Official War With Iran Thread
- Thread starter Berniewood Hogan
- Start date
Counterintelligence Agents Nab Alabama Man for Iran Smuggling
Prosecutors say an Alabama man shipped vital US-made parts to Iran’s energy sector.
www.coffeeordie.com
Counterintelligence Agents Nab Alabama Man for Iran Smuggling
The arrest of an Alabama man, 69-year-old parts supplier Ray Hunt, for allegedly shipping American parts to Iran’s energy sector comes amid heightened tensions between the US and Tehran. This climate was punctuated during a July 16, 2022, protest there against the US. Photo by Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images.
For the past seven years, an Alabama man violated US sanctions by secretly shuttling control valves, nozzles, and tubing to Iran’s oil and gas industry, according to a federal grand jury indictment.
Unsealed Tuesday, Nov. 29, in Huntsville, the 15-count indictment charges Ray Hunt, 69, of Owens Cross Roads, with conspiring to unlawfully ship the banned parts, without federal export licenses, to a pair of unnamed Tehran companies, by peddling falsified forms.
Born in Iran and naturalized as a US citizen, Hunt — also known as Abdolrahman Hantoosh, Rahman Hantoosh, and Rahman Natoosh — operated Vega Tools LLC, an Alabama company that resold industrial parts for the US manufacturing and energy sector.
If convicted on all counts, Hunt faces up to 40 years behind bars and a $1 million fine. Federal agents arrested him Tuesday and he made his initial court appearance on the same day.
US-Iranian tensions remain high over a range of issues, including Tehran’s ongoing crackdown on women protesting a lack of civil rights in the Middle Eastern nation. Here, a woman wears a T-shirt bearing the word “Execution” in Persian, as she takes part in a rally in support of Iranian women in Istanbul, Saturday, Nov. 26, 2022. Photo by Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images.
Attempts by Coffee or Die Magazine to reach Hunt by email and on his phone were unsuccessful.
No attorney has been entered for him on the federal docket, and it remains unclear if he’s still in federal custody.
To skirt sanctions, Hunt would purchase the parts from US companies and then pass the packages to transhippers located in United Arab Emirates and Turkey to bring to Iran, according to his indictment.
Prosecutors say he’d also fill out bogus export paperwork, lying to freight companies about the contents of parcels and the true value of the goods being forwarded to Iran.
A woman holds a placard during a rally in support of demonstrations in Iran, at the Place de la Republique in Paris, Oct. 29, 2022. Iranian Mahsa Amini, 22, died in custody Sept. 16, 2022, three days after her arrest by Tehran’s morality police for allegedly breaching the Islamic republic’s strict dress code for women. Photo by Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/AFP via Getty Images.
It remains unclear how many parts Hunt allegedly smuggled to Iran. Federal investigators listed only five transactions between late 2017 and late 2019 that added up to nearly $51,823 in purchase orders.
Hunt’s indictment came during heightened tensions between the US and Iran, highlighted by tightening federal sanctions on Tehran’s banking, energy, military, and nuclear sectors.
The latest round of financial penalties are designed to help curtail Iran’s treatment of ethnic and religious minorities; the Islamic Revolutionary regime’s crackdown on women protesters; Tehran’s materiel transfers to aid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; and the government’s support to Middle Eastern terrorist organizations.
Read Next: US Navy Forensic Investigators: Iran Drone Blasted Tanker
Rise in Iranian assassination, kidnapping plots alarms Western officials
In the summer of 2021, officers from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service showed up at the Vancouver home of Ramin Seyed Emami, an Iranian Canadian musician and performer who hosts a popular Persian-language podcast.
Seyed Emami often features guests from inside Iran and delves into topics that are taboo in conservative Iranian culture, such as sex, mental health and losing religious faith.
One of the officers explained that the government of Iran had developed a list of people living abroad whom it deemed a threat to the regime, Seyed Emami said in an interview. The officer didn’t say whether the 41-year-old podcaster’s name was on it, but the implication was clear, and he was told to take security precautions.
