Tens of thousands of teachers, civil servants and ordinary citizens have protested across Iran in recent days over the crippling economic pressure and the increase in prices of essential food products such as bread and eggs.
“Two Europeans individuals who had entered the country and wanted to take advantage of the demands of different guilds and people, and divert their demands towards riots and social unrest, as well as destabilizing the society, were identified and detained by the soldiers of the Hidden Imam,” the ministry said in a statement quoted by Iranian state media. The “soldiers of Hidden Imam” is a euphemism used to refer to agents of the Ministry of Intelligence.
The ministry said that the two individuals were “well experienced” and were deployed by the foreign forces that intend to destabilize the country by causing destruction and fueling insecurity.
There are a number of foreign nationals detained in Iran including American, British and Swedish nationals.
On Friday, the Swedish foreign ministry confirmed that a Swedish citizen had been detained in Iran and said that authorities were trying to obtain further information. It is not clear if the Swedish man is one of the two Europeans mentioned by the ministry of intelligence.
Iran is currently planning to execute an Iranian-Swedish doctor, Ahmadreza Djalali, who has been in prison since April 2016 on charges of espionage and collaboration with Israel. The spokesperson for the judiciary, Zabihollah Khodaian, confirmed on Tuesday that Tehran will go ahead with the execution, ruling out the possibility of a prisoner exchange with an Iranian national who is on trial in Sweden for his role in the execution of around 5,000 political prisoners in 1988.
Iran has a history of detaining foreign citizens that travel to Iran, accusing them of causing riots and working with the foreign intelligence agencies, mostly Israel’s Mossad spy agency and the US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, an Iranian-British national who was detained in April 2016 on spying charges was freed in March after Britain agreed to pay an old debt of nearly half a billion dollars.
