Foiled attack in Paris: The suspicion of a link with Iran is not surprising, according to Senator Cédric Perrin, President of the Senates Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee

“The suspicion of a link with Iran is not surprising,” said on Saturday, March 28, on franceinfo, Cédric Perrin, LR senator from Territoire de Belfort, president of the defense and foreign affairs committee in the Senate and member of the parliamentary intelligence delegation, after the bomb attack in front of the Bank of America in Paris. The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office immediately took charge.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, on Saturday evening on BFMTV, made the “connection” with the war in the Middle East, seeing in the modus operandi of this thwarted bomb attack “similarities” with actions carried out in several European countries and claimed by a mysterious group, considered close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. “Given the context in the Middle East, given the means and especially the methods that the Iranians have been applying since 1979 [date of the revolution], particularly towards the West, it is clear that the risk of a terrorist attack is increasing,” underlines Cédric Perrin.

“We will have to consider giving the means to work” on intelligence, demands the senator, pointing out encrypted messaging platforms like “WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, and others.” “Significantly improving the capacity to decipher these messages is essential,” he adds. “This is a big debate going on in Parliament right now. When you have these completely isolated and coded messaging platforms, it is extremely difficult for intelligence services to trace the networks or anticipate attacks or attempted attacks”, insists the senator. The person arrested for the thwarted bomb attack confessed to the police that they had been deposited on-site and recruited via the Snapchat app in exchange for 600 euros.