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Iran Claims to Have Arrested and Sentenced to Death U.S. Spies Even as Tensions With Iran Rise Over Seized Ship, U.K. Stays ‘Committed’ to Nuclear Deal
(about 5 hours later)
LONDON — Iran said on Monday that it had arrested 17 Iranian citizens on charges of spying for the United States and had already sentenced some to death, Iranian and Western news media reported. LONDON — Britain took new steps on Monday to distance itself from the Trump administration’s escalating confrontation with Iran, even while pushing for the release of an oil tanker seized by Tehran three days earlier.
At a news conference in Tehran, an official who identified himself as a director of counterespionage in the Intelligence Ministry described the arrests of people he said had been trained by the C.I.A., but he did not name them and gave few details of their alleged spying. The official declined to give his name, The Associated Press reported, and did not say how many of those arrested had been sentenced. British efforts to bolster maritime security in the Persian Gulf “will not be part of the U.S. maximum pressure policy on Iran,” Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt said after an emergency cabinet meeting about the tanker.
Iran has previously claimed, without elaboration or supporting evidence, to have broken up American spy rings. It made similar announcements in April and again in June this year. Mr. Hunt’s pointed statement was the first indication that a broad disagreement over Iran still persists between the two allies despite the Iranian seizure of the British-flagged tanker on Friday.
President Trump, in a Twitter post, called the Iranian claim about the spies “totally false.” On the American side of the divide, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted on Monday that both the British and American disputes with Iran arose from the same essential cause: the fundamental character of the Iranian government.
“Zero truth. Just more lies and propaganda,” he wrote, calling Iran “a Religious Regime that is Badly Failing and has no idea what to do.” “This is a bad regime,” Mr. Pompeo said in an interview with Fox News.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also dismissed the report. In an interview with Fox News, he said that “the Iranian regime has a long history of lying” and blamed it on the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian officials have said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp seized the tanker, the Stena Impero, for various infractions like polluting, but also as retaliation for the British impounding of an Iranian tanker off the coast of Gibraltar two weeks ago. Britain said it had detained the ship on suspicion of violating a European Union embargo on the delivery of oil to Syria.
“It is part of the nature of the ayatollah to lie to the world,” Mr. Pompeo said. “I would take with a significant grain of salt any Iranian assertions about actions that they have taken.” Many analysts and some former British diplomats had wondered if the tanker “tit-for-tat,” as Mr. Hunt called it, would push Britain into closer collaboration with the Trump administration in its own showdown with Iran.
The latest claim from Tehran comes at a moment of rising tensions between Iran and the West. Last year, President Trump withdrew from a 2015 accord that the United States, Britain and other international powers had reached with Iran to trade relief from economic sanctions for limits on its nuclear program. In May, the administration hit Iran with sweeping new sanctions in an attempt to force it to negotiate a new and more restrictive agreement.
Tehran and Washington are in a showdown over President Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear accord that Iran signed with several international powers and over his imposition of sweeping new sanctions in an attempt to force Tehran to negotiate a new agreement. In response, Iran has ramped up its nuclear program in recent months, exceeding limits imposed by the deal. Iran has called the new sanctions “economic warfare,” and since May it has begun calibrated steps to restart its nuclear program, exceeding limits on uranium enrichment imposed by the 2015 deal.
Against that backdrop, Iran on Friday seized a British-flagged oil tanker entering the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has accused the tanker of various infractions but also described the seizure as retaliation for the British impounding of an Iranian tanker on July 4 off the coast of Gibraltar. At the same time, Iran has taken steps like the seizure of the tanker that have reminded the international powers of the country’s ability to threaten the flow of shipping out of the Persian Gulf through the narrow Strait of Hormuz. The channel accounts for a fifth of the world’s oil supply, a quarter of the liquefied natural gas, and a half a trillion a dollars in trade every year.
Britain has said that it detained the Iranian tanker on suspicion that it was violating a European Union embargo on the delivery of oil to Syria. Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt has called it a tanker “tit-for-tat,” and the British government has threatened “serious consequences” and “robust” action if Iran does not release the British ship. Britain has so far joined France, Germany and the European Union in trying preserve the 2015 deal in defiance of Mr. Trump. Any hope of success would almost certainly be doomed if Britain were to react to the seizure by joining the United States in re-imposing sanctions.
Mr. Pompeo, in his interview with Fox News, said the protection of the ship was not the job of the United States. “The responsibility in the first instance falls to the United Kingdom to take care of their ships,” he said, adding, “The United States has a responsibility to do our part, but the world’s got to take a big role in this, too, to keep these sea lanes open.” But Mr. Hunt, the foreign secretary, instead reaffirmed the depth of the government’s disagreement with the Trump administration despite Britain’s own rising tensions with Iran over the tankers. “We remain committed to preserving the Iran nuclear agreement,” he said.
But he attributed the Iranian seizure of the ship to the fundamental character of the Iranian government. Iran’s retaliation against the West “isn’t because of the American sanctions,” he said. “This is because the theocracy, the leadership in Iran, their revolutionary zeal to conduct terror around the world for now four decades continues.” In the government’s most substantial response yet to the seizure, Mr. Hunt said that Britain was now dispatching additional warships to the Persian Gulf while working in concert with European allies to better guard commercial traffic.
“This is a bad regime,” he added. “They have now conducted national piracy, right? A nation state taking over a ship that is traveling in international waters.” “If Iran continues on this dangerous path, they must accept the price will be a larger Western military presence in the waters along their coastline,” Mr. Hunt warned. He described the new maritime security effort as “European-led.”
