US President Donald Trump denies the detention of 17 individuals accused of spying for the CIA in Iran.

Iran Press/ America: US President Donald Trump in a Twitter message on Monday said that the detention of 17 individuals accused of working as spies for the CIA is not true.

"The Report of Iran capturing CIA spies is totally false," Trump tweeted.

According to an Iran Press report, Trump's tweet was in response to Iran's Intelligence Ministry statement on Monday, which announced the break-up of a network of 17 professional spies working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Also on Monday US President Donald Trump said it is getting harder for him to want to make a deal with Iran and said the situation could go either way very easily.

Trump made the comment on Monday while talking to reporters at the White House amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington.

Iran's Ministry of Intelligence said earlier on Monday it had captured 17 US spies and broken-up a CIA spying network, but Trump has denied the report saying the report has 'zero truth'.

Related news:

CIA spying network busted in Iran: Intelligence Ministry

The 17 spies, many of them working in small cells or individually, were identified and arrested by the Intelligence Ministry in the second half of 2018 and the first three months of 2019.

The statement said all the spies arrested were employed in 'sensitive' Iranian government institutions, or were employed in the private sector, often as contractors or advisers, and were active in such fields as economic intelligence gathering, military, and cyber intelligence gathering, the civilian nuclear industry, and intelligence gathering about infrastructure.

The statement said the spies gathered classified information and categorized them and sometimes carried out technical-intelligence operations on the ground.

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