Global Security, Privacy, & Risk Management

22 Arrested in Iranian Backed Plot Against US and Israeli Embassies March 14, 2012

According to FoxNews and Agence France Presse, 22 people have been arrested inside Azerbaijan suspected of planning attacks against the US and Israeli embassies inside Baku.  According to the reports, the attacks were planned for the benefit of Iran.

“Twenty-two citizens of Azerbaijan have been arrested by the national security ministry for cooperating with the Iranian Sepah,” the ministry said, referring to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, according to AFP. “On orders of the Sepah, they were to commit terrorist acts against the US, Israeli and other Western states’ embassies and the embassies’ employees.”

According to reports, those arrested were recruited as early as 1999 and trained inside Iran for espionage and other tactics.  It should be noted that Azerbaijan has purchased hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military equipment from Isreal.  This, according to the report, angered Iran.

On another, related note, it is important to remember that the Stuxnet worm was used to destroy roughly 1/5 of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.  Evidence points to a state sponsored program’s development of Stuxnet.  Speculation rests on either the US, Israel, or a joint program that developed Stuxnet.  In a January 2011 report, the New York Times reported that Stuxnet had been tested in Israel against centrifuges identical to those in Iran.