Iranian authorities have foiled “the biggest terrorist plot” to be planned against the country, including the capital Tehran, state television reported Monday.
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The Intelligence Ministry did not identify who planned the attacks, which were scheduled to occur during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, but referred to them as “Takfiri-Wahhabi groups”. The kingdom cut diplomatic relations with Tehran following those attacks, and now it appears that Iranians won’t take part in this year’s hajj, a pilgrimage required of all able-bodied Muslims once in their life.
An Intelligence Ministry statement read on state TV and carried by local news agencies offered few details of the plot.
Officials in predominantly Shi’ite Iran have said in recent weeks that Sunni militants from Islamic State have been trying to target 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, a Shiite Islamic Republic, has been aiding both the Syrian and Iraqi governments in their fight against the militant “Islamic State” group.
Mentioning Wahhabism, however, also may be an Iranian dig at Saudi Arabia.
Iran has not been accustomed to being faced with such attacks since the early 1980’s. It is not clear whether that announcement is related to this new one.
The ministry added that the terrorists were arrested and a number of bombs as well as a huge amount of ammunition they were storing were spotted.
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The PJAK is an Iranian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, and the five terrorists were killed in an ambush near the city of Sardasht in Iran’s northwestern province of West Azerbaijan along the border with Turkey, the IRGC said on its website. Last week, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard clashed with an insurgent Kurdish group in the northwest of the country and several died on both sides.
