Newspaper: French Foiled 2018 Iranian Terror Attack in Paris

French authorities reportedly foiled a potential attack in 2018 when Iran sent half a ton of explosives in diplomatic suitcases on a civilian flight for use in a terror bombing in Paris, according to a report by the British newspaper Independent in Arabic, citing unidentified intelligence sources. The attack was reportedly supposed to be carried out by an Iranian intelligence official who had worked at the country’s embassy in Austria, but French authorities thwarted the attack following the arrest of a Belgian couple of Iranian origin en route to Paris with the explosives in their vehicle. According to the anonymous source, Iran frequently uses civilian flights to transport weaponry and funds to their proxies. The report comes amid another by the British Daily Telegraph that said the Islamic Republic was currently setting up terror cells in African countries to attack the United States and assets in other Western countries. “It is all part of Tehran’s attempts to expand its terrorist operations across the globe,” an anonymous senior western security source told the Telegraph. The report noted that according to intelligence officials, Iran has been “working on the new terror network for the past three years since signing the nuclear deal on freezing its uranium enrichment activities with the US and other major world powers in 2015.”