Iran was behind the recently foiled planned terror attacks on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) embassies in Addis Ababa and Khartoum, the U.S. and Israeli officials told the New York Times this week.
On 3 February, Ethiopia’s National Intelligence Service (NISS) said it had foiled a terrorist plot to attack the UAE embassies in Addis Ababa and Khartoum, adding they worked with the Sudanese intelligence agency to arrest the group’s members.
The Ethiopian authorities, however, did not disclose the identity of instigators who was orchestrating the planned attacks. They only but said they had been monitoring the activities of these groups since November 2020 in collaboration with several foreign intelligence services in Europe, Asia and Africa.
On Monday, the New York Times, based on statements by the U.S. and Israeli security officials reported that Iran was behind the attacks.
“They say the Ethiopian operation was part of a wider drive to seek soft targets in African countries where Iran might avenge painful, high-profile losses such as the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, said to have been killed by Israel in November, and Maj Gen Qassim Suleimani, the Iranian spymaster killed by the United States in Iraq just over one year ago,” said the NYT.
Rear Adm Heidi K. Berg, director of intelligence at the Pentagon’s Africa Command, said that Iran was behind the 15 people arrested in Ethiopia and that the “mastermind of this foiled plot,” the paper further said.
In addition, the Swedish authorities arrested ringleader, Ahmed Ismail who is residing in Stockholm.
The Ethiopian security service earlier this month said that Sudanese General Intelligence Service (GIS) also arrested the suspects who were preparing for similar attacks in Sudan.
However, the Sudanese authorities did not comment on this report.
Nonetheless, the Iranian embassy in Addis Ababa rejected the allegations of the American and Israeli officials.
“These are baseless allegations only provoked by the Zionist regime’s malicious media,” said a spokeswoman for the Iranian Embassy in Addis Ababa.
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