Iran’s intelligence ministry arrests foreign agents, state media

TEHRAN:  Iran’s intelligence ministry has arrested a foreign national it said was conducting espionage on behalf of the United States and Israel, and acting as a proxy for two Gulf countries, state media cited the ministry as saying on Tuesday.

The ministry also said it had arrested 30 spies, internal mercenaries, and operational agents of Israel and the US over the past few days.

US attacks on Iran will hit a new intensity Tuesday and the war will continue as long as President Donald Trump decides, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said.

“Today will be yet again, our most intense day of strikes inside Iran — the most fighters, the most bombers,” Hegseth told a news conference at the Pentagon more than 10 days into the US-Israeli war against the Islamic republic.

As for a timeline for the war, Trump “gets to control the throttle. He’s the one deciding,” Hegseth said. “It’s not for me to posit whether it’s the beginning, the middle or the end,” the defense secretary said.

Trump had said the previous day that the war could end “very soon,” but remained vague. Among the goals is destruction of Iran’s navy, which has been targeted with “artillery, fighters, bombers and sea-launched missiles,” General Dan Caine, the top US military officer, said alongside Hegseth on Tuesday.

Iran has vowed to block all oil exports via the Gulf while the war lasts, while Trump has threatened “death, fire, and fury” if Tehran interferes with crude exports.

Caine said US forces continue “to hunt and strike mine-laying vessels and mine storage facilities” — weapons Iran could use to block maritime traffic.

Hegseth meanwhile accused Iran of “moving rocket launchers into civilian neighborhoods, near schools, near hospitals to try to prevent our ability to strike,” saying “that’s how they operate.”

He did not directly address a strike early in the conflict that hit an elementary school in the southern city of Minab, which Iran said killed more than 150 people, but said that “no nation takes more precautions to ensure there’s never targeting of civilians than the United States of America.”

Trump has said the incident is being investigated, while suggesting Monday that Iran may have fired a Tomahawk missile at the school itself.

Iran does not possess Tomahawks — a US weapon used extensively by US forces, including in the current conflict.

Tehran has responded to the war by launching waves of missiles and drones at countries in the region that host US forces, but Hegseth said Tuesday that the volume of fire is lessening. “The last 24 hours have seen Iran fire the lowest number of missiles they’ve been capable of firing yet,” he said.

Iran is fighting back but is not tougher than the US military expected before the war, the top US general told reporters, as the Pentagon promised its most intense day of strikes in the 10-day-old conflict.

The Pentagon says the number of Iranian strikes has fallen sharply from the start of the war, as the Pentagon bombs Iran’s weapons inventories and targets Iran’s more limited number of missile launchers.

Asked if Iran was a stronger adversary than he expected when the US military drew up its war plans, General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters the fight was not harder than expected.

“I think they’re fighting, and I respect that, but I don’t think they are more formidable than what we thought,” Caine told the Pentagon briefing. Monitoring Desk