DHAKA: Iran’s intelligence ministry said Monday it had thwarted a major jihadist plot to carry out bomb attacks in the capital Tehran and other parts of the country.

Iran state media reported, says The Telegraph.

‘One of the biggest takfiri-Wahhabi terrorist plots was discovered and foiled,’ the official IRNA news agency quoted the ministry as saying, using terms applied by Iran to Sunni extremist groups.

‘A series of bomb attacks prepared in various areas deep inside the country and especially in Tehran and some other provinces... were foiled, the terrorists were arrested and a number of readymade bombs were recovered,’ it said.

No more details were provided. The ministry said they were interrogating the suspects and more information would come following investigations ‘both inside and outside the country’.

The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, told the ISNA news agency the plot included plans for ‘suicide attacks in Tehran’.

Iran, the predominant Shia power, has been helping both the governments of Iraq and President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria to battle the Sunni extremist Islamic State (IS) group.

Iranian cities have not however faced any serious threat of jihadist attack, with the country’s powerful security forces prioritizing the protection of the country’s borders.

In November, Iran’s army conducted exercises close to its border with Afghanistan designed to simulate how it would respond if ‘terrorist groups’ such as IS mounted an attack.

Before the drills in the northeastern province of Khorasan, General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, the army’s head of ground forces, announced a 40-kilometer limit on the borders with Iraq and Afghanistan, which if breached would trigger action.

‘Before the enemy reaches borders, its actions will be neutralized,’ he said.

BDST: 2204 HRS, JUN 20, 2016
RR