Tehran announced on Saturday that it had detained the leader of a U.S.-based dissident group allegedly behind terrorist attacks in Iran, Reuters reported.
According to the report, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry stated that “Jamshid Sharmahd, the ringleader of the terrorist Tondar (Thunder) group, who directed armed and terrorist acts in Iran from America, was arrested following a complicated operation, and is now in (our agents’) powerful hands.”
One such attack, the report stated, was the 2008 bombing of a mosque in Shiraz, which killed 14 people and wounded 215.
The Los Angeles-based Tondar group seeks to restore the Iranian monarchy that was ousted in the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Separately, in a televised speech on Friday marking the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused the United States of using sanctions to promote unrest in the country.
“Their (The U.S.) short-term goal was to make our people so fed up and tired that they would stand up against the (ruling) system,” Khamenei said, according to Reuters. “Their long-term aim is to bankrupt the country, the state, in other words, to make the economy collapse.”
