Iran says it has foiled 2 plots on eve of protests

Nervous government warns against protests and claims that arms have been smuggled into country.

Iason AthanasiadisNovember 3, 2009 18:34Updated May 30, 2010 12:12

An Iranian protester shouts anti-Israel slogans during a demonstration in Tehran, Oct. 9, 2009. The government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is worried that anti-government protests will take to the streets of Tehran Wednesday, the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. embassy by Islamic militants. (Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters)

LONDON, U.K. — On the eve of the 30th anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, jumpy Iranian authorities declared they had broken up two new plots aimed at destabilizing the Islamic Republic.

Five “terrorists” were detained as part of a plot to assassinate a prominent Iranian political figure, the news agency ISNA reported quoting Intelligence Ministry sources, who blamed the CIA. The high-profile regime official was targeted twice, according to the report — once in August during the parliament’s swearing-in ceremony and again in the past week — in a move intended to “create conflicts among different political factions.”

The second alleged plot was foiled when security forces arrested three people linked to a royalist group. They were planning on setting off bombs targeting the U.S., British and Russian embassies, under cover of tomorrow’s regime-organized protest, “to foster insecurity and terror,” according to the conservative Javan online news agency.

The Iranian government is nervous about the continuing post-election unrest that started after the disputed June 12 presidential elections and is now rumbling into a fifth month. And maybe it has reason to worry, as a prominent exile has called for the restoration of the monarchy and one source reports that exiles have been smuggling arms into Iran from Turkey.

Last month, Iran experienced its largest single military loss of life since the conclusion in 1989 of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war when an explosion in Iran’s restive Balochestan province killed more than 30 members of the Revolutionary Guard, including several top officials. The Iranian government blamed the Baloch separatist group Jundollah and alleged that it receives U.S. support.

Thousands of people have been arrested in the past months of unrest and five men condemned to death in a series of mass televised trials condemned as show trials by the opposition. Royalist groups have been particularly targeted, with four of the men condemned to death for purportedly belonging to a royalist group called the Iran Monarchy Committee that advocates restoring the Pahlavi dynasty overthrown by the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The arrests, imprisonments, death sentences and reports of widespread torture and rape have cowed a usually argumentative society. One Iranian university professor contacted in Tehran refused to comment, explaining that “I have been banned from speaking to foreign media.”

Royalist groups may be increasing their mobilization in response to a call by Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah, to “come together inside and outside Iran in support of the higher ideals of secular democracy, majority rule and respect for human rights.”