UK's deputy ambassador to Iran detained in Tehran on espionage charges

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps has arrested a number of diplomats working in foreign embassies in Tehran over espionage charges, Report informs, citing Iranian media.

According to footage released by the IRGC Intelligence Organization, the detainees were involved in espionage activities, including soil sampling in banned areas.

The detainees include a deputy of the British ambassador Giles Whitaker, who, along with his family, visited Shahdad Desert on a tourism trip, but as the footage shows, he was conducting soil sampling in that area.

The spouse of Austria’s cultural attaché and Maciej Walczak, a professor in Poland who was visiting Iran as a tourist, were also arrested, according to Karam.

The IRGC released a video allegedly showing them near the site of the missile exercises, but the UK’s foreign office has said that “reports of the arrest of a British diplomat in Iran are completely false.”