The Iranian judiciary announced the arrest of an espionage network operating in the country's various governorates for the Israeli Mossad, noting that the network was planning to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists.
The authority added that the Mossad network consists of 3 agents, and that their arrest came after 8 months of monitoring and security follow-up.
For its part, the Iranian Islamic Republic News Agency quoted judicial official Mahdi Shams Ebadi as saying today, Tuesday, that Iran will soon try those whom it said were 3 agents linked to the Israeli intelligence (Mossad) who were arrested last April.
Ebadi confirmed that the three "were planning to assassinate our nuclear scientists, according to intelligence estimates," without specifying the nationality of the detainees.
Last April, the agency reported the arrest of 3 people, and said they were spies linked to Israeli intelligence in Sistan and Baluchestan province, southeast of Iran.
The announcement of the arrest of the network comes amid escalating tension between Iran and Israel, with the Vienna negotiations stalling and the indefinite delay in signing a new nuclear agreement.
The manifestations of this escalation emerged through the repeated bombing by Israeli warplanes of what are described as Iranian military targets in Syria, in addition to the Israeli media's disclosure of the deployment of an Israeli radar system in the Gulf.
It also comes in the context of threats made by the Israeli Chief of Staff, Aviv Kohavi, against the Lebanese Hezbollah, and the talk about thwarting an Iranian attempt to attack Israeli targets in Turkey, preceded by the assassination of a number of scientists in Tehran and officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in recent years.
On the other hand, Tel Aviv confirmed that it thwarted last month an attempt to launch an attack on Israeli targets inside Turkish territory, which was planned by Iranian sides.