On Monday, the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) announced that it had arrested three senior members of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA), or the al-Ahwaziyeh terrorist group, on suspicion of spying for Saudi Arabia and planning to conduct terrorist attacks inside Iran.

On the same day, the Netherlands' police separately arrested another member of the mentioned terrorist group on the same charge.

Shortly after the PET's announcement, Danish Minister for Foreign Affairs Jeppe Kofod wrote on his Twitter account that the Saudi Arabia's envoy to Copenhagen will be summoned and called Riyadh's spying operation in his country an unacceptable and dangerous act.  

Detention of four senior members of al-Ahwaziyeh terrorist group in Denmark and the Netherlands on spying for Saudi Arabia and planning to conduct terrorist attacks in Iran was an awful scandal for Riyadh's regime as it proved practical connection of the regime with the mentioned terrorist group in spite of Saudi officials' denial of such connections. 

Al-Ahwaziyeh staged a bloody terrorist attack on a military parade in the southeastern city of Ahwaz in September 2018 killing at least 25 people, including children and injured many more.

Saudi Arabia, however, denied any connection with the Al-Ahwaziyeh terrorists but the Saudi-backed news network of Iran International immediately conducted an interview with the ring-leader of the terrorist group.

Iran filed a complaint before the relevant bodies against the news network though it had no desirable result. 

It should be mentioned that Al-Ahwaziyeh was also involved in Iran's November riots, especially in the southern port city of Mahshahr. The terrorist group resorted to armed assaults that apart from turning the popular protest against gas price rise plan into a chaos, it also ended in assassination of a number of innocent people.

Now that the connection between Al-Ahwaziyeh and Saudi Arabia has been proven, Riyadh’s evil involvement in the November riots cannot rejected by the regime any more.      

According to documents, following the U.S.-led aggression on Iraq and deployment of the British army in city of Basra near the border with Iran, Al-Ahwaziyeh's destructive activities were enhanced under the UK army's organizing supports.

Accordingly, disclosures by the Danish and Dutch officials over Saudis' involvement in organizing and providing support for Al-Ahwaziyeh have once more disclosed the Riyadh regime's direct role in a series of terrorist operations in the region, especially against the Islamic Republic of Iran.  

The scandal has not only shed light on the Saudis' terrorist measures but has proven that the regime enjoys a long record of spying operations too. The scandal has also pushed the Saudis into a new nightmare of similar accusations which had been previously denied by Riyadh.   

For instance, Crown-Prince Mohammad bin Salman was accused of conducting spying operation against Amazon company a couple of weeks ago. The scandal created vast media coverage worldwide. 

The London-printed Guardian, released in a report that months prior to the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in October 2018, a virus-polluted file had been sent via bin Salman's WhatsApp account to the account of the Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos as well as the Washington Post’s account.  

Jeff Bezos had his mobile phone “hacked” in 2018 for several months after receiving a WhatsApp message that had apparently been sent from the personal account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, sources told the Guardian a couple of weeks ago.

In addition to all these hostile and malicious behaviors by the Saudi regime in the regional and beyond, Riyadh over the past two years has embarked on operationalizing a cyber center dubbed Etedal (moderation) to stage psychological operations against the public opinion's tranquility to spread violence and wreak havoc among the regional countries. The Saudis' behaviors are blatant evidence of terrorism.  

In line with the U.S. “maximum pressure” campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Saudi regime has always been claiming that Iran is behaving abnormally and that Tehran interferes in other countries' internal affairs to undermine the regional balance. 

But in view of events in recent weeks, even Saudi Arabia's allies, which have mainly benefited from their economic relations with Riyadh, have expressed their concerns about evil interferences of the Saudis in their affairs. Saudi allies have realized that Riyadh’s policies in recent years have brought nothing except insecurity and instability to the region.     

The Saudis' support for terrorism and their role in organizing spying networks must come as warnings to the Europeans. If the Europeans fail to respond to the destabilizing behaviors of Riyadh, they should wait for more adventurism by the despots in Riyadh  

* Author: Mohammad Ghaderi , Tehran Times editor in chief 

His page on Twitter : @ghaderi62 - and Gmail address : m.ghaderi62@gmail.com