Alleged Iranian spy cell busted in Kuwait

Al-Qabas website

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A leading Kuwaiti newspaper has claimed that government agencies captured members of an alleged Iranian spy cell in the Gulf state. Citing “senior intelligence sources”, Al-Qabas daily said that Kuwaiti counterintelligence officers arrested at least seven men last week, and are looking for up to seven others, in connection with an extensive espionage ring operating on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. The Revolutionary Guards are an independent administrative and paramilitary institution in Iran, tasked with –among other things– exporting the Iranian Revolution abroad. They handle most of Iran’s intelligence operatives around the world, who, according to some observers, number in the tens of thousands. According to Al-Qabas, those arrested include Kuwaiti civil servants, as well as non-native Arab residents of Kuwait, all of whom frequently traveled to Iran as tourists or religious pilgrims. Kuwaiti government sources said that communications equipment, maps and photographs of Kuwaiti and US military installations, as well as US$250,000 in cash, were found at the home of one of the alleged cell leaders, in the town of Sulaibiya. An Iranian government spokesman dismissed Al-Qabas’ allegations as “utterly baseless propaganda” against the Iranian state.