Israel Intelligence Recruiting Iranian Kurds to Sabotage Tehran’s Nuclear Program: Report

Israel's Mossad spy agency is recruiting and using dissident Iranian Kurds to subvert Tehran’s nuclear program, according to a report in the French daily newspaper Le Figaro.

Quoting unnamed Iraqi security officials in Baghdad, the paper claims that Israeli agents are actively training Iranians in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq to fight against the Iranian government, including carrying out bombings.

“The Mossad agents have increased their infiltration in the Kurdish regions of Iraq,” the security official told Figaro.

The report comes on the same day that an Iranian nuclear scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was killed by a car bomb in Tehran – an act that Iran has directly blamed on Israel and the United States. The scientist was involved with the Natanz uranium enrichment site – a facility that Western powers and Israel believe is being used to develop nuclear weapons.

Deputy Governor Safarali Baratloo said the killing was similar to previous attacks targeting Iranian nuclear scientists.

The bomb was a magnetic one and the same as the ones previously used for the assassination of the scientists, and is the work of the Zionists, Baratloo told the Fars news agency of Iran.

Roshan was the fourth nuclear scientist to be killed by a car-bombing Iran in the past two years. Tehran University professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi was killed in when a rigged motorcycle exploded next to him in January 2010, and in November 2010 professors and nuclear scientists Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi were killed by a car bomb that was also blamed on Israel.

The U.S. and Israel have both denied involvement in the killings.

On Monday, a revolutionary court sentenced an American citizen of Iranian descent to death on charges of espionage and being a member of the CIA.

Iran has in the past arrested Iranian citizens on charges of spying for either the U.S. or Israel.