Greece probes Azerbaijani arrested for espionage for links to Iran
Greek police have arrested an Azerbaijani national suspected of spying on a NATO base on the island of Crete.
Local media reported on Monday that the man was detained the previous day on suspicion of espionage. Authorities are reportedly investigating whether the case is linked to the arrest in recent days of a man with Azeri roots in Cyprus on suspicion of terror-related offences linked to Iran.
The 26-year-old was arrested in Crete after he was seen scouting the air and naval base of the United States at Souda Bay, broadcaster ERT reported, citing police and intelligence sources.
According to the report, authorities said he was seen photographing strategically sensitive locations and tracking the movements of warships entering and leaving the bay.
The base is a strategic US and NATO facility for the eastern Mediterranean.
Police seized approximately 5,000 photographs and numerous videos. The suspect is expected to be brought before a public prosecutor.
The arrest came days after a similar incident in Cyprus, where a man was detained for alleged espionage and planning a 'terrorist attack' on military facilities.
The suspect, who was also reported to be ethnically Azeri, was said to be acting on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). According to Cypriot media, citing government sources, he entered the country using a British passport.
Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Saturday that the IRGC had attempted to carry out a terror attack targeting Israelis.
Cyprus and Crete lie close to the Middle East and have in recent days been used as a transit point amid the conflict between Israel and the US, and Iran.
Since the start of the hostilities, reports of detected espionage have increased on both sides.
Iran has carried out multiple arrests since Israel launched its bombing campaign on July 13, and executed several others who had been arrested in recent years.
On Monday, Iran's judiciary said it had executed Mohammad-Amin Mahdavi Shayesteh 'for intelligence cooperation with the Zionist regime', which is Iran's term for Israel.
He was also convicted of collaborating with Iran International, a Persian-language TV channel based in London that is critical of the Iranian government and that Tehran considered linked to Israel.
The previous day, Iran executed Majid Mosayebi after saying he had been proved to have been working with Mossad.
Late on Sunday, officials in Tehran reported that three people had been arrested in the western province of Kermanshah on allegations of espionage, one a national of a European country.
Special judicial branches are now planned in provincial prosecutors' offices and courts to handle Israeli-linked espionage cases on an 'extraordinary' basis, officials added.
Iran is the world's second most prolific executioner after China, according to human rights groups, including Amnesty International.
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Al Jazeera
42 minutes ago
- Al Jazeera
US-Israel-Iran conflict: List of key events, June 23, 2025
Here's where things stand on Monday, June 23: Fighting Iran has fired ballistic missiles at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the United States' largest military installation in the Middle East. Doha said the attack was intercepted and there were no casualties. Fellow Gulf countries Bahrain and Kuwait – which also host US facilities – joined Qatar in closing their airspace, then reopened them. Earlier, Israel had struck Tehran's Evin Prison, notorious for holding political activists. Iranian state television shared surveillance footage of the strike, which reportedly blew the facility's gate open. Explosions were heard on the western outskirts of the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz, capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province, the Fars news agency reported. Tasnim news agency reported a strike at an electricity feeder station in the Evin neighbourhood in north Tehran. Earlier, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said his country had attacked 'regime targets and government repression bodies in the heart of Tehran', including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) command centres. Israel also carried out a strike on the Fordow enrichment facility, a day after the US hit the underground site south of Tehran with so-called 'bunker buster' bombs. The Israeli military issued an evacuation threat to residents of Tehran, telling them to stay away from weapons production centres and military bases. Iranian state television said on Monday that the country had targeted the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv. It claimed the majority of its projectiles fired since the early hours of the day had successfully reached their targets. Sirens sounded across Israel before noon on Monday, with a large number of impacts recorded in several areas, including the Ashdod area in southern Israel and the Lachish area, south of Jerusalem. Casualties