Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei has asked intelligence agencies to distance themselves from internal divisions, calling for changes in the rules of the intelligence game.
During his meeting with high-ranking officials in the Iranian intelligence ministry, Khamenei said that his country is fighting a largescale intelligence war with the “regime’s enemies.”
The Iranian regime is facing a large and strong front of enemies in the battlefield, he said.
The war involves power and data theft, changing decision-making methods and people’s beliefs, igniting economic and financial unrest as well as security tension, Khamenei added, stressing that the intelligence community should go on the offensive, in addition to adopting preemptive tactics.
Khamenei attempted to hinder any attempt to distance intelligence agencies from their traditional role, asserting that they follow the Iranian regime’s policies.
His statements came as the end of President Hassan Rouhani’s first presidential term witnessed an implicit struggle between the ministry of intelligence and similar bodies in the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in addition to the establishment of an intelligence body in the Iranian judiciary.
After Rouhani began his second term, the IRGC’s intelligence body arrested - in coordination with the judiciary – his brother Hossein Fereydoun and VP Eshaq Jahangiri's brother Mehdi Jahangiri on corruption charges.
Neither the details of the corruption charges nor the result of the investigation against them have been revealed.
