Iran said Wednesday it had detained five suspected agents of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency on charges of tarnishing the country’s image online, Iranian news agencies reported.
“These mercenaries sought to sow fear among the public and tarnish the image of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran through their calculated activities online,” the Tasnim and ISNA news agencies quoted a statement from the Revolutionary Guards as saying.
They added that the arrests had been made in the western province of Lorestan.
The arrests came as Iran traded fire with Israel for a sixth day following the aerial assault on Iranian military and nuclear facilities, as well as residential areas, which it launched last week.
Iran announced on Friday that it was placing temporary restrictions on the internet for the duration of the conflict. Numerous sites and apps have since been at least partially inaccessible.
The authorities appealed to the public on Tuesday to “minimise their use of equipment connected to the internet and to take appropriate precautions” online.
For their own safety, civil servants and their security teams have been banned from using any connected devices, including smartphones, watches, and laptops, during the Israeli air offensive.
State television appealed to Iranians on Tuesday to delete WhatsApp from their phones, charging that the messaging app gathers users’ location and personal data and “communicates them to the Zionist enemy.”
