The Mossad thwarted an Iranian assassination attempt against an Israeli consulate employee in Turkey, Israeli officials confirmed Saturday. The agent was detained in Turkey and interrogated on Iranian soil before embarking on the mission and was later released.
The U.K.-based Iran International News Channel reported Saturday that an agent of the Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard was commissioned to assassinate three people, among them the Israeli employee. The two other targets were a U.S. general in Germany and a journalist in France.
According to the report, the agent was given $150,000 to prepare for the assassinations and was meant to receive another $1 million after the task was completed.
The report says that the Iranian news channel obtained documents showing the agent was planning on using drug traffickers to carry out the killings.
Earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "there is an ongoing threat against American officials both past and present" when asked about the IRGC's reported plot to assassinate former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other Trump administration officials.
“Within the context of any engagements that we have, directly or indirectly, with Iranians, one of the strong messages we send to them is they need to stop targeting our people, period,” Blinken said. U.S. officials have previously raised these ongoing threats during talks in Vienna over a nuclear agreement between Iran and Western powers.
U.S. President Joe Biden is due to make a decision on Tehran's request to remove Iran's Revolutionary Guards from the U.S. terror blacklist. The removal of the IRGC from the blacklist is one of the outstanding issues remaining in the talks over a new Iranian nuclear deal.
With the verdict pending, Israel has been conducting an intensive campaign in the U.S. against removing the organization from the blacklist. Following that, White House officials, unlike those at the State Department, have signaled that they would side with Israel and ask to leave the Revolutionary Guards on the list.
In recent months, the U.S. and Israel have been on high alert over the targeting of their nationals abroad.
A U.S. State Department report made public last month detailed how the State Department is spending $2 million per month to protect Pompeo and Brian Hook, who served as the Trump administration's Iran envoy, and $13 million to date.
While Pompeo was entitled to receive automatic protection for the six months after he left office, Blinken has repeatedly extended the protection in two-month increments due to a "serious and credible threat from a foreign power or agent of a foreign power arising from duties performed by former Secretary Pompeo while employed by the department," per the report.
In October, Iran attempted to carry out a "terror attack" targeting Israeli businesspeople in Cyprus, a spokesman for the Israeli government said following reports of an attempted assassination of Israeli-Cypriot billionaire Teddy Sagi.
Israel appeared to hint that its intelligence services had contributed to Cyprus' foiling of the suspected attack plot. "There are security threats. As you can see, the Shin Bet, the Mossad, all of the security forces know how to handle them," Foreign Minister Yair Lapid told reporters when asked about the incident.
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