Foiled Plot in Paris: Suspicion of Links with Iran is Not Surprising, says Senator Cedric Perrin, President of the Senates Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee

In the night from Friday to Saturday, a bomb attack was carried out in front of the Bank of America in Paris.

“The suspicion of links with Iran is not surprising,” said Cédric Perrin, LR senator of Territoire de Belfort and president of the Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee of the Senate, after the bomb attack in front of the Bank of America in Paris. The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) immediately took charge.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez made the “link” with the war in the Middle East on Saturday evening on BFMTV, seeing “similarities” in the modus operandi of this attack 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 using since 1979 [date of the revolution] especially towards the West, it is obvious that the risk of a terrorist attack is increasing,” emphasizes Cédric Perrin.

“We need to think about giving the means to work” on intelligence, demands the senator, pointing out encrypted messaging services such as “Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, and others.” “It is necessary to significantly improve the capacity to decrypt these messages,” he adds. “This is a major debate currently in Parliament. When you have these completely enclosed and coded messaging services, it is extremely complicated for intelligence services to trace the connections or anticipate attacks or attempted attacks,” insists the senator. The person arrested for the bomb attack confessed to the police that she had been placed at the scene and recruited via the Snapchat application in exchange for 600 euros.