and disruptions Eleven days into the conflict, large numbers of Tehran's 10 million population have reportedly fled. After Israel's strike on Evin Prison, Iran's IRIB state broadcaster released video showing rescue workers combing the flattened wreckage of a building at the prison, carrying a wounded man on a stretcher. Iranian power company Tavanir said there were power cuts in the Iranian capital, Tehran. In Qatar, prior to Iran's attack on Al Udeid, the US and the United Kingdom had urged their citizens in the country to 'shelter in place'. Britain said on Monday that a Royal Air Force flight carrying 63 British nationals and their dependents out of Israel had left Tel Aviv. A number of airlines, including Kuwait Airways, Finnair and Singapore Airlines, have suspended operations in the Middle East. Air India said it was not only halting operations to the region, but also stopping flights to and from the US east coast and Europe. Politics and diplomacy After Iran's attack on Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, US President Donald Trump thanked Tehran for giving him 'early notice' of the attack, with he described as a 'very weak response' to the US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. In a separate post, he thanked the Emir of Qatar for his peace efforts. A spokesperson for the Qatari Foreign Ministry said that the country considered the Iranian attack to be a 'surprise', announcing the situation in the country was safe. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei posted on his Farsi-language X account: 'We have not violated anyone's rights, nor will we ever accept anyone violating ours, and we will not surrender to anyone's violation; this is the logic of the Iranian nation.' Earlier in the day, Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had said bases used by US forces 'in the region or elsewhere' could be attacked – that evening, Iran targeted Al Udeid in Qatar. Abdolrahim Mousavi, Iran's armed forces chief of staff, pledged that the country would take 'firm action' in response to US strikes on key nuclear sites the day before. 'This crime and desecration will not go unanswered,' he said on state television. Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesperson for Iran's Khatam al-Anbiya central military headquarters, addressed US intervention in the war in a video statement, saying: 'Mr Trump, the gambler, you may start this war, but we will be the ones to end it.' Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency said a parliamentary committee had approved a general plan to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran's mission to the United Nations said the US, the UK, France, Israel and IAEA chief Rafael Grossi were responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians and the destruction of infrastructure. Russian President Vladimir Putin slammed attacks on Iran as 'unprovoked' and 'unjustified' in a Moscow meeting with Tehran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, 'Our strategic partnership with Iran is unbreakable,' but was not drawn on the question of whether Iran had requested military help – or whether any help would be forthcoming. After Israel's attack on Tehran's Evin Prison, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar wrote 'Viva la libertad!', Spanish for 'long live liberty', on X. French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said that the Israeli strike on Tehran's Evin Prison, which holds some French prisoners, was unacceptable. China's UN ambassador, Fu Cong, said US credibility was 'damaged' after its bombing of Iran's nuclear sites, warning the conflict could 'go out of control', according to the state broadcaster. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said of Sunday's US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites: 'Yes, it is not without risk, but leaving it as it was wasn't an option either.' British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said his country stood ready to 'defend our personnel, our assets and those of our allies and partners'. NATO chief Mark Rutte said alliance members had 'long agreed that Iran must not develop a nuclear weapon' and called an Iranian atomic bomb his 'greatest fear'. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on China to help deter Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for one-fifth of the world's oil supply and a potential lever for retaliatory action. The European Union's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said closing the strait would be 'extremely dangerous'. US President Trump posted an online message on oil production to the US Department of Energy, encouraging it to 'drill, baby, drill', and saying, 'I mean now.' Reza Pahlavi, the long-exiled son of Iran's toppled shah, but not seen as a player with any real influence in Iran itself, warned the US and Europe not to throw a 'lifeline' to Iran's current leadership. 'This is our Berlin Wall moment,' he said in an interview with the AFP news agency.
