TEHRAN, Feb 23, (Agencies): Iran arrested a top Sunni militant on a flight from Dubai only 24 hours after it claimed he was at a US military base in Afghanistan, in what it hailed Tuesday as a “defeat” for its Western arch-foes.
The claim came from Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, who said Abdolmalek Rigi had even been issued an Afghan passport by the “Americans,” traveled to Europe and met with a NATO military chief in Afghanistan.
State television aired footage of a handcuffed Rigi, dressed in a white shirt and khaki trousers, as masked agents led him off an aircraft at an airstrip at an unknown location in Iran.
It was not immediately clear how Iranian authorities were able to remove the leader of the shadowy rebel group Jundallah (Soldiers of God) from the flight, which was said to be between Dubai and Kyrgyzstan.
Rigi, Iran’s most wanted fugitive accused of launching deadly attacks from Pakistan, had been tracked by Iranian agents for five months before his arrest, said Moslehi.
The capture was “a great defeat for the US and UK,” the minister said at a media conference reported by Iranian state media, accusing the United States and Britain of involvement in “continuous plots” in the region.
“He was arrested on a flight from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan,” Moslehi said.
“It is such a scandal for Dubai in this incident, which shows that the Zionist regime (Israel), by using (the) US and Europe, is seeking to turn the region into a haven for terrorists.
“This scandal cannot be covered up,” said Moslehi, who held up pictures of Rigi he said were taken “inside a US military base in Afghanistan by Iranian agents”, and of his identity card.
In Washington, a US official said Moslehi’s claim that Rigi was at an American base in Afghanistan before his arrest was a “totally bogus accusation.”
Iran’s Interior Minister Mustafa Mohammad Najjar said Rigi was caught “outside Iran and then moved” to the Islamic republic.
Lawmaker Mohammad Dehghan appeared to give an account contradictory to Moslehi’s, saying Rigi was “arrested in Persian Gulf waters while he was travelling on a plane via Pakistan to an Arab country,” rather than to Kyrgyzstan.
“His plane was ordered to land, and then he was arrested after the plane was searched,” the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying without elaborating.
Moslehi said Rigi, believed to be in 30s, was caught in an operation carried out entirely by Iranian agents.
“He was arrested without the slightest help of intelligence services of other countries, including those from the region,” Moslehi said.
The intelligence ministry said in a Fars news agency report that he was arrested along with two members of his group.
Foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast confirmed the arrest, saying “this is another disgrace for countries who claim human rights,” in reference to the United States.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, soon after Rigi’s arrest was declared, warned that Iran would hit back if it came under attack.
“We will welcome a hand which has sincerely reached out for friendship, but if anywhere in the world a hand is extended for aggression against Iranians, the nation will cut it from the arm,” the hardliner told a rally in South Khorasan province.
Iran claims Rigi has links with the intelligence services of Pakistan, Britain and the United States.
It accuses him of carrying out attacks in Sistan-Baluchestan, the restive province on a major narcotics-smuggling route bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Strike
The top US military officer warned on Monday that any strike against Iran would not be “decisive” in countering Tehran’s nuclear program.
Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he supported using diplomatic and economic pressure against Iran and repeated his view that military action could carry “unintended consequences.”
“No strike, however effective, will be in and of itself decisive,” Mullen told a press conference after recently returning from a visit to the Middle East.
But he said the US military stood ready with plans for possible action if necessary.
“Let me be clear: We owe the (defense) secretary and the president a range of options for this threat. We owe the American people our readiness.”
Mullen’s comments came as the United States pushed for fresh sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program and before Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak visits Washington this week.
The admiral said he believed Iran was “on a path to achieve nuclear weaponization” and that the effort “further destabilizes the region.”
He said there was widespread concern in the Middle East about Iran’s role and its nuclear ambitions.
He said that “it isn’t just a nuclear capable Iranian military our friends worry about, it’s an Iran with hegemonic ambitions and a desire to dominate its neighbors.”