The Iranian government has stepped up its efforts to kidnap and kill government officials, activists and journalists around the world, including in the United States, according to government documents and interviews with 15 officials in Washington, Europe and the Middle East, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
Tehran has targeted former senior U.S. government officials; dissidents who have fled the country for the United States, Britain, Canada, Turkey and Europe; media organizations critical of the regime; and Jewish civilians or those with links to Israel, according to the officials and government documents.
Iran’s intelligence and security services rely largely on proxies to carry out their plans, offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to jewel thieves, drug dealers and other criminals in murder-for-hire schemes, the officials said. That hands-off approach probably caused some operations to fail, the officials said, as plots have been disrupted — and, in some cases, the hired hit men appear to have gotten cold feet and never carried out their orders.
But officials say Iran’s persistence makes it likely to eventually carry out the killing of a high-profile dissident, journalist or Western government figure, and that could spark direct confrontation with Tehran.
Iran’s security services have carried out lethal operations abroad since the regime took power four decades ago, officials said. More recently, they said, between 2015 and 2017, Tehran is believed to have killed at least three dissidents in Western Europe, including an Iranian Arab activist who was gunned down in front of his home in The Hague.
Dutch authorities accused Iran of involvement in another assassination plot as well as attempted bombings in Europe. In 2018, an Iranian diplomat who was stationed in Vienna was arrested and accused of enlisting an Iranian couple living in Belgium to plant a bomb at a huge rally in Paris for the Mujahideen-e Khalq, or MEK, an exiled opposition group that Iran calls a terrorist organization.
The tempo of the plots has dramatically increased in the past two years, and they are among the most ambitious and far-reaching in recent memory, according to the officials and documents. Iran’s actions have led to diplomatic expulsions and warnings to potential targets from governments.
“The general feeling I got was they were beginning to take this issue seriously,” said Seyed Emami, who recalled that one of the Canadian officers asked him to place his phone in a bag designed to block electromagnetic waves, so their conversation could not be surveilled. “They realize if people are being threatened on their own land, it’s a whole different story.”
For Seyed Emami, the danger is very real. His father, an environmentalist, died in an Iranian prison in February 2018, and his mother was barred from leaving the country for over a year afterward. The Canadian officers warned Seyed Emami that he shouldn’t travel to any countries bordering Iran and to be aware of “honey pot” schemes, in which a potential romantic partner might lure him into the hands of Iranian operatives.
A spokesperson for the Canadian intelligence service, without commenting on Seyed Emami’s case, said in a statement that the agency “is aware that hostile state actors, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, monitor and intimidate Canadian communities, with diaspora communities often disproportionately targeted. … CSIS is actively investigating several threats to life emanating from the Islamic Republic of Iran based on credible intelligence. Ultimately, these hostile activities and foreign interference undermine the security of Canada and Canadians, as well as our democratic values and sovereignty.”
The intensity of the Iranian campaign is reflected in its global reach, officials said. Just since last year, Western security and law enforcement agencies said they have disrupted an attempt to assassinate former national security adviser John Bolton in Washington and one to kidnap an Iranian American journalist, Masih Alinejad, in New York City; multiple attempts to kill British nationals and others living in the United Kingdom; an operation using an Iranian drug dealer to murder French journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy in Paris; attempts to kill Israeli business people in Cyprus, including one allegedly overseen by a Russian Azerbaijani citizen that involved a surveillance team made up of Pakistani nationals; and a plan to use assassins recruited in a prison in Dubai to kill Israeli business people in Colombia.
Multiple calls and emails to Iranian officials and diplomats requesting comment went unanswered. The FBI declined to comment.
Iran’s plotting appears motivated by a number of factors, officials said. Lévy was targeted by a unit of the Quds Force, the special operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), probably because of his international prominence as a public intellectual who has been critical of the country’s leadership. Intelligence officials said the Quds Force tapped an Iranian drug dealer, who recruited others to help in the slaying, and paid him $150,000. In a text message, Lévy declined to comment.
