Iran said broke up a U.S.-backed international plot to overthrow the Persian Gulf country's cleric-led regime with the arrest of four people, state-run Fars news reported.
The U.S. aimed to oust the government in Tehran with the help of agents in the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Kuwait, the news agency said, citing the Intelligence Ministry's counter-espionage director, whom it didn't identify. About $32 million of U.S. funding was budgeted for the project, according to the official.
The Bush administration allocated $75 million for the funding of Iranian activists and expansion of radio and television programming aimed at Iran, a move that led to a security crackdown by Iranian authorities. Iran said Jan. 13 the four people detained were key figures in a network that aimed to create social crisis, incite street protests and meddle in minority affairs, Fars cited the official as saying.
The intelligence official identified two of the detained as brothers, doctors Kamiar and Arash Alaei, the news agency said.
The brothers, who were arrested in June last year, are "pioneering HIV/AIDS physicians," according to a report on the Web site of New York-based Human Rights Watch. They underwent a one-day trial in Tehran's revolutionary court on Dec. 31, the group said, without giving the outcome.
Evin Prison
The doctors were held in Tehran's Evin prison since late June and were indicted on charges of communicating with an "enemy government," HRW said, citing their attorney, Masoud Shafie. HRW described the charges as "politically motivated and illegitimate." The doctors and the other two people held were convicted of planning to overthrow the country's Islamic system and sentenced to unspecified jail terms, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported.
Dozens of people were involved in the network, including academics, doctors, clerics, athletes and artists, who were invited to take trips oversees to attend meetings in the U.S., Fars cited the official as saying.
During these meetings, Americans tried to influence them by presenting the U.S. as Iran's only savior with the intention that once back home they would create divisions between the government and the people, said the official, who added that state television will soon broadcast what he called the detainees' confessions.
Purported Confessions
The official said U.S. institutions including George Soros's Open Society Institute and the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center and the International Research and Exchanges Board cooperated on the project, Fars reported.
In 2007, Iran held for several months Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planning consultant who worked with the Open Society Institute, and Haleh Esfandiari, director of Middle East studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center. Both U.S.-Iranian nationals were accused of supporting U.S. plans to undermine the regime.
Iran aired their purported confessions as part of a documentary program on state television before they were released.