TERHAN – Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence announced on Thursday that it had arrested the members of four operational teams linked with Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

The ministry said in a statement that it had succeeded in identifying and busting all members of the spy teams thanks to its professional work.

It said the “fake and criminal Zionist regime” had made plans to take advantage of the riots of the past recent weeks in some parts of Iran to make its operational teams carry out a number of “hybrid terrorist operations”, but all of the terrorists were arrested before taking any action, Tasnim reported.
 
The Intelligence Ministry also noted that clues have been found about a main intermediary of Mossad in a European country, saying more information will be publicized after the completion of investigations.

The announcement came less than a week after the Ministry of Intelligence said it had dismantled a spy cell run by Israel’s Mossad that was planning to carry out acts of sabotage in the country’s defense industry through security marketing.

The Iranian intelligence forces uncovered a plot by a Mossad espionage network to gather information from Iranian knowledge-based companies that cooperate with Iran’s defense industries, according to a Tasnim report last week. 

The Israeli Mossad spy agency had hired data broker Frank Genin, who introduced himself as the chief of a spare parts manufacturer company and was able to contact several Iranian companies and employees, according to Tasnim. 

The Mossad agent then invited his coworkers to a seminar in Malaysia, where he introduced them to another Mossad agent, Hadrien Lavaux.

As a cover-up, Lavaux has been the managing director of Triple A Industries, an Aerospace advanced alloys and composites company that was established in Singapore in 2017. Since then, the company started communicating with Iranian companies that provide carbon fibers, resin, and other metal alloys.

It is worth mentioning that Triple A Industries’ website says that Frank Genin is the chairman of the company, which explains the close cooperation between Genin and Lavaux.

Lavaux’s associates in Iran attended different exhibitions, monitored scientific conferences, and identified the latest needs of Iran’s defense industries.

They later began to identify the chiefs, salespersons and important employees in companies that are active in the field of defense industries. These employees were invited to multiple front conferences abroad, including in Turkey, Hungary, Oman and Georgia, and their trips were fully covered, Press TV reported.

However, Iran’s intelligence forces had kept a close eye on these trips and were able to track down the network.

Recently, Iran executed four spies found guilty of having connections to Israel's Mossad. The four convicted individuals were named as Hossein Ordukhanzadeh, Shahin Imani Mahmoudabad, Milad Ashrafi Atbatan, and Manouchehr Shahbandi Bejandi, according to an announcement by the Iranian judiciary. 

The four men were detained by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps in June (IRGC). They were eventually given the death penalty by a court for both kidnapping and intelligence collaboration with the Zionist regime of Israel.