The plan to kidnap Alinejad from her home in Brooklyn is illustrative of a global effort to intimidate exiled Iranians by showing they aren’t safe anywhere outside Iran. Last year, the Justice Department indicted four alleged Iranian intelligence officials and agents in the plot, saying they targeted Alinejad because she was “mobilizing public opinion in Iran and around the world to bring about changes to the regime’s laws and practices.”
The operatives allegedly hired private investigators to photograph and take video recordings of Alinejad and her family and researched how they might use speedboats to secret her out of New York and eventually on to Venezuela, “a country whose de facto government has friendly relations with Iran,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
This July, police arrested a man in Brooklyn and found a loaded assault rifle in his vehicle. Prosecutors did not identify Alinejad, but she wrote on Twitter that she was the intended target, posting a doorbell video of a man appearing to take cellphone footage of the entrance to her home.
“I’m still shocked that the Islamic Republic has tried on two occasions to eliminate me, an American citizen, on U.S. soil. And not paid a price,” Alinejad said in an emailed statement.
Officials and experts said that plots directed against U.S. citizens also are driven by revenge for the killing in January 2020 of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force. The Trump administration launched an airstrike on Soleimani while he was in Baghdad in what officials justified as a defensive measure, accusing Iran of “actively developing plans” to attack American diplomats and military forces in the region. At the time, analysts warned that the U.S. strike was likely to incur reprisal attacks.
The U.S. decision to kill a top Iranian general
Matthew Levitt, a former U.S. counterterrorism official and now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that, of the 124 foreign plots by Iran he has tracked since 1979, 36 have occurred since Soleimani’s killing, which he called “an extraordinary increase.”
More than a quarter of those took place in the United States, compared with just under 15 percent before Soleimani died, Levitt added.Levitt said that Iran has a long history of lethal operations, but also of surveilling targets and formulating plans for killings and abductions that security services put on a shelf for future activation. Now, though, he said, “they’re not collecting information so they can try to abduct and kill people if they want to. They are actively trying to abduct and kill people.”
Norman T. Roule, a veteran CIA officer who managed the intelligence community’s Iran activities, said Tehran is eager to demonstrate its capabilities — and other adversaries of the West are probably watching.
“If the international community has no red line for these operations, why shouldn’t another rogue country feel it could undertake similar aggression without cost?” Roule said.
Sounding alarms
The frequency of the operations and their potential to escalate tensions with Iran have prompted Western governments to raise their defenses.
In June, the United Kingdom filed a notice with Interpol alleging a suspected member of the Quds Force had helped to arrange attempted “lethal operations against Iranian dissidents in the U.K. in 2020.” The operative, identified as Mohammed Mehdi Mozayyani, had also “conspired to conduct lethal operations against Iranian oppositionist groups” in Albania in 2018 and 2019, according to the Interpol “blue notice,” which asked law enforcement agencies to begin gathering evidence against Mozayyani and any activities he may be planning or conducting in their countries. The Washington Post obtained a copy of the document.
This month, the head of Britain’s domestic security agency, MI5, said in public remarks that authorities had uncovered at least 10 “potential threats” to kidnap or kill British nationals or people based in the United Kingdom. Days earlier, the British Foreign Office summoned Iran’s senior diplomat in the country to answer for threats against journalists. Iran has targeted employees at BBC Persian and Iran International, a Persian-language news channel headquartered in London, labeling them instruments of the West and peddlers of anti-regime sentiment, according to British officials and Iranian nationals living in the country.
Man with assault rifle arrested near Iranian American writer’s Brooklyn home
This month, the Metropolitan Police stationed armed officers outside Iran International’s London office. The news organization has been reporting extensively on the recent protests in Iran following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
“The volume of threats against our staff has gone up in step with the protests we report,” Adam Baillie, a spokesman for Iran International, said in a statement to The Post. Two senior journalists have received death threats, and staffers have limited contact with their family members in Iran for fear of retaliation against them, he said.
