TEHRAN, Jan 11, (Agencies): Iran warned neighbouring countries not to help its arch-foe Israel, one day after announcing it had rounded up a spy ring linked to Israel which it said had assassinated an Iranian nuclear scientist. Israel has not ruled out military strikes on the Islamic Republic if diplomatic efforts fail to stop Tehran trying to build nuclear weapons. Iran has vowed to retaliate with missile strikes on Israel and US targets in the Gulf. “Our neighbours and the regional countries that have ties with the Zionist regime should know that any assistance given to this regime would be viewed as a threat to Iran,” Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi told a rare news conference on Tuesday. “The regional countries’ interaction with this regime will help the creation of bases for terrorist and espionage actions.”

Iran said on Monday it had arrested a “network of spies” linked to Israel’s Mossad intelligence service which it blamed for the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in 2010. “The arrested cluster includes many networks ... so far, over 10 people connected to various networks have been arrested and arrests will continue,” Moslehi said. “They were all members of networks linked to Mossad.” A remote-controlled bomb killed Tehran University scientist Masoud Ali-Mohammadi in Tehran on Jan. 12 last year. Iran blamed the United States and Israel for the killing, a charge Washington rejected as “absurd”. Western sources have said Ali-Mohammadi, a physics professor, worked closely with Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi and Fereydoun Abbassi-Davani, named in UN sanctions resolutions because of their work on suspected nuclear weapons development. Another Iranian nuclear scientist was killed on Nov 29.

Iran said on Monday Israel had used “some European and non-European countries as well as some neighbouring countries to carry out the assassination” of Ali-Mohammadi, without giving further details.
Israel has diplomatic relations with several Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt, Jordan and Turkey but is largely shunned by Arab and other Muslim states. Tehran often accuses Israel and the United States of trying to destabilise the Islamic Republic, which has been hit by international sanctions for refusing to suspend its uranium enrichment-related activities.

“Mercenary groups like Rigi’s and PJAK ... had meetings with the Zionist regime to inflict blows on the Islamic Republic,” Moslehi said. Iran sees PJAK, the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan which seeks autonomy for Kurdish areas in the country, as a terrorist group. The leader of Sunni rebel group Jundollah, Abdolmalek Rigi, was executed in 2010. Iran and Israel have been arch-enemies since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, and Tehran periodically announces arrests of people suspected of spying for Israel.

Fail
Iran said Tuesday that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will fail in a bid to convince Gulf states to strengthen sanctions against Tehran during her current tour of the region. “US officials’ moves and visits in the region aimed at intensifying sanctions against Iran will not have the desired result for them,” foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters. He accused the United States of seeking to “incite disunity in the region” and called on Iran’s neighbours “not to let colonising powers further into the region.”

Clinton, who is on a five-day trip to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar, said on Monday that international sanctions have made it “much more difficult” for Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions.
She urged Arab states in the Gulf to stay focused on sanctions against Iran, adding Gulf countries, which have close economic ties with Iran, have been “very responsive” to enforcing sanctions.
The UN Security Council last June imposed a fourth round of sanctions against Iran in a bid to halt its uranium enrichment programme.
Iran says its aims are peaceful, denying charges by Israel and the West that its uranium enrichment work masks a drive for nuclear weapons.
The Islamic republic is set to hold a new round of nuclear talks with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States in Istanbul on Jan 21 and 22.
The alleged killer of a top nuclear scientist who was murdered last year said he was trained in Israel by the Mossad spy agency, state-television reported on its website on Monday.

Majid Jamali Fash, identified in the report as “a member of Mossad terrorist network and the main element” behind last year’s assassination of nuclear scientist Masoud Ali Mohammadi, said he was trained by Israeli military officers at a base near Tel Aviv.
“On a trip to Tel Aviv, I got acquainted with several senior Israeli officers in a base on a highway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. There, I learned different things such as tailing, stalking and planting bombs under vehicles,” Fash was quoted as saying on the website.
He did not say when he had made the trip to Israel.
Fash said he was briefed about Ali Mohammadi and “practised bombing in a base near Tel Aviv several times.”
“I was given a very precise model of Dr Ali Mohammadi’s house and its whereabouts to be very well acquainted with the real situation of his assassination.”
The report said that the details of his interview will be released on Tuesday.

Arrest
Iran denied on Tuesday it has arrested a US woman as claimed by a senior border police officer, adding that she had never entered the Islamic republic.
“From the start she never entered Iran ... The issue was sorted out at the level of border control,” foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters at his weekly press conference.
He was referring to a woman named Hal Talayan who according to an Iranian border police officer was arrested on January 5 in the town of Jolfa on the border with Azerbaijan’s autonomous region of Naxcivan, close to Armenia.
“The news which was published was not an important and significant issue, which is why there was no official explanation given,” Mehmanparast said when asked to elaborate on the report of Talayan’s arrest.
“Because it (the issue) was not important it ended,” he said, categorically denying the confusing reports of the arrest.
On Sunday, Ahmad Garavand, deputy head of Iran’s border police, told reporters that his forces had arrested Talayan, a US woman “spy”, in Jolfa.
“This person was arrested on January 5 while she was filming under cover as a tourist, and she was on a mission from the US spy agency,” he was quoted as saying by Fars news agency.
Garavand’s claim was never backed or refuted officially until Tuesday’s remarks by Mehmanparast, but they were rejected in a separate report on Fars itself on Sunday quoting an unnamed informed source.
The denial by Fars said the woman had come to the border guards claiming to be a spy and carrying espionage devices but she was later deported.

“After interrogation it was found that she is not in a stable mental state and...her claim of being a spy and carrying devices are not true,” the source said.
“After it was known that she is a mental patient, she was deported from Jolfa border,” the report added.
Garavand’s claim of arrest was also rejected outright by Washington.
“We have located the US citizen who appears to have been the subject of the reports and confirmed that the individual is safe,” Mark Toner, a US State Department spokesman, told AFP on Sunday. “She is not in Iran,” he said.

Meanwhile, a charity based in Portland and its founder have pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy charges involving an alleged violation of a US embargo against Iran.
Federal prosecutors said Monday that 53-year-old Mehrdad Yasrebi founded the tax-exempt charity Child Foundation in 1994 and served as its chief executive until his resignation last year.
Yasrebi and the charity were charged with conspiring with Ahmad Iranshahi and a Texas couple, Dr Hossein Lahiji and Najmeh Vahid, who face separate charges.
Yasrebi and the Child Foundation were accused of conspiring to defraud the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the federal agency enforcing the Iranian embargo.
Prosecutors said Yasrebi helped transfer funds to Iran and exaggerate charitable tax deductions.