TEHRAN – The West must cease financing and harboring terrorists, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said in a tweet on Saturday night.

The west must cease financing and harboring terrorists. From their safe havens in US and Europe, they promote hatred, agitate & organize murder & mayhem, and shamelessly claim responsibility for the murder of innocent Iranian civilians.

Smokescreens can’t obscure this hypocrisy.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) August 1, 2020

“From their safe havens in US and Europe, they promote hatred, agitate & organize murder & mayhem, and shamelessly claim responsibility for the murder of innocent Iranian civilians,” Zarif wrote.

“Smokescreens can’t obscure this hypocrisy,” he added.

Zarif’s tweet came a few hours after the Intelligence Ministry announced it has arrested the ringleader of an anti-Iran terrorist group based in the United States.

In its statement, the ministry said Iranian intelligence forces have arrested the ringleader of a terrorist group called “Tondar”.

“The surveillance of the unknown soldiers of Imam Zaman (Iranian intelligence forces) on a terrorist group based in the U.S. has led to the arrest of this terrorist group’s ringleader,” the statement read.

The ringleader, Jamshid Sharmahd, who headed an armed act of sabotage in Iran, is now in custody of Iran’s intelligence forces.

According to the statement, Sharmahd was behind the 2008 terrorist attack that killed 14 people and wounded 215 others at the Hosseynieh Seyed al-Shohada Mosque in the city of Shiraz.

In recent years, Tondar terror group has been planning to carry out a number of big terrorist operations in Iran, it added.

“I was called before the bomb was about to be set off,” Sharmahd said in footage broadcast on national TV, speaking about the Hosseynieh Seyed al-Shohada terrorist attack.

“They were in a good position. They [just] needed explosives that we provided for them,” he added.

The footage also incorporated intercuts of his previous televised remarks, during which he is seen admitting to Tondar’s working alongside the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Do you know where is the FBI’s office, the same federal building, wherein we are present?” he is seen telling a member of the audience in one.

MH/PA