ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian police arrested three suspected members of the Islamic State (ISIS) on Saturday. They were allegedly planning an attack on one of the country’s tourist hubs, state media reported.
The suspects were arrested in Nowshahr, a port city on the Caspian Sea in Mazandaran province about 150 kilometers north of Tehran.
“With the efforts of the security forces in Nowshahr, we were able to identify and arrest this terrorist group,” Ali Akbar Darvishi, Nowshahr’s police commander told IRNA.
In 2015, ISIS established a branch called ISIS-Khorasan that has carried out multiple attacks in Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asian countries.
An ISIS attack in Iran’s Kerman in January killed over 80 people at a commemorative ceremony for slain Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Qasem Soleimani on the fourth anniversary of his assassination. Tens of people were injured in a stampede as crowds panicked after the blasts.
In July, the Iranian minister of intelligence said that 20 suspects had been arrested in a counterinsurgency operation, accused of plotting terrorist attacks. Two of them were allegedly ISIS leaders.
ISIS rose to prominence in 2014 when it seized control of large swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory. The group was declared territorially defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019. While it no longer controls any territory, ISIS continues to pose a serious security threat through bombings, hit-and-run attacks, and abductions.
