The Iranian Revolutionary Guard announced the detention of foreigners and a number of diplomats - including the deputy head of the British diplomatic mission - on charges of espionage, but London "categorically" denied this.
Iranian television said that some of the detainees entered Iran as academics, and that the Revolutionary Guards' intelligence arrested some detainees while they were leaving the country with samples of soil and stones collected from prohibited areas in the center of the country that witnessed missile tests.
While other diplomats face Iranian accusations of espionage, an Iranian TV report indicated that among those collecting samples from this region was a professor at a Polish university who entered Iran as an academic figure.
They collected samples
The television said that he was collecting samples of soil, water and rocks in prohibited areas, and that these samples were seized before he left Iran.
The Revolutionary Guards also charged the husband of an employee of the cultural attaché in the Austrian embassy in Tehran with spying. The Revolutionary Guards said that a drone had spotted him while collecting soil samples from the city of Damghan (in the center of the country) and taking pictures from military sites in the capital, Tehran.
Iranian TV showed pictures it said were of foreigners accused of spying while they were in the prohibited areas
The director of Al Jazeera's office in Iran, Abdul Qader Fayez, said that the Iranian TV report included pictures of people in a desert area in central Iran, where missile tests are usually conducted, and foreigners and citizens are prohibited from entering it.
British exile
In contrast to these accusations, the British Foreign Office reported that Iranian television reports that Jill Whitaker, the deputy head of the British diplomatic mission, was detained on spying charges were completely untrue.
"Reports that a British diplomat has been arrested in Iran are completely untrue," a Foreign Office spokesman in London said.
And the Iranian Fars news agency reported that there is a tendency "to expel and deport the British deputy ambassador on charges of espionage."
Iran often announces the dismantling of spy networks and the arrest of foreign and local agents involved in sabotage.