Israel has said its intelligence agencies have ‘exposed’ a terror network organised by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) through an investigation that followed what Azerbaijan said in March was a failed IRGC terrorist plot against several sites in the country, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.
The plot that Azerbaijan’s State Security Service (DTX) said it had thwarted back in March also involved several Jewish and Israeli sites, and came at a time of heightened tension between Azerbaijan and Iran. Just days earlier, amidst the still-ongoing war in Iran, Baku said that Iranian drones had struck the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan, injuring several people.
Israel’s Mossad and Shin Bet said in a joint statement on Monday that ‘the cell worked to gather intelligence on targets using various methods, including physical surveillance and photography, all under direct orders from their handlers in Iran’. The joint statement corroborated the allegations made by the DTX at the time.
‘This exposure, alongside strenuous intelligence investigation and operational activities on the ground, led to the uncovering of the secret terrorist network that has been established within the IRGC and its chain of command’, the Mossad and Shin Bet said.
Among those revealed in the operation was a sleeper cell managed by ‘Mehdi Yeka-Dehqan, known as “The Doctor” who led terror efforts in Azerbaijan’, the agencies said.
Dehqan’s cell was involved in a variety of plots in the region, including some ‘in which Azeri nationals were arrested on suspicion of gathering intelligence on Israeli targets, and military bases in Cyprus and Crete’.
The DTX has not commented on the latest revelations by the Mossad and Shin Bet. The initial list of alleged collaborators in the foiled March attack included some Iranian nationals, but Dehqan’s name was not mentioned.
Nate Ostiller
