TEHRAN -- Iran’s judiciary said the country’s intelligence units have arrested the No. 2 leader of a militant group based in California.
The man — identified only as “Masmatus,” which appears to be a pseudonym — is believed to be the second in command in the group known as “Tondar,” according to the judiciary’s media outlet Mizanonline. The arrest took place last month, it said. The suspect was involved in the planning of an attack on a mosque in Iran in 2008 tha
t martyred 14 worshippers and wounded over 200 people.
In 2020, Iran’s intelligence service detained Jamshid Sharmahd, the No. 1 U.S.-based leader of Tondar, or “Thunder” in Farsi, over the same 2008 bombing that targeted the Husseynieh Seyyed al-Shohada Mosque in the city of Shiraz. At the time, Iran said that Sharmahd was planning other attacks around the Islamic Republic.
Tondar is a militant wing of the Kingdom Assembly of Iran, known in Farsi as Anjoman-e Padeshahi-e Iran. It seeks to restore U.S.-backed monarchy, which ended when the fatally ill Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi fled the country in 1979 just before the Islamic Revolution. The group’s founder disappeared in the mid-2000s.