Aug. 8 – Israel recruited political dissidents of the Islamic Republic of Iran to carry out its military attack on the regime, according to a report by news agency Pro Publica.
The report, which included an alleged first hand account from an Iranian man recruited by Israel’s Mossad spy agency, said he decided to work as an informant following his arrest as a student by the regime’s street police, who tortured him and his friends with electric cables and brutally assaulted them.
The report also detailed the ways in which Israeli spies lured senior military leaders to a location by sending false messages to their phones about a fabricated meeting in a secret bunker, where the officials once gathered were killed by a targeted strike.
Five Islamic Republic nuclear scientists made a covert visit to Russia to learn about dual technologies with possible military applications, according to a report by the Financial Times.
The trip included queries about dual-use chemical elements as well as visits to Russian nuclear and electronics research centers, raising concerns that the regime could be considering rebuilding its nuclear program following a military attack by Israel in June which damaged several of its key nuclear sites.
The trip has also raised questions among analysts about whether Moscow could be less opposed to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons than it has been in the past, following the Russian state’s increasing geopolitical isolation.
And Lindsay and Craig Foreman, a British couple detained in Iran, have spoken to their family for the first time in seven months.
Their son, Joe Bennett, said his parents seemed to be in good mental and physical health, and that they were transferred from Kerman to Tehran one week ago by plane.
The Foremans were arrested in Iran in January on charges of espionage, allegations which the couple denies.
