TEHRAN, Iran—Iran has arrested 10 people in a southern province it says are linked to foreign intelligence services, the official IRNA news agency reported Tuesday.
The report said Iran’s intelligence agency arrested the 10 after “sophisticated and continuous” surveillance in Bushehr province. It didn’t name the countries the suspects were linked to.
The 10 worked for “regional” countries whose intelligence services acted as accomplices and proxies for the spy agencies of “hostile countries,” the news agency reported, a reference to Iran’s arch-enemy Israel and the U.S. The report said the 10 people were Iranian expatriates in the regional countries.
Bushehr is home to Iran’s sole nuclear power plant that went online in 2011 with help from Russia. In July, Iran said authorities arrested members of a group linked to Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency amid ongoing protests over water shortages in the country’s southwest.
In 2019, Iran said it arrested 17 Iranians accused of spying on the country’s nuclear and military sites for the CIA and reported that some of them had been sentenced to death.
Iran occasionally announces the detention of people it says are spying for foreign countries, including the United States and Israel.
