TEHRAN – A number of individuals in Iran who received funding and training from Europe were arrested by intelligence forces before they could carry out directed terrorist operations, including bombing Tehran’s vast metro station, killing police and security forces, and killing random civilians.
Their arrest was announced via IRIB news agency on Friday. By Saturday evening, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence announced that it had captured three more people belonging to the same terrorist organization.
The terrorists were trained by a man named Sam Radpool, who was based in Sweden. He is in personal contact with the arrested men and also runs a public Instagram account where he teaches young people how to use knives and guns against security forces during potential riots. On his page, he introduces himself as a “NATO military officer.”
“Regime change (in Iran) requires individuals,” Radpour said in a soundbite included in the IRIB report.
Radpour was in contact with the son of the ousted Shah of Iran when he was giving instructions to detainees. He is also believed to have ties to the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) terrorist group, which is based in Europe and has killed at least 17,000 Iranians in terrorist attacks since the 1980s.
Radpur is not completely unknown to Iranians. In a video that went viral several months ago, a journalist heading to a conference organized by the terror group in Europe is seen asking Radpour about the 17,000 Iranians killed by the MEK.
“What happened to the 17,000 people you killed?” the journalist asks Radpur. “There’s more!” he answered with a big smile.
According to IRIB news agency, he also supports terrorist organizations such as al-Ahwazi. Al-Ahvazieh, headquartered in Denmark and the Netherlands, has claimed responsibility for several assassinations, attacks on energy infrastructure, and civilian “soft targets,” including a deadly terrorist attack on a military parade in Ahvaz, the capital of Iran’s Khuzestan province, on September 22, 2018.
The IRIB report said Radpour’s contacts with the detainees were carried out on the orders of Mossad, adding that Israel wanted to incite unrest in Iran during the 12-day war in June.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Iranian people twice during the war, telling them he wanted “freedom” and “prosperity” and calling on them to take to the streets to overthrow the Iranian government. Iranians reacted to his videos, which were shared on X, YouTube and Instagram, mainly with profanity. During the war, approximately 1,100 Iranians, most of them civilians, were killed in Israeli attacks on homes, civilian infrastructure, police stations, military installations, nuclear facilities, and one prison in Tehran.
The detainees confessed that Radpour had transferred weapons to Iran through “friends” in the country. The weapons were hidden in sweets and shipped to Iran, where they were to be used against police stations, civilians and the capital’s subway. Tehran’s metro system is crowded with commuters and transports millions of passengers every day.
The operation failed as the terrorist elements were arrested and weapons seized by Iranian intelligence.
The recent arrests have also reignited debate over Europe’s blatant support and protection of terrorist and separatist groups. Iranian officials have repeatedly said that European countries are complicit in terrorist attacks against Iranian citizens. European leaders have never mentioned why they are shielding a faction that has Iranian blood in its veins. Meanwhile, it imposed sanctions on Iran, claiming it had sold drones to Russia for use in the Ukraine war, thereby undermining European security.