As in the past, he appeared to call for such comprehensive changes to the Iranian government that he left little room for negotiations with the current Iranian leadership. Although the United States has said it intends to lead its own multilateral maritime security operation in the Gulf, Mr. Hunt said only that he would talk to Washington “later this week” about how “to complement this with recent U.S. proposals.”
“I am ultimately convinced,” Mr. Pompeo said, “that the Iranian people will get the leadership behavior that they so richly deserve.” Britain is now deploying its Navy “with a heavy heart,” Mr. Hunt said, “because the focus of our diplomacy has been on de-escalating tensions, in the hope that such changes would not be necessary.”
Prime Minister Theresa May, who is expected to leave office on Wednesday, held the latest in a series of emergency cabinet meetings on Monday to address the tanker seizure. Iran, for its part, released photographs indicating that the 23 crew members of the seized tanker were in good health.
A race within the Conservative Party to succeed her is nearing its completion. The favorite is Boris Johnson, a former foreign minister who has not publicly expressed an opinion about the crisis. He has styled himself as a populist and a nationalist, and analysts say his response is hard to predict. But the broader overtones of the conflict with Washington continued as Iran also announced that it had arrested 17 Iranian citizens on charges of spying for the United States.
In May and June, six tankers from various nations were damaged in the Gulf of Oman, in what United States officials described as attacks by Iran. Iran denied responsibility. The gulf connects to the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil supply flows. The Iranian announcement, which did not include the names of those arrested or offer any evidence of spying, drew a swift denial from the White House.
Last month, Iran shot down an American surveillance drone that it said had violated its airspace, but which the United States said was over international waters, prompting President Trump to order airstrikes that he then called off at the last minute. “Zero Truth. Just more lies and propaganda,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter, calling Iran “a Religious Regime that is Badly Failing and has no idea what to do.”
A running battle to root out American spies is a staple of the news media in Iran. The English-language Press TV in the country recently broadcast a documentary about what it called a successful “mole hunt” for C.I.A. agents. Mr. Pompeo, in his interview with Fox News, was equally dismissive. “The Iranian regime has a long history of lying,” he said, casting blame on its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
According to a BBC report, the Iranian intelligence minister, Mahmoud Alavi, said in the documentary that the spy hunt had resulted in the C.I.A. “crumbling like a house of cards.” The documentary argued that President Trump was making “wrong and bizarre” decisions about Iran and suggested that the reason may be “a lack of access to reliable intelligence.” “It is part of the nature of the ayatollah to lie to the world,” Mr. Pompeo said.
A fictional Iranian television series, called “Gando,” that reached its conclusion this month, chronicled the exploits of heroic counterintelligence agents battling a villainous American spy working under cover as a journalist. Sidestepping the chronology of American actions and Iranian responses, Mr. Pompeo asserted that what Iran is doing “isn’t because of the American sanctions.”
The director and producer have reportedly said that the series is based on the case of Jason Rezaian, a reporter for the Washington Post who spent 18 months in an Iranian prison on charges of espionage, which he and American officials denied. “This is because the theocracy, the leadership in Iran, their revolutionary zeal to conduct terror around the world for now four decades continues,” he said.
In a post on Twitter, Mr. Rezaian said the resemblance was only superficial. “Besides being fat, bald and wearing glasses, there is no similarity to me or anything that has happened in my life,” he wrote on June 25. “They have now conducted national piracy, right? A nation state taking over a ship that is traveling in international waters.”
Iranian news agencies also reported last month that Iran had executed a man arrested two years earlier, Jalal Hajizavar, who was accused of being a spy for the United States. He was said to have been a former employee of the Iranian Defense Ministry’s Aerospace Industries Organization who had been fired years earlier. In contrast to more conciliatory statements occasionally made by Mr. Trump himself, Mr. Pompeo appeared to leave little room for negotiations with the current Iranian leadership. “I am ultimately convinced,” he said, “that the Iranian people will get the leadership behavior that they so richly deserve.”
The semiofficial news agency Fars said that Mr. Hajizavar had “explicitly confessed that he had collaborated with the C.I.A. and spied for the United States in return for money.” It also reported that his spouse had been sentenced to 15 years in prison for cooperating with him. Mr. Pompeo also disclaimed any American responsibility for the captured British tanker. “The responsibility in the first instance falls to the United Kingdom to take care of their ships,” he said.
The Iranian fear of American spies is founded in history. American intelligence agencies have used cyberweapons to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. And all Iranians know that in 1953, the C.I.A. orchestrated a military coup that removed an elected prime minister. In a new conference to announce the arrest of the 17 unnamed spies, an Iranian counterterrorism official said they had been recruited and trained by the C.I.A.
A running battle to root out American spies is a staple of the news media in Iran, and its English-language Press TV recently broadcast a documentary about what it called a successful “mole hunt” for C.I.A. agents.
The Iranian intelligence minister, Mahmoud Alavi, claimed in the documentary that the spy hunt had resulted in the C.I.A. “crumbling like a house of cards,” according to a report by the BBC monitoring service.
Iranian television this year also broadcast a fictional series, titled “Gando,” about the exploits of heroic counterintelligence agents battling a villainous American spy who is undercover as a journalist.
The director and producer have said that the villain is modeled on Jason Rezaian, a reporter for the Washington Post who spent 18 months in an Iranian prison on charges of espionage, which he and American officials denied.
Mr. Rezaian, in a Twitter post last month, said the resemblance was only superficial. “Besides being fat, bald and wearing glasses,” he wrote, “there is no similarity to me or anything that has happened in my life.”