In a joint operation with Israel's spy agency, Mossad, Brazilian police have arrested a terror cell from the Lebanese Hezbollah planning Iran-backed attacks on Jewish targets.
Brazil's Federal Police said in a statement last week that they arrested two people, who they did not name, on terrorism charges in Sao Paulo. They also carried out search and seizure warrants in Sao Paulo, Brasilia and Minas Gerais states.
Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, issued a statement which said, "The Brazilian security services, together with the Mossad and ... additional international security and enforcement agencies, have foiled a terrorist attack in Brazil, which had been planned by the Hezbollah terrorist organization, directed and financed by the Iranian regime".
Mossad said the "terrorist cell ... was operated by Hezbollah in order to carry out an attack on Israeli and Jewish targets in Brazil."
In September, David Barnea, the head of Mossad, warned that the agency would strike "in the heart of Tehran" to find the people behind 27 Iranian attempts to hit Israeli and Jewish targets around the world over the last year.
Attacks had been foiled in Europe, Africa, southeast Asia and South America, he said, with others ongoing.
Hezbollah, originally established in Lebanon by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in 1982 to counter Israeli forces, holds the designation of a terrorist organization from Argentina, Britain, Canada, Germany, Honduras, the United States, and several Persian Gulf states aligned with the US.
