Foiled attack in Paris: Suspicion of ties with Iran is not surprising, says Senator Cédric Perrin, chairman of the Senates defense and foreign affairs committee.

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

“The suspicion of a link with Iran is not surprising,” states Saturday, March 28, on Franceinfo, Cedric Perrin, LR Senator of Territoire de Belfort, president of the Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee in the Senate and member of the parliamentary intelligence delegation, following the bomb attack in front of the Bank of America in Paris. The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat) has immediately taken the case.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez, on Saturday evening on BFMTV, made the “connection” with the war in the Middle East, seeing “similarities” in the modus operandi of this thwarted attack “to 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 [the date of the revolution] especially towards the West, it is obvious that the risk of terrorist attacks is increasingly high,” underlines Cedric Perrin.

“We will have to think about providing the means to work” on intelligence, demands the senator, pointing in particular to encrypted messaging services like “WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, and others.” We need to “significantly improve the ability to decode these messages,” he adds. “This is a major debate in parliament right now.” “When you have these completely closed and encoded messaging services, it is extremely complicated for intelligence services to trace the sources or anticipate attacks or attempted attacks,” insists the senator. The person arrested for the thwarted attack confessed to the police that they had been placed on site and recruited via the Snapchat application in exchange for 600 euros.