(JNi.media) Iranian news agency Tasneem has issued “a new scenario,” stating that the stampede in Mina, Saudi Arabia, September 24, when overcrowding caused between 769 and 1,184 people to suffocate and be crushed to death—was the handiwork of the intelligence services of Israel and Saudi Arabia, targeting senior officials in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and other Iranian officials, including diplomats.
Iran’s Prosecutor General Seyed Ebrahim Raeisi said on Saturday that Riyadh must punish those responsible for the stampede. “It is disturbing and regrettable for everyone to witness the guests of God (Hajj pilgrims) are hurt in this way,” Raeisi said, adding that the tragic incident should not be considered merely the Saudis’ lack of prudence and competence, but an outright crime. He warned that if Saudi authorities do not investigate the issue and punish those behind the incident, Iran will ask international courts to deal with the Saudi crime.
The Iranian news agency quotes the information as coming from European Union staff who say “they heard the whispers going on among European diplomats in Brussels who feared that what happened in Mina during the stoning ritual was an orchestrated and prepared operation” by the Israeli Mossad.
According to Tasneem, those European diplomats saw a preliminary intelligence report about the possibility of Mossad and Saudi intelligence collaborating to start the stampede and then use it as cover for kidnapping Iranian Revolutionary Guards officials, ambassadors and staff working for the office of the Supreme Leader of the Revolution Ali Khamenei.
The reason Tanseem pins the notion that the stampede was an Israeli-Saudi collaboration on information in the Western intelligence report indicating that “it is impossible that Mossad agents could carry out such an operation without coordination with Saudi intelligence, and perhaps with the assistance from one or more Western intelligence services.”
Tanseem says its sources confirmed that former Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Ghazanfar Abadi is among the missing in Mina, and as he is one of the most important figures in the office of the commander of the revolution, and possibly the most prominent figure familiar with the secrets of Iranian armament of Hezbollah in Lebanon, it follows that he could have been targeted in the “Mossad stampede.”
Among other important figures who are also missing is Director of Strategic Studies Office of the Revolutionary Guard, Dr. Ali Asghar Fulladgr, as well as others from the Revolutionary Guards, and the Office of the Iranian Hajj Mission.
The Iranian Agency admitted its European diplomatic sources pointed out that the credibility of the “preliminary” report they had seen is yet to be confirmed, but stressed that it remains one of the possibilities that Western intelligence agencies, as well as Russian intelligence, are seriously looking into.