Part 2:
“The threat from IRGC or IRGC-connected operatives here in Britain itself is frightening,” Baillie said. “And that’s what it’s designed to do: frighten and intimidate.”
The Iranians’ recruitment of agents appears as varied as the geographic distribution of their targets. Intelligence officials say that while serving a prison sentence in Dubai in connection with the kidnapping and subsequent death of an Iranian British businessman, Rahmat Asadi, an operative for the IRGC’s intelligence arm, met two Colombian brothers involved in international jewelry theft. While in prison, the officials alleged, Asadi trained the brothers in conducting lethal operations and assigned them to kill American and Israeli individuals in Colombia following their release in 2021. The brothers never followed through with the operations, officials said, but their recruitment underscored the lengths to which Iran has gone to place operatives around the world.
Multiple Iranian agencies have been implicated in the plots, including the Ministry of Intelligence and Security as well as the Quds Force and the IRGC Intelligence Organization. But the orders to try to kidnap or kill abroad come from the senior level of the government, officials and experts said.
Iran’s foreign operations tend to follow a playbook. Agents first trail their targets and collect information on their daily habits, including the routes they take to and from work, as well as any plans they may have to travel out of their home country. Tehran then uses that “pattern of life” information to direct proxy operatives to try to kidnap or kill the target, officials said.
In an operation in Cyprus allegedly targeting Israelis living on the Mediterranean island, officials accused the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization of hiring a network of Pakistani nationals to conduct surveillance, including a man who they said used his job as a motorcycle delivery man for a local food company as cover. Officials allege that in the fall of 2021, he passed his information to his handlers in Tehran, as well as to another man in Cyprus hired to carry out the killings.
Last year, Cypriot officials charged Orkhan Asadov, a 38-year-old Russian Azerbaijani national, in connection with plots to murder Israeli citizens.
Shahram Poursafi, the IRGC member alleged to have set up the Bolton operation, recruited an individual via social media to help arrange the assassination and directed surveillance in advance as Bolton came and went from his office in Washington, federal authorities allege. Unbeknown to Poursafi, his ostensible co-conspirator was an informant for the FBI.
The informant strung Poursafi along for months, obtaining more details about the murder plot, for which Poursafi was prepared to pay up to $300,000, according to court filings. Throughout his conversations with the ostensible hit man, Poursafi alluded to discussions he was having with more senior officials, who were eager for the operation to move ahead.
U.S. authorities have said the plot against Bolton was meant to avenge the killing of Soleimani.
Western officials allege Poursafi also tried to orchestrate the murder last year of Itzik Moshe, a businessman in Georgia who has worked on improving relations between the South Caucasus country and Israel.
‘A life of fear’
Sometimes, rather than attack its targets abroad, Iran has constructed deception operations to lure dissidents and critics to countries friendly with Tehran, where they are kidnapped or turned over by local authorities, officials said.
In October 2019, Ruhollah Zam, a prominent Iranian journalist living in exile in France, went to Iraq believing that he had been granted an interview with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s leading Shiite Muslim religious authority. Zam, who had been jailed in Iran and was accused of inciting protests in 2017 and 2018, ran Amad news, a popular anti-government website, which had more than 1 million followers on Telegram.
Once in Iraq, Zam was arrested by local authorities and extradited to Iran, according to public reporting and officials familiar with Zam’s case. The promise of an interview with Sistani was a ruse orchestrated by the IRGC. Sistani’s representatives have denied that the religious leader had any planned meeting with Zam.
The IRGC publicly boasted of its own deception, portraying Zam’s capture as a triumph for the Iranian security services, which had outfoxed their Western adversaries. Zam was tried and sentenced to death for “corruption on Earth.” He was hanged on Dec. 12, 2020, at the age of 42.
