29 Mar 2024
Monday 10 December 2018 - 12:54
Story Code : 330049

MP says 'American spies' visited Iran as civilian experts

Radio Farda - Members of a "US military group" who visited Iran were "presumably" spies, the chairman of the Public Works Commission of Iran's parliament has said.

The group entered Iran to negotiate about obtaining OFAC permits for selling planes to Iran, Mohammad-Reza Rezaei Kouchi asserted, without mentioning any date.

OFAC, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, is a financial intelligence and enforcement agency of the U.S. Treasury Department. It administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions in support of U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives.

Rezaei Kouchi has made the comments while there are no reports available on OFAC experts ever visiting Iran. Such unexpected statements are sometimes made by public figures in Iran.

Earlier it was reported that an unknown number of foreign experts had traveled to Tehran to negotiate to sell Boeing and Airbus planes to Iran. However, the nationality of the experts was not disclosed at the time.

Nevertheless, speaking to the state-run Iran Labor News Agency (ILNA) on Saturday, December 8, Rezaei Kouchi claimed, "This is an obvious fact that when an American team enters Iran to assess the country's transport situation, one can presume that it has had an espionage agenda, as well."

Meanwhile, Rezaei Kouchi has admitted, "I do not know if the team's presence in Iran was monitored and controlled, or not---yet, the intelligence and supervisory departments should have controlled and monitored the team's activities."

Furthermore, the chairman of parliamentary commission acknowledged that he has no "precise information" regarding the case and the officials of the Islamic Republic's Ministry of Roads and Urban Development (MURD) have not delivered a report concerning transactions for buying planes to parliament.

MURD has not yet responded to Rezaei Kouchi's comments.
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