Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the co-ordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel's Mossad spy agency, Iranian state media reported on Saturday.
They are accused of providing the information to Mossad during Israel's air war on Iran in June, when they bombed Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders, as well as civilians, in the worst attack on the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
The suspects received specialised online training from Mossad and were planning to design and carry out operations against civilian and military officials, as well as to sabotage key facilities in the holy city of Mashhad, the Tasnim news agency reported, citing a statement from the Revolutionary Guard division in the north-eastern Khorasan Razavi province.
It said materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps were seized from them.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the 12-day war with Israel. State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 "suspects" during the war, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Iran retaliated to Israel's attacks with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The war ended on June 24 with a ceasefire brokered by the US, two days after it entered the conflict with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, who was hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli air strikes.