Al Jazeera
3 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Trump's budget demands, Iran to split NATO summit focus
As NATO leaders prepare to gather in The Hague on Tuesday, efforts to satisfy United States President Donald Trump's call for a big new defence spending goal may be overshadowed by the repercussions of US military strikes on Iran. Trump has demanded that NATO allies commit to spending 5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defence at their two-day gathering, starting on Tuesday. The summit is also intended to signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin that NATO is united, despite Trump's previous criticism of the alliance, and determined to expand and upgrade its defences to deter any attack from Moscow. On Monday, NATO chief Mark Rutte said the new defence spending pledge to be announced at the summit is fundamental for ensuring that the alliance can deter Russia. 'The defence investment plan that allies will agree in The Hague introduces a new baseline, 5 percent of GDP to be invested in defence,' Rutte said. 'This is a quantum leap that is ambitious, historic and fundamental to securing our future.' The US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites at the weekend, however, makes the summit much less predictable than Rutte – a former prime minister of the Netherlands hosting the gathering in his home city – and other NATO member countries would like. In 2003, the US-led war on Iraq deeply divided NATO, as France and Germany led opposition to the attack, while Britain and Spain joined the coalition. European allies and Canada also want Ukraine to be at the top of the summit agenda, but they are wary that Trump might not want President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to steal the limelight. Iran adds uncertainty Much will depend on the precise situation in the Middle East when the summit takes place – such as whether Iran has retaliated against the US – and whether other NATO leaders address the strikes with Trump or in comments to reporters. On Monday, Rutte told reporters the strikes on Iran over the weekend did not violate international law. Al Jazeera's Kimberly Halkett said that currently, European leaders are focused on diplomacy as the path towards de-escalation and limiting Iran from having nuclear weapons. However, an escalation in fighting, including Iran's targeting of a US military base in Qatar on Monday, makes diplomacy more difficult. 'Given the escalation that has taken place in recent days, that is a task that has become much more challenging to accomplish, which is why this meeting [at the NATO summit] has become so much more critical,' Halkett reported from Washington, DC. Speaking from The Hague, Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra said Rutte's view is that consensus among NATO allies is almost universal: 'Blaming the Iranians for failing to come forward in the past and negotiate a way out with the international community and with the IAEA.' A dangerous moment for NATO If the meeting does not go to plan, NATO risks appearing weak and divided, just as its European members see Russia as at its most dangerous since the end of the Cold War and are bracing for possible US troop cuts on the continent. On Monday, Putin dismissed NATO claims that Russia could one day attack a member of the alliance as lies that Western powers use to justify vast military spending. Under the new NATO defence spending plan, countries would spend 3.5 percent of GDP on 'core defence' – such as weapons, troops – and a further 1.5 percent on security-related investments such as adapting roads, ports and bridges for use by military vehicles, protecting pipelines and deterring cyberattacks. Such an increase – to be phased in over 10 years – would mean hundreds of billions of dollars more spending on defence. 'The reason they're doing this is so when Trump comes to the Hague, they'll tell him: Listen, we've been listening to your concerns, therefore, we're from now onwards committed to the 5 percent benchmark you have been talking about in the past,' said Ahelberra. Trump has long insisted it is time for Europeans to take on more of the financial and military burden of defending their continent. Rutte said Monday that Spain had not been granted an 'opt-out' from the pledge, despite Madrid claiming it had agreed it would not have to reach the headline figure of 5 percent. Last year, alliance members collectively spent about 2.6 percent of NATO GDP on core defence, amounting to about $1.3 trillion, according to NATO estimates. The lion's share came from the US, which spent almost $818bn. European Union leaders, said Ahelberra, 'want to convince Trump that NATO is taking into account his demands, but they're looking forward to being able to convince Trump to continue to team up with the military allies for the sake of tackling many issues … particularly Ukraine.' 'They don't want the Americans to abandon the Ukrainians. They don't want to see the Americans negotiate a settlement with Putin without taking into account the real concerns of Ukraine,' he added.
