TEHRAN – In yet another vicious calumny, Israel’s Mossad alleged that it had arrested and interrogated an Iranian operative behind an alleged attack against Jews in Cyprus. But the Iranian media reports reveal totally different version of the Cyprus episode. 

What's the matter?

In late June, Israeli media broke the news that a “terrorist attack” orchestrated by Iran against Israeli individuals in Cyprus were thwarted by the Cypriot authorities in tandem with Israeli intelligence services. They said that the purported attack was linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). 

A few days later, Israeli media topped it off with a story about a Mossad operation inside Iran that looked like a thriller. 

The notorious Israeli spy agency said it carried out an operation inside Iran to kidnap the suspected hitman behind the Cyprus attack. 

The man unveiled by Israeli media was identified as Yousef Shahbazi Abbasalilo, who appeared in a video saying he was tasked by Iran to carry out the Cyprus attack. 

According to the video, Abbasalilo said he was given weapons and instructions from the IRGC to kill Israeli businesspeople in the small island nation. The whole story seemed to be taken directly out of the Israeli Tehran series. 

Why it matters?

Aside from its Hollywood-style dimension, the Israeli fiction story came at a time when several Western media outlets reported that Tehran and Washington have been engaged in indirect talks to soothe tensions and reach an unwritten understanding about a set of thorny issues. 
Although Iran and the U.S. were nowhere close to a deal, Israeli officials started crying wolf. They said they are against any deal with Iran. 

The Mossad cocked up the Cyprus story in these circumstances. An Israeli expert told the BBC that the Cyprus story could have been prompted by reports that the U.S. has quietly restarted indirect talks with Iran to contain its nuclear program. 

"Israel's interest here in publicizing this is to show the world that you might be making a deal with Iran on its nuclear program, but Iran is a far greater challenge," comments Yaakov Katz, journalist and author of Israel Vs Iran: The Shadow War.

What's really the matter?

Aside from the Israeli canard, the story of Abbasalilo appears to have been embroidered by the Mossad. The Iranian media revealed some intriguing details about the man in question.
 
Iranian news website Mashregh News said the video of Abbasalilo was recorded in Baku, Azerbaijan. The website published travel documents showing in no uncertain terms that the alleged hitman left Tehran for Baku on May 15, 2023, aboard Iran Air flight 749. That means that Abbasalilo has not been in Iran since mid-May and that the story of the Mossad about kidnapping and interrogating him inside Iran is totally untrue. 

The news website also said that the Mossad has hurriedly resorted to cooking up the story due the busting of Israel’s proxy groups in Iran. Israeli spy services have putatively worked to organize thugs and hooligans inside Iran and use them in their acts of sabotage. 

But the Iranian intelligence services, Mashregh News said, have dismantled these gangs and eradicated Israeli proxy thugs. 

In recent months, Iranian media reported that the country’s intelligence services have busted many espionage networks. In May, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence said that a foreign espionage network that was gathering critical information from important authorities has been dissolved and its agents have been apprehended.

The ministry declared that continuous monitoring had shown that an unidentified foreign intelligence service had been gathering data on Iranians leaving and entering the country, including those who worked in important government positions or had access to sensitive information in sensitive institutions.

The ministry said that it had been successful in locating a network of intermediaries and executive agents who had been gathering information from a number of significant institutions and agencies inside Iran.

The agents attempted to improperly use the databases that were accessible in Iran to extract information about travelers entering and leaving the country and then provide the information to the relevant foreign spy services.