Mullen and other top US officials have said previously military action against Iran cannot be ruled out.
“But, as I have said many times, I worry a lot about the unintended consequences of any sort of military action.
“For now, the diplomatic and the economic levers of international power are and ought to be, the levers first pulled,” Mullen said.
China on Tuesday repeated its longstanding call for greater diplomatic efforts to resolve the standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme, despite growing pressure for strong UN action against Tehran.
Iran has identified potential sites for 10 new nuclear enrichment plants and construction of two of them could begin this year, a nuclear energy official said on Monday.
Iran’s uranium enrichment, in defiance of UN Security Council sanctions, has spurred world powers to consider tougher measures to halt what the West fears is a covert nuclear weapons drive.
Tehran denies it wants to build an atomic bomb and says its enrichment is for electricity generation and medical isotopes.
China, a veto-holding member of the UN Security Council, has long said sanctions are not an effective tool for resolving diplomatic disputes, especially over Iran.
“China believes that in the current stage all relevant parties should continue deepening diplomatic efforts to maintain and push forward the process of talks and negotiations,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a news briefing.
Fuel
Iran said on Tuesday any exchange of nuclear fuel must take place on its soil, underlining its rejection of a plan to ensure it does not amass possible atom bomb material.
In a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency, its first official reply to an IAEA-brokered fuel swap proposal, Iran said it would prefer simply to buy the fuel but would accept a simultaneous exchange on its territory.
That would be unacceptable to the United States and European allies, who hope to get new sanctions imposed in the coming weeks after failing to reach agreement on the fuel exchange. But China expressed reservations over sanctions again on Tuesday, saying greater diplomatic efforts were needed.
Western countries fear Iran wants to stockpile uranium to enrich it to levels that could be used for nuclear weapons. Iran says its sole aim is to run nuclear energy plants to generate electricity and produce isotopes for medicine or agriculture.
“In order to bring about a constructive interaction, we have declared our readiness for a fuel swap, provided it is done within the country,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said, cementing remarks by other Iranian officials.
“We are prepared for a fuel swap even though we do not regard this condition of supplying fuel to the Tehran research reactor through a swap as correct.”
Earlier this month Iran announced a start to higher-scale enrichment which would refine uranium to 20 percent purity — the level needed for conversion into fuel plates for its Tehran research reactor, which makes isotopes for cancer patients.
Iran said it was boosting enrichment itself because the West was refusing to budge from terms drawn up by the UN nuclear watchdog under which Iran would ship 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) abroad and wait up to a year to get reactor fuel back in exchange.
Meanwhile, veteran politician Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a key figure in Iran’s ruling elite, expressed support for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday over turmoil following a disputed election last year.
In recent months, followers of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have criticised former president Rafsanjani for failing to give Khamenei unswerving support in the struggle to crush opposition protesters who say presidential vote last June was rigged.
Addressing the powerful Assembly of Experts, which he heads, Rafsanjani defended the system of Shi’ite Muslim religious rule that gives Khamenei ultimate authority in Iran as its supreme religious jurist.
“Our focal point is clear and that is the constitution, Islam, the principle of the office of the jurisprudent and supreme leadership,” he said.
“There are those who do not recognise these, but that is not the case with the majority of people in our society. It is very important for us to try to safeguard these.”
Rafsanjani said Khamenei had tried to ease the political unrest following the vote, which plunged the Islamic republic into its worst domestic crisis since its inception in 1979.
He pointed to Khamenei’s order to close the Kahrizak detention centre in June after prisoners died there amid reports that people held in post-election street clashes had been mistreated.
“The events that took place at Kahrizak and the consoling of those who were hurt in these events, or the release of those who were arrested, have been along this axis. (The leader) is vigilant that there should be no turmoil,” he said.
The 86-member Assembly of Experts, which meets twice a year, supervises, appoints and in theory can sack the Supreme Leader — a never-tested prerogative, which hardliners contest.