Tehran, June 19 (RHC)-- Iran’s Intelligence Ministry has detailed how it recently delivered an unprecedented destructive blow to an integrated network of operatives serving the U.S. spy agency via the Internet.

Iran’s top security official had announced the security operation earlier this week.  Then, on Tuesday, IRNA cited the Ministry’s director-general for counterintelligence as recounting the operation in detail.

“The Ministry recently detected and destroyed a big internationally-active spy network of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a world first,” said the unnamed official.

“This is the first time that an expansive active American espionage network operating on the Internet platform across the international arena has been detected,” the official added, referring to cyberspace as the area most used by the United States to compromise other country's interests.

Iran's intelligence minister says the country has identified 290 CIA agents across different countries, forcing the U.S. to form a special committee to reassess its operations.  The operation saw Iranian intelligence experts infiltrating the channels used by the CIA across the Internet for safe communications with its spies, the official noted, adding that the agency would use the cover of apparently-irrelevant websites in order to enable the communications.

The intelligence command enabled the Ministry to identify all the websites and the agents linked to them, according to the official.  The agents, each of whom were assigned a specifically-designated website and communications channel, would act against the interests of the countries in which they were operating, including the Islamic Republic, and referred to the exposed agents as “professional and special sources” for the CIA.

Once harvesting the information, Iran entrusted it with the countries, with which it shares intelligence, according to the official, who said this interaction led to entrapment of more operatives elsewhere in the world.

“The Americans sensed danger after this development, finding their spies to be subject to threats.  Therefore, they put out an international recall, taking their spies of various nationalities out of the targeted countries,” the director-general stated, adding: “As a result, they lost a big intelligence network.”

Some of the identified operatives have been referred to judicial authorities, some have been executed, and others were still being used in favor of intelligence goals, said the official.

“American spies would operate in industrial, military, nuclear, cyberspace, economy and infrastructure,” the source specified.  The Ministry has dealt a blow to a new network after finding clues across the U.S.’s intelligence chains and identifying new people serving U.S. spy activities.