Other activists have been captured while traveling abroad. In August 2020, Jamshid Sharmahd, a 67-year-old California resident and German Iranian citizen, was kidnapped allegedly by agents for Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence during a flight layover in Dubai and spirited to Iran. Iran accuses Sharmahd of leading a “terrorist” group trying to overthrow the government, which he denied during a trial that human rights activists denounced as a sham. Sharmahd’s family fear he will be sentenced to death.
Iran issues first known death sentence linked to uprising
Activists and dissidents who have fled Iran have faced relentless harassment from Tehran.
Mehdi Hajati, a former Shiraz city councilman who had spoken out against corruption in Iran and defended the rights of Bahais, a harshly persecuted religious minority, hoped he might find sanctuary in Turkey. But almost as soon as he arrived in the fall of 2021, he began to receive threats.
Hajati had been jailed for eight months by Iranian security forces. On the day he tweeted to his followers that he had left Iran, an Iranian friend in Turkey who had also recently escaped received a message from an IRGC intelligence official who had interrogated both men in prison.
“It seems that a friend who is more traitorous than you has come to Turkey and joined you, his spy friend,” said the message, a screenshot of which Hajati shared with The Post. “Teach that Bahai hypocrite how to sleep with his eyes open and watch his back even in the shower and washroom!”
The friend who received that message, Mohammad Shabani, died in October under what Hajati called suspicious circumstances. Shabani’s wrists were cut, and he had fallen from the fourth floor of his apartment building, according to one person who knew him, Adel Javan. Some friends wonder whether Shabani was driven to suicide by harassment from Tehran.
One person who was in touch with Shabani in the weeks before his death shared screenshots of some of his messages. On Sept. 10, Shabani wrote that he had received death threats, including pictures of himself on the street in Turkey and of his home there. He said that without further help with his refugee case, he would be “condemned to a life of fear and home imprisonment for the next 10 years.”
A little more than a month later, Shabani was dead.
Hajati, now living as a refugee in Turkey with his family and awaiting resettlement to a third country, said he receives a near-constant stream of threatening messages via social media, screenshots of which he provided. The threats tend to escalate when Hajati speaks out via a prominent platform or when there is unrest in Iran, and they have reached a new intensity during the domestic uprising of the past two months.
More worrisome for Hajati are attempts by the authorities to implicate him in a recent deadly attack at Shiraz’s Shahcheragh holy shrine, which he fears they could use as a possible justification for his eventual kidnapping or killing.
In October, Turkish intelligence agents summoned Hajati and questioned him about his activities for five hours, told him he risked deportation if he did not stop his activities, and that, with the level of threats against him, they could not guarantee his safety.
Hajati replied that he could not “abandon the people in the streets who are being shot, and even if it threatens my life I will continue my activities.”
Turkish officials did not respond to requests for comment.
But the threats have shrunk his family’s world to their 1,000-square-foot two-bedroom home, with Hajati unable to go outside except for medical care or to speak with Turkish authorities.
“It’s an absolute constant loneliness,” Hajati said. “I don’t know what disaster is worse than this for a person that by name they are free but they are imprisoned at home, and just because of the Islamic Republic’s constant threats and intent to destroy them.”
“The threat from IRGC or IRGC-connected operatives here in Britain itself is frightening,” Baillie said. “And that’s what it’s designed to do: frighten and intimidate.”
The Iranians’ recruitment of agents appears as varied as the geographic distribution of their targets. Intelligence officials say that while serving a prison sentence in Dubai in connection with the kidnapping and subsequent death of an Iranian British businessman, Rahmat Asadi, an operative for the IRGC’s intelligence arm, met two Colombian brothers involved in international jewelry theft. While in prison, the officials alleged, Asadi trained the brothers in conducting lethal operations and assigned them to kill American and Israeli individuals in Colombia following their release in 2021. The brothers never followed through with the operations, officials said, but their recruitment underscored the lengths to which Iran has gone to place operatives around the world.
