Iranian Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi said the 12 CIA spies who were recently arrested in Iran ran espionage operations in all the various grounds. In response to a question about the operations of these 12 agents recently arrested in Iran, Moslehi said, that "these individuals were spying in all fields", Fars News Agency reported.
Moslehi's remarks came after Senior Iranian parliamentary officials announced that the country has arrested 12 agents of the American Central Intelligence Agency. National Security and Foreign Policy Commission member Parviz Sorouri said Iran arrested these agents, who aimed t damaging Iran's security, military and nuclear sectors.
Member of the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Parviz Sorouri said that the agents had been operating in coordination with Israel's Mossad and other regional agencies, and targeted the country's military and its nuclear program.
The US officials confessed earlier that Iranian intelligence forces and Hezbollah have unraveled the CIA's spy network in Iran and Lebanon and arrested dozens of informants, severely damaging the intelligence agency's reputation and ability to gather vital information on the two countries at a sensitive time in the region.
US officials said several foreign spies working for the CIA had been captured by Hezbollah in recent months. The blow to the CIA's operations in Lebanon came after top agency managers were alerted last year to be especially careful handling informants in the Middle East country.
Separately, counterintelligence officers in Iran also succeeded in uncovering the identities of at least a handful of alleged CIA informants, Washington officials said.
A CIA-led program in the Middle East is up in the air after officials confirmed to news organizations today that paid informants in Iran and Lebanon working for the US government have disappeared while attempting to infiltrate in Hezbollah resistance group in Lebanon.
During the past year, leaders of both Iran and Hezbollah have publicly announced the successes of their security and counterintelligence forces in uncovering CIA informants.