Iran says it detains leader of California-based exile group

Iran on Saturday said it detained an
Iranian-American leader of a little-known California-based militant opposition
group for allegedly planning a 2008 attack on a mosque that killed 14 people
and wounded over 200 others.
Iran’s Intelligence Ministry also alleged Jamshid
Sharmahd of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran planned other attacks around the
Islamic Republic amid heightened tensions between Tehran and the U.S. over its
collapsing 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
It was unclear how the 65-year-old Sharmahd, whom
Iran accused of running the opposition group’s Tondar militant wing, ended up
detained by intelligence officials. The Intelligence Ministry called it a
“complex operation,” without elaborating. It published a purported picture of
Sharmahd, blindfolded, on its website.
Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi later
appeared on state TV, saying Sharmahd had been arrested in Iran, without
elaborating.
Requests for comment sent by email to the
Glendora-based Kingdom Assembly of Iran were not immediately answered and a
telephone number for the group no longer worked.
The U.S. State Department, which mentioned how
Sharmahd earlier had been targeted for assassination in a recent report called
“Outlaw Regime: A Chronicle of Iran’s Destructive Activities,” acknowledged
reports of his detention.
“The Iranian regime has a long history of detaining
Iranians and foreign nationals on spurious charges,” the State Department said
in a statement. “We urge Iran to be fully transparent and abide by all international
legal standards.”
Iranian state television broadcast a report on
Sharmahd’s arrest, linking him to the 2008 bombing of the Hosseynieh Seyed
al-Shohada Mosque in Shiraz. It also said his group was behind a 2010 bombing
at Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s mausoleum in Tehran that wounded several
people.
The report also alleged without providing evidence
that Tondar, or “Thunder” in Farsi, plotted attacks on a dam and planned to use
cyanide bombs at Tehran’s annual book fair.
State TV later aired footage of Sharmahd
interspersed with footage from the moment of the 2008 explosion at the Shiraz
mosque. Sharmahd’s face appeared swollen and the style of the footage resembled
one of what a rights group has identified as over 350 coerced confessions aired
by the broadcaster over the last decade.
The Intelligence Ministry has not said what charges
Sharmahd will face. Prisoners earlier accused in the same attack were sentenced
to death and executed.
The Kingdom Assembly of Iran, known in Farsi as
Anjoman-e Padeshahi-e Iran, and Tondar seek to restore Iran’s monarchy, which
ended when the fatally ill Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled the country in 1979
just before its Islamic Revolution. The group’s founder disappeared in the
mid-2000s.
Iranian intelligence operatives in the past have
used family members and other tricks to lure targets back to Iran or friendly
countries to be captured. An alleged Iranian government operative who allegedly
tried to hire a hit man to kill Sharmahd disappeared in 2010 before facing
trial in California, likely having returned to Iran.
A 2010 U.S. diplomatic cable from London later
published by WikiLeaks shows that a Voice of America commentator said that same
operative earlier had been in contact with him. British anti-terror police
later warned the commentator that he “had been targeted by the Iranian regime,”
the cable said.
The two cases marked “a clear escalation in the
regime’s attempts to intimidate critics outside its borders, and could have a
chilling effect on journalists, academics and others in the West who until
recently felt little physical threat from the regime,” the cable said.
Sharmahd last appeared in an online livestream video
on Dec. 29, according to his group’s website, speaking in Farsi while sitting
in a black chair in front of a black background.
“We are not only seeking the liberation of the
homeland, but we are also moving towards a special direction, and that is to be
Iranian,” Sharmahd said at one point in the video. “Because we have heard that
once upon a time some people were living in the region who were able to build
an empire.”
While overshadowed by other exiled opposition
groups, Iran reportedly brought up the Kingdom Assembly multiple times while
negotiating the terms of the 2015 deal, which saw Tehran limit its enrichment
of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi
reacted to the news by criticizing the U.S. for allowing Sharmahd and others to
live in America.
The U.S. “must be responsible for supporting
terrorist groups which are inside of this country and carry out and lead
terrorist acts against the Iranian people,” state TV quoted Mousavi as saying.
A statement attributed to Tondar claimed the
assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in 2010 by a remote-control bomb,
though it later said it wasn’t responsible. Suspicion long has fallen on Israel
for a string of assassinations targeting scientists amid concerns about Iran’s
nuclear program, which the West fears could be used to develop a nuclear bomb.
Iran long has maintained its program is for peaceful purposes.
Sharmahd’s reported arrest comes as tensions remain
inflamed by President Donald Trump’s 2018 decision to unilaterally withdraw
America from the nuclear deal. A series of incidents last year were capped by a
U.S. drone strike in January killing a top Iranian general in Baghdad. Iran
responded by launching a ballistic missile attack on U.S. soldiers in Iraq that
injured dozens.