This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

France has concluded that Iran’s ministry of intelligence was behind a foiled bombing attack that targeted a rally organised by an Iranian opposition group near Paris in June.

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The Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), a fringe organisation loathed by Iran’s establishment, had accused authorities in Tehran of planning the attack near Paris. An Iranian diplomat was among six people who had been arrested for allegedly plotting the bombing of the MEK event, which featured among its guests senior US politicians, including Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s attorney.

French diplomatic sources said on Tuesday that they believed a ranking official from within the Iranian ministry of intelligence had ordered the attack. He was named as Saeid Hashemi Moghadam, a deputy minister and director general of intelligence.

Belgian authorities said in July that an Iranian diplomat, who works for Tehran’s mission to Austria, was arrested in Germany, while a married couple – Belgian citizens of Iranian heritage – were detained with “attempt at terrorist murder and preparing a terrorist crime” against the MEK.

It emerged on Tuesday that the Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi is poised to be extradited from Germany to Belgium for prosecution. The Belgian-Iranian couple were in a Mercedes car when they were stopped by special forces and arrested in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, which is close to EU institutions in Brussels. According to Belgian media, police found 500 grams of TATP explosive and a detonator hidden in a toiletries bag.

On Tuesday France said it had frozen the assets of Assadi and Hashemi Moghadam, who it described as operatives acting on behalf of Iranian intelligence.

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A joint statement from France’s interior, economic and foreign affairs ministries, said: “A planned bomb attack was foiled at Villepinte on June 30. This extremely serious attack that was to take place on our territory cannot go without a response.”

It went on: “Without prejudicing the results of a criminal proceedings taking against the initiators, the perpetrators and the accomplices of this planned attack, France has taken targeted and proportionate preventative measures in the form of adopting national measures to freeze the assets of Mr Assadollah Assadi and Mr Saeid Hashemi Moghadam, Iranian nationals, as well as the Internal Security Directorate of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence,” the official statement read.

The asset freeze was published in France’s Official Journal on Tuesday and will last for six months. Jean-Yves Le Drian, foreign affairs minister, said the foiling of the bomb plot “confirms the need for a tough approach in our relations with Iran”.

Iran denied the allegations which it called a conspiracy to “sabotage Iran’s ancient and long-standing relations with France and other significant European countries”.

“We deny the accusations and forcefully condemn the Iranian diplomat’s arrest and call for his immediate release,” the foreign affairs ministry said in a statement.

But Tuesday’s news puts further strain in relations between Iran and France, which is among European countries defending the 2015 nuclear accord against Trump’s attempts to tear it up. France has postponed sending a new ambassador to the Iranian capital and has advised diplomats and other officials to postpone visits to Iran.

The foiled attack came ahead of a rare visit to Europe by the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, who was travelling to the EU to lobby officials to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal after Trump said the US would not honour it.

Iran has two parallel intelligence services, often competing and at times at odds with each other. Tuesday’s accusations were directed at the ministry of intelligence, which is nominally part of Hassan Rouhani’s government, but in fact heavily controlled by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The elite Revolutionary Guards, which act independently of Rouhani’s government, also has a powerful intelligence arm.

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Tehran considers the MEK as a terrorist organisation – a view that until recently was shared by the US and the EU. The US removed it from its list of terror groups in 2012, but the MEK’s animosity with Iran’s rulers has earned it powerful allies in the west, most particularly among Trump associates such as John Bolton, who is the group’s most powerful advocate.

The bomb plot was discussed by Le Drian and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammed Javad Zarif, in a bilateral meeting during the recent United Nations general assembly.

A French diplomat told Le Monde it was an occasion to “mention the very heavy suspicions concerning the Iranians and the seriousness of those suspicions”.

In a separate operation, French anti-terrorist police arrested 11 people during raids on a pro-Iranian Shia Muslim association based in Grande-Synthe, a suburb of Dunkirk. Police said the arrests were not linked to the June bomb plot.