An Iranian diplomat was arrested in connection to an alleged terrorism plot disrupted by Belgian authorities, according to reports.
“We can say we arrested them just in time,” said Eric Van der Sijpt, a spokesman for the prosecutors’ office, per the Associated Press.
A Belgian couple “of Iranian origin” were intercepted, per police, in possession of homemade explosives intended to bomb a conference of Iranian opposition figures near Paris. The diplomat, attached to Iran’s embassy in Austria, was arrested in Germany.
“They were planning a terrorist attack at a conference,” Van der Sijpt said. “I don’t know if they were targeting somebody special.”
The conference was attended by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is now President Trump’s personal attorney.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif accused Western authorities of staging the incident. “How convenient: Just as we embark on a presidential visit to Europe, an alleged Iranian operation and its ‘plotters’ arrested,” Zarif tweeted. “Iran unequivocally condemns all violence & terror anywhere, and is ready to work with all concerned to uncover what is a sinister false flag ploy.”
Iranian opposition figures blamed the regime immediately. “The terrorists from the Mullahs’ regime in Belgium assisted by its terrorist-diplomats planned this attack,” the National Council of Resistance of Iran told AFP.
Giuliani, who was a speaker at the conference, compared Trump’s pressure on Iran to President Ronald Reagan’s denunciations of the Soviet Union in the run-up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. “We are now very realistic in being able to see an end of the regime in Iran,” he said Saturday, according to the New Yorker.
