None of those arrested has been named, but the Fars news agency said they include “senior public servants.”
Speaking to reporters Sunday, Moslehi said, “The US intelligence officials thought they could win the trust of Iranians who traveled abroad for research and study purposes.”
He said the American spy agencies has used US embassies and consulates in several countries, particularly Turkey, Malaysia and the UAE to collect information about “oil and gas pipelines, telecommunications and electricity networks, airports and customs, the security of the banking and communications systems.”
Moslehi said the American agents tried to trick citizens into spying for the US under the guise of issuing visas, helping get permanent residency green cards, or making job and study offers.
The description made it sound as if the people arrested were mainly Iranians who had been interviewed on foreign trips by American diplomats, not US intelligence agents. US diplomats, chiefly in Dubai, Baku and Frankfurt, contact many traveling Iranians and seek to interview them for information from inside Iran. They do not task Iranians to gather information in the future, but seek whatever information the travelers have in their heads. It is the kind of overt information gathering that all diplomats do, including Iran’s diplomats.
The arrests suggest that the regime is trying to pressure Iranian travelers not to cooperate with American diplomats.