A senior Iranian official said on Thursday that Tehran had foiled a plot by Israeli and Arab agencies to assassinate Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, last month.
State media quoted Hossein Taeb, the Revolutionary Guards security chief, as telling a conference that the plotters had planned to buy property adjacent to the grave of Soleimani's father and rig it with explosives to kill the commander when he attended a religious ceremony in the southeastern Kerman Province in September.
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It said the attackers had planned to plant nearly 500 kilograms, about 1,100 pounds, of explosives in an underground tunnel beneath where Soleimani would have been standing.
The report didn't elaborate on the number of suspects but said they were linked to Israeli and Arab intelligence services.
Soleimani leads the foreign arm of the Guards and has had a key role in fighting in Syria and Iraq.
Taeb said an unspecified number of people had been arrested in the plot, which he said had been "years in planning."
Taeb did not name the Arab countries allegedly involved in the plot, but Iran has had tense relations with US-allied regional rival Saudi Arabia.
According to the Tasnim media outlet, Taeb said the hope was to trigger a religious war inside the country and make it look as if Soleimani's assassination was an "act of domestic revenge." He said the Revolutionary Guards had been keeping a close eye on the terrorist cell, including when it was dispatched to neighboring countries for training in preparation of the attack.
It was not possible to independently verify the events described by Iranian media.
Soleimani's Quds Force, tasked with carrying out operations beyond Iran's borders, has shored up support for Syria's President Bashar Assad when he looked close to defeat in the civil war raging since 2011 and also helped militiamen defeat the Islamic State group in Iraq.
Its successes have made Soleimani instrumental in the steady spread of Iranian influence in the Middle East, which the United States and Tehran's foes Saudi Arabia and Israel have struggled to keep in check.
There have been repeated air attacks on Quds bases in Syria, and in August, Israel accused the force of planning "killer drone attacks" and said its airstrike showed Tehran that its forces were vulnerable anywhere.
Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz said at the time that Israel was working to "uproot" Soleimani, according to Israeli media.
