Tehran // Iran has thwarted one of the “biggest terrorist” plots ever planned against Tehran and other provinces in the Islamic Republic, state media reported on Monday.
“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 ready-made bombs were recovered,” the official IRNA news agency said quoting the country’s intelligence ministry.
The secretary of Iran’s supreme national security council, Ali Shamkhani, told the semi-official ISNA news agency the plot included plans for “suicide attacks in Tehran”.
The report did not identify those arrested, but called them “takfiris” – a derogatory term in both Arabic and Farsi referring to Muslims who accuse others of being nonbelievers.
The foiled attacks come as Iran, the predominant Shiite power, finds itself battling against the Sunni extremist group ISIL as it supports the governments of Iraq and Syria.
Iranian cities have so far not faced any serious threat of extremist attack, with the country’s powerful security forces prioritising the protection of its citizens within its borders.
While authorities have announced breaking up other plots in the past, they have not described those plots with the same terms used on Monday.
In May, Iran’s intelligence minister Mahmoud Alavi announced that 20 “terrorist groups” that planned to detonate bombs and cause insecurity across the country had been dismantled. It is not clear whether that included the plot announced by state television on Monday.
Iran faces a number of threats from several militant groups.
Last week, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard battled armed members of an insurgent Kurdish group in the country’s West Azerbaijan province near its border with Iraq and Turkey.
The elite Revolutionary Guards killed 12 Kurdish rebels in fighting near the Iraqi border on Wednesday that also left three members of the Guards dead, but the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan said Kurds killed over 12 Guard members, including a colonel.
The same day, state television reported that a police officer and five members of Sunni militant group Jaish-ul Adl had been killed in clashes in the south-eastern Sistan-Baluchistan province.
Iran has warned of possible militant assaults targeting the country, which has not seen large-scale attacks since the immediate aftermath of its 1979 Islamic Revolution. It suffered its worst attack in June 28, 1981, when a blast at the ruling Islamic Republican Party’s central headquarters in Tehran killed at least 72 people, including the party’s leader, four government ministers, eight deputy ministers and 23 parliament members.
Following that attack, Iran’s security agencies and its paramilitary Guard tightened their grip on security in the country.
* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