Al Jazeera
6 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
What the US and Israel really want from Iran
In his 2002 testimony to the United States Congress, then former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US lawmakers that an invasion of Iraq was necessary for winning the 'war on terror' and preventing Iraq and terrorist groups from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. He further claimed that the war would be quick and would usher in a new age of Western-friendly democracy, not just in Iraq, but across the region, including Iran. Neither proclamation was true. As many experts and officials already knew before the 2003 invasion began, Saddam Hussein's regime did not have weapons of mass destruction and held no ties to al-Qaeda. The war was bound to cause widespread devastation, instability, insecurity, unspeakable suffering, chaos and the breakdown of governance. And that is what happened. Iraq today is at best a fragile state with enormous economic and political challenges. After Israel and then the US attacked Iran earlier this month, many analysts rushed to comment on how the two allies have supposedly failed to learn the lessons of the Iraq war and are now repeating the same mistakes in Iran. These analyses would have been accurate had the actual goals of the 2003 invasion been to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and to establish democracy. But they were not. For the US and Israel, the desired outcome of the war was an Iraq that would not pose any resistance to the Israeli settler-colonial project in Palestine and its role as an agent of US imperial power in the region. This is also the desired outcome in Iran today. Just like the claims about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq proved completely false, the claims that Iran was on the 'verge of' developing a nuclear weapon have no grounds. No real evidence that Tehran was in fact close to gaining nuclear capabilities has been put forward. Instead, we have been presented with a truly unmatched level of hypocrisy and lies. Here we have a situation where two nuclear powers – one which stands out as the only state in history to use, not once but twice, a nuclear weapon and another that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has a mass-murder-suicide type of nuclear doctrine – are undertaking illegal 'pre-emptive' aggression under the guise of stopping nuclear proliferation. Clearly, the US and Israel are not after Iran's nuclear programme. They are after Iran as a regional power, and that is why regime change has already been floated in public. In addition to multiple statements from Netanyahu, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, and other Israeli officials, US Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz have also called for toppling the Iranian government. On Sunday, US President Donald Trump joined the calls for regime change in Iran with a post on social media. The Iranian people are now being encouraged to 'stand up' and fight for their 'freedom'. But freedom and democracy in Iran are certainly not what Israel and the US aim for. Why? Because a free and democratic Iran would not serve their interests and accept the brutalities of a settler-colonial project in its vicinity. They would rather see Iran return to the violent, tyrannical monarchy under the Pahlavi dynasty, which was overthrown in a popular revolution in 1979, or any other political force willing to do their bidding. If that doesn't happen, Israel and the US would rather have a fragmented, weak, chaotic, destabilised Iran, marred by a civil war. That would suit their interests, just as a war-torn Iraq did. Weakening regional powers in the Middle East and spreading instability through subversion and aggression is a well-established policy goal that the political elites in Israel and the US have jointly embraced since the 1990s. A policy document called Clean Break, authored by former US Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle and other neoconservatives in 1996, outlined this strategy of attacking Middle Eastern states under the pretext of preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to secure Israel's strategic interests. Perle et al did not come up with something radically new; they simply built on the well-known imperial strategy of sowing division and chaos in order to facilitate imperial domination. But this strategy is not without risks. Just like the collapse of the Iraqi state paved the way for violent non-state actors to emerge and for Iran to solidify its position as a regional power challenging US-Israeli interests, a weakened or fragmented Iranian state can result in the same dynamics. On a more global scale, the actions of the US and Israel are encouraging more countries to pursue nuclear weapons. The lesson that states are drawing from the US-Israeli aggression on Iran is that nuclear weapons are necessary to acquire precisely to prevent such attacks. Thus, we are likely heading towards more proliferation as a result of this war, not less. The Israeli state does not seem to be concerned about proliferation as long as the chaos and destruction it spreads in the region allows it to achieve its strategic goal of eradicating the Palestinian struggle once and for all, and ending all resistance to its settler colonisation project. Israel, in a nutshell, wants the entire region on its knees and will stop at nothing to achieve that objective. This is because it does not really have to foot the bill of regional instability. By contrast, US interests are directly impacted when the Middle East descends into chaos. A dysfunctional Iraq or a weakened Iran may serve the US in the short term, but in the longer term, the instability can disrupt its grander plans for control of global energy markets and containing China. The rest of the world will also feel the ripple effect of this unjustified aggression, just as it did after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Given the brutal, decades-long fallout of that war, the global response to the US-Israeli aggression against Iran has been self-defeatingly subdued; some European countries have appeared to endorse the attack, despite the many negative economic impacts they could face as a result of this war. If governments truly desire to make the world a safer place, this complacency with imperial violence needs to end. It is past time that they come to the sober conclusion that the US and Israel are agents of destruction and chaos by virtue of their racist colonial design. The Israeli settler colonial project is an unjustifiable project of displacement, expulsion and genocide; US imperialism is an unjustifiable project of robbing people of their resources, dignity and sovereignty. To establish peace and stability in the Middle East, the world needs to put pressure on Israel to give up its settler colonial project and become part of the region through a decolonial existence with the Palestinians in a decolonised Palestine; and to compel the US to release its iron grip on the region, allowing its people to live in freedom and sovereignty. This is the only way to avoid perpetual chaos, instability, suffering and pain. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