Multiple Iranian agencies have been implicated in the plots, including the Ministry of Intelligence and Security as well as the Quds Force and the IRGC Intelligence Organization. But the orders to try to kidnap or kill abroad come from the senior level of the government, officials and experts said.
Iran’s foreign operations tend to follow a playbook. Agents first trail their targets and collect information on their daily habits, including the routes they take to and from work, as well as any plans they may have to travel out of their home country. Tehran then uses that “pattern of life” information to direct proxy operatives to try to kidnap or kill the target, officials said.
In an operation in Cyprus allegedly targeting Israelis living on the Mediterranean island, officials accused the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization of hiring a network of Pakistani nationals to conduct surveillance, including a man who they said used his job as a motorcycle delivery man for a local food company as cover. Officials allege that in the fall of 2021, he passed his information to his handlers in Tehran, as well as to another man in Cyprus hired to carry out the killings.
Last year, Cypriot officials charged Orkhan Asadov, a 38-year-old Russian Azerbaijani national, in connection with plots to murder Israeli citizens.
Shahram Poursafi, the IRGC member alleged to have set up the Bolton operation, recruited an individual via social media to help arrange the assassination and directed surveillance in advance as Bolton came and went from his office in Washington, federal authorities allege. Unbeknown to Poursafi, his ostensible co-conspirator was an informant for the FBI.
The informant strung Poursafi along for months, obtaining more details about the murder plot, for which Poursafi was prepared to pay up to $300,000, according to court filings. Throughout his conversations with the ostensible hit man, Poursafi alluded to discussions he was having with more senior officials, who were eager for the operation to move ahead.
U.S. authorities have said the plot against Bolton was meant to avenge the killing of Soleimani.
Western officials allege Poursafi also tried to orchestrate the murder last year of Itzik Moshe, a businessman in Georgia who has worked on improving relations between the South Caucasus country and Israel.
‘A life of fear’
Sometimes, rather than attack its targets abroad, Iran has constructed deception operations to lure dissidents and critics to countries friendly with Tehran, where they are kidnapped or turned over by local authorities, officials said.
In October 2019, Ruhollah Zam, a prominent Iranian journalist living in exile in France, went to Iraq believing that he had been granted an interview with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s leading Shiite Muslim religious authority. Zam, who had been jailed in Iran and was accused of inciting protests in 2017 and 2018, ran Amad news, a popular anti-government website, which had more than 1 million followers on Telegram.
Once in Iraq, Zam was arrested by local authorities and extradited to Iran, according to public reporting and officials familiar with Zam’s case. The promise of an interview with Sistani was a ruse orchestrated by the IRGC. Sistani’s representatives have denied that the religious leader had any planned meeting with Zam.
The IRGC publicly boasted of its own deception, portraying Zam’s capture as a triumph for the Iranian security services, which had outfoxed their Western adversaries. Zam was tried and sentenced to death for “corruption on Earth.” He was hanged on Dec. 12, 2020, at the age of 42.
Other activists have been captured while traveling abroad. In August 2020, Jamshid Sharmahd, a 67-year-old California resident and German Iranian citizen, was kidnapped allegedly by agents for Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence during a flight layover in Dubai and spirited to Iran. Iran accuses Sharmahd of leading a “terrorist” group trying to overthrow the government, which he denied during a trial that human rights activists denounced as a sham. Sharmahd’s family fear he will be sentenced to death.
Iran issues first known death sentence linked to uprising
Activists and dissidents who have fled Iran have faced relentless harassment from Tehran.
Mehdi Hajati, a former Shiraz city councilman who had spoken out against corruption in Iran and defended the rights of Bahais, a harshly persecuted religious minority, hoped he might find sanctuary in Turkey. But almost as soon as he arrived in the fall of 2021, he began to receive threats.
Hajati had been jailed for eight months by Iranian security forces. On the day he tweeted to his followers that he had left Iran, an Iranian friend in Turkey who had also recently escaped received a message from an IRGC intelligence official who had interrogated both men in prison.
