Iranian military officials claimed on Wednesday that an Iranian-British national had been arrested at the country’s airport on "spying charges," according to reports in the Iran’s state-controlled media.
The British national, identified by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as Nazanin Zaghari, was arrested as she tried to leave the country and then transferred to IRGC authorities "for her involvement in a regime change plot," according to the IRGC.
The IRGC claimed in a statement that "foreign countries" are trying to take down the country’s hardline Islamic regime.
"One of the heads of the [spying] networks affiliated with foreign countries who had conducted different missions in line with the realization of the heinous objectives of the enemies of the Islamic establishment has been identified and captured," according to the IRGC statement.
The British national "Zaghari is a member of foreign entities and had cooperated in designing and staging media and cyber projects with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the Islamic Republic," the IRGC claimed.
The purported spy operated under the "direction and support of media and spy services of foreign governments for years," the IRGC further claimed.
The statement goes on to single out Britain for trying "in recent months to disrupt the IRGC's determination through their media hype, but to no avail," according to the report.
Iranian officials say they had been monitoring the spy plot for several months and will disclose further details in "the near future."
"The enemies and ill-wishers of the Islamic Revolution should know that the IRGC's intelligence officers are in full control of their hostile activities in the cyberspace and they will resolutely deal with all elements and networks of foreign countries," the IRGC said.