare their hypocrisy.

Nouri was arrested at the Stockholm Airport in 2019, upon arrival in Sweden, and held in solitary confinement for over two years.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran considers the detention and trial of Hamid Nouri, an Iranian citizen, illegal and demands his immediate release,” foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told his Swedish counterpart, Ann Linde, last week.

In this connection, Tehran earlier this month even summoned the Swedish ambassador to protest Nouri’s incarceration and his trial.