Khatib made the remarks at a ceremony in Tehran on Sunday, saying the intelligence forces have detained members of a terror team affiliated with the Zionist regime’s spy agency Mossad who had sneaked across the border into Western Iran from Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.

The minister made clear that Iranian military and security troops will not hesitate to deliver a crushing and decisive response to any destabilizing action against the country’s border regions.

Mossad has upped its espionage activity in the past few months and has been involved in a covert war against Iran. Iran’s foes, mainly Israel and the US, have also been engaged in an attempt to spy on and sabotage Iran’s defense and nuclear industries.

The intelligence minister has also stated that Israel got bogged down extremely further during the past Iranian year compared to the years before.

"The main reason behind the deterioration of the Israeli regime’s situation in the past year was that it encountered retaliatory and serious offenses and assaults," he added.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Khatib said more than 200 anti-Iran media outlets, 35 think tanks and dozens of intelligence services were actively involved in foreign-sponsored riots that broke out in some parts of the country.

Analyzing the hybrid war against the Iranian nation, he added that the hybrid war will continue in various forms and that it is necessary for Iran to have an accurate intelligence and security estimate in this regard.

Iran has in recent months captured several members of spy networks affiliated to foreign secret services. The militants were involved in making explosives and hand-made bombs and linked to foreigners and planned to carry out counter-security acts and set up operational groups to direct the riots in Iran.

Back in mid-January, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry announced that the country's security forces have arrested at least 13 members of Mossad spy agency who planned to murder a military official and carry out several acts of sabotage in major cities.

It said in a statement that security agents have dismantled two espionage and terrorist teams linked with the Mossad spy agency.

It added that 23 members of the terror network had been identified and 13 of them, who were operating on Iranian soil, had been detained.

In late December, the intelligence ministry announced that the country's security agents have captured all members of four terrorist teams of Mossad before they could carry out operations in the country. They were planning to carry out terrorist attacks in some parts of the country.

And in mid-December, Iranian security troops captured the members of a Mossad spy network who were planning to sabotage Iran's defense industry. Iran’s intelligence forces uncovered a plot by a Mossad espionage network to gather information from Iranian knowledge-based companies that cooperate with Iran’s defense industries.

It comes months after Iranian security forces disbanded an espionage network linked to the spy agency, detaining 10 elements who planned to carry out terror operations in the country.

Iran's Judiciary announced in a statement in late October that 10 individuals with links to Mossad have been arrested in West Azarbaijan province.

The members of the terror outfit received rigorous training from Israeli intelligence officers and were collecting information about individuals cooperating with the Iranian security and intelligence apparatus, the statement read.

They tried to extract information from their victims through abduction, various threats and violent assault and battery, it noted.

And in July, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry announced that it has captured a network of Mossad agents who had entered the country to conduct terror attacks on sensitive sites.

It declared that the detained mercenaries intended to blow up a sensitive military site inside Iran by highly powerful bombs. But they were identified and arrested by the country's security forces before they could take any action to carry out acts of sabotage.

Iranian nuclear scientists and sites have been the target of the Western and Israeli spy agencies' terror and sabotage attacks in recent years, but, Iranian intelligence bodies say they have managed to thwart a large number of these plots.