News - Middle East: Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence has arrested seven individuals affiliated with hostile groups based in the United States and Europe.

The Judiciary’s Mizan news agency carried the report on Wednesday, citing an informed source within the ministry.

According to the source, five of those identified and detained were in contact with the ringleader of US-based anti-Iran monarchists.

The monarchists have been campaigning unsuccessfully for decades to try to restore the tyrannical reign of Iran’s former US-backed Pahlavi regime.

The regime was deposed through monumental countrywide protests in 1979 under the leadership of the late founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Khomeini, who guided the Iranian nation in their quest to bring about the triumph of the country’s historic Islamic Revolution.

The monarchists, who have been in receipt of unstinting Western and Israeli support since the Revolution’s victory, were found particularly active during the illegal and unprovoked Israeli-American war on the nation in June.

In July, the ministry released a detailed statement, revealing its having conducted a detailed counterintelligence masterstroke during the war that neutralized the aggressors’ simultaneous sabotage and espionage operations.  

The revelations showed at the time how the aggressors had simultaneously sought to implement plots aimed at setting up a “puppet government” centered on Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s former tyrannical monarch, and Mossad agents. Those plots “were identified and disrupted” by the ministry, which dealt “significant blows” to the organizational networks of monarchist groups and their operatives besides successfully confronting cultist elements, the statement noted then.

The source cited by Mizan also noted the arrest of two other individuals linked to counterrevolutionary outfits operating in Europe.

It also reported seizure of 100 smuggled handguns, adding that the weapons had been brought into the country disguised as goods carried by cross-border porters. Those involved in facilitating the smuggling operation have also been identified and arrested, the report conduced.

Source: Press TV