TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Iran said on Monday it had captured 17 spies working for the CIA and sentenced some of them to death.
Iranian national television published images of CIA officers who had been in touch with the spies. The Ministry of Intelligence said the 17 spies had been arrested in the 12 months to March 2019. Some had been sentenced to death.
Those taken into custody worked on "sensitive sites” in the country’s military and nuclear facilities, an Iranian intelligence official told a press conference here.
The revelations prompted U.S. President Donald Trump to dismiss the captures with his characteristic disdain.
"The Report of Iran capturing CIA spies is totally false,” he tweeted. "Their Economy is dead, and will get much worse. Iran is a total mess!” Trump claimed.
The Iranian intelligence official said none of the 17, who had "sophisticated training”, had succeeded in their sabotage missions. Their spying missions included collecting information at the facilities they worked at, carrying out technical and intelligence activities and transferring and installing monitoring devices, he said.
The official further said the CIA had promised those arrested U.S. visas or jobs in America and that some of the agents had turned and were now working with his department "against the U.S”.
He also handed out a CD with a video recording of a foreign female spy working for the CIA. The disc also included names of several U.S. embassy staff in Turkey, India, Zimbabwe and Austria who Iran says were in touch with the recruited Iranian spies.
The announcement on Monday came as national television started broadcasting a "documentary" titled "The Mole Hunt", a trailer of which was on the disc.
It shows re-enactments of spy meetings plus interviews with officials like intelligence minister Mahmoud Alavi.
Some of the spies had been recruited by falling into a "visa trap" set by the CIA for Iranians seeking to travel to the United States.
"Some were approached when they were applying for a visa, while others had visas from before and were pressured by the CIA in order to renew them."
Others were "lured" by promises of cash, high-paying jobs and even medical services for seriously ill family members.
Their mission was to collect classified information and carry out "technical and intelligence operations at important and sensitive centers using advanced equipment," he said.
The top security official said the CIA used special stone-like containers to send communications tools and identity documents to its network.
"The forgery was clumsy, showing that it was done by the CIA itself," he said, adding that this "proves" it was government-sanctioned.
"After they were discovered, CIA officers ordered the spies to destroy all the documents," he added.
The official said the CIA had informed the suspects to go to "emergency exits" in cities near the border in case they felt they were in danger. "Of course, they instead met the intelligence ministry's agents and were arrested."
He hailed the operation as a "second major defeat of the CIA" following a similar one five years earlier. "They will naturally try to restore and rebuild themselves, and of course we are always vigilant."
In June, Iran said it executed a former staff member of the defense ministry who was convicted of spying for the CIA.
In April, Iran said it had uncovered 290 CIA spies both inside and outside the country over recent years.
National television recently aired a 30-episode series called "Gando" (an Iranian crocodile species), dramatizing the Iranian counter-espionage operations.
Its first season is inspired in part by the case of Jason Rezaian, the Iranian-American correspondent for the Washington Post in Tehran jailed for 544 days over charges of espionage. Gando portrays him as a spymaster.
Rezaian was released in 2016 as part of a prisoner exchange with Washington.