“It seems that a friend who is more traitorous than you has come to Turkey and joined you, his spy friend,” said the message, a screenshot of which Hajati shared with The Post. “Teach that Bahai hypocrite how to sleep with his eyes open and watch his back even in the shower and washroom!”
The friend who received that message, Mohammad Shabani, died in October under what Hajati called suspicious circumstances. Shabani’s wrists were cut, and he had fallen from the fourth floor of his apartment building, according to one person who knew him, Adel Javan. Some friends wonder whether Shabani was driven to suicide by harassment from Tehran.
One person who was in touch with Shabani in the weeks before his death shared screenshots of some of his messages. On Sept. 10, Shabani wrote that he had received death threats, including pictures of himself on the street in Turkey and of his home there. He said that without further help with his refugee case, he would be “condemned to a life of fear and home imprisonment for the next 10 years.”
A little more than a month later, Shabani was dead.
Hajati, now living as a refugee in Turkey with his family and awaiting resettlement to a third country, said he receives a near-constant stream of threatening messages via social media, screenshots of which he provided. The threats tend to escalate when Hajati speaks out via a prominent platform or when there is unrest in Iran, and they have reached a new intensity during the domestic uprising of the past two months.
More worrisome for Hajati are attempts by the authorities to implicate him in a recent deadly attack at Shiraz’s Shahcheragh holy shrine, which he fears they could use as a possible justification for his eventual kidnapping or killing.
In October, Turkish intelligence agents summoned Hajati and questioned him about his activities for five hours, told him he risked deportation if he did not stop his activities, and that, with the level of threats against him, they could not guarantee his safety.
Hajati replied that he could not “abandon the people in the streets who are being shot, and even if it threatens my life I will continue my activities.”
Turkish officials did not respond to requests for comment.
But the threats have shrunk his family’s world to their 1,000-square-foot two-bedroom home, with Hajati unable to go outside except for medical care or to speak with Turkish authorities.
“It’s an absolute constant loneliness,” Hajati said. “I don’t know what disaster is worse than this for a person that by name they are free but they are imprisoned at home, and just because of the Islamic Republic’s constant threats and intent to destroy them.”
Canadian, American, Iranian lawyers team up to identify IRGC members in Canada | Globalnews.ca
A B.C.-based lawyer has helped created a website to identify and investigate reports of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members living in Canada.
globalnews.ca
Support Russia's war effort, brehs 
:
www.timesofisrael.com
:
Senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer shot to death on doorstep of Tehran home
No claim of responsibility for killing of Qassem Fethallahi, a high-ranking member of an IRGC and Basij militia that has faced off with protesters
www.timesofisrael.com
Last edited:
Fmr. Hezbollah member spied for Israel after Mossad blackmail - report
The alleged Israeli spy reportedly attempted to reenter Hezbollah after being blackmailed by the Mossad, but failed to do so before he was arrested.
www.jpost.com
Fmr. Hezbollah member spied for Israel after Mossad blackmail - report
The alleged Israeli spy reportedly attempted to reenter Hezbollah after being blackmailed by the Mossad, but failed to do so before he was arrested.
Supporters of Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, gather as they carry flags, marking the commemoration of Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, in Adaisseh village near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, May 25, 2022. (photo credit: REUTERS/AZIZ TAHER)
A former member of Hezbollah was arrested in September in Lebanon on suspicion of spying for the Mossad, and was blackmailed into doing so on threat of the release of videos showing him engaged in sexual relations, the Lebanese Al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Wednesday.
According to the report, in June 2021, the former Hezbollah member, identified as Mohsen S., met a woman who said she was Belgian at a cafe in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. The next day, they met at her house and had sex. A few days later, the woman disappeared and would not answer his calls.
A week after the woman disappeared, Mohsen received a video clip on his phone showing him in intimate situations with the woman. Mohsen responded by sending question marks and received no answer except for a message reading "Rejoice, sweetheart." A short time afterward, he received a call from the number, with a man telling him that he was "a friend who wanted help" and that he was from the Mossad.
After hearing the word Mossad, Mohsen hung up and blocked the number, but the man contacted him from another number, warning him that he would send the video clip to his friends and family, according to Al-Akhbar. Mohsen called his friends and family to check whether they had been sent the video and confirmed that they had not.
A few days later, Mohsen received a phone call from the same person and offered to call him over Skype to verify his identity. Mohsen told investigators that in the Skype call, he saw a man in his 50s sitting at a desk with an Israeli flag behind him, along with two other people, including one in an IDF uniform. The former Hezbollah member told the alleged Mossad agent that he would do whatever he wanted if the video wasn't published.
Mossad seal (credit: רונאלדיניו המלך/Wikimedia Commons) Mossad seal (credit: רונאלדיניו המלך/Wikimedia Commons)
In a further conversation, the alleged Mossad agent began to ask Mohsen about his work in Hezbollah and the training he underwent. Mohsen had joined Hezbollah in 2010 and fought in Syria before being kicked out of the movement for bad behavior. The Mossad agent then asked Mohsen to return to Lebanon and to try and become part of Hezbollah again.
Mohsen was then brought to Liberia where four Israeli officers interrogated him about Hezbollah, the military skills he was trained in, the weapons he had used, the locations where he was trained and individuals who had fought alongside him. Mohsen told the officers that he had worked in the engineering units of Hezbollah and had been trained to plant and dismantle explosive devices.
The officers instructed Mohsen to return to Hezbollah and to provide them with the locations and photos of the movement's weapons and ammunition depots. The officers trained him to use a VPN to mask his communications.
After returning to Lebanon, Mohsen failed to reenter Hezbollah, despite repeated attempts. In September, the Internal Security Forces arrested Mohsen in Naqoura, according to Al-Akhbar.
Multiple arrests of alleged Mossad spies reported in past year in Lebanon
Lebanese media and officials have made repeated claims of catching spies working for Israel in the country in the past year.
In November, Al-Akhbar reported that a Lebanese citizen whose family is close with Hezbollah turned himself in and admitted to working with Israel.
The citizen, a 21-year-old from al-Asira in the Baalbek area, said that he had communicated with Israel through an application provided by an Israeli operator and had decided to turn himself in after "his conscience was awakened," according to the report.
In January, Lebanese Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi announced that 17 spy networks working for Israel were caught throughout Lebanon.
An Al-Akhbar report at the time claimed that the Information Branch of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces Directorate had launched an operation four weeks prior to dismantle the spy networks one by one. The newspaper added that the branch was trying to keep the operation under wraps by claiming that the suspects were arrested for fraud and drug crimes.
Al-Akhbar claimed that "very sensitive" information showed that, in the past two years, Israeli intelligence has succeeded in conducting a number of "remarkable" operations in Lebanon and Syria and possibly in other locations as well.
Taliban networked with Turkish al-Qaeda affiliate, courtesy of Iranian intelligence - Nordic Monitor
Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
nordicmonitor.com
Taliban networked with Turkish al-Qaeda affiliate, courtesy of Iranian intelligence
Taliban networked with Turkish al-Qaeda affiliate, courtesy of Iranian intelligence
Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm
Iranian intelligence brokered a meeting between a senior Taliban official and a member of Turkish al-Qaeda affiliate the Islamic Great East Raiders Front (İslami Büyük Doğu Akıncıları Cephesi, IBDA-C) in Istanbul in November 2022, Nordic Monitor has learned.
The meeting was held in an office of Rehber TV, a Turkish-language religious network that is funded by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force operatives. Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman and deputy minister of information and culture who had been in Turkey for several days on a visit that was coordinated by Iranian assets, met with Faruk Hanedar, a senior militant who works for IBDA-C.
IBDA-C even published an interview with Mujahid in its monthly magazine Baran, owned by Hanedar, and promoted the meeting on the cover of its November 2022 issue. The interview was titled with a remark by Mujahid: “What we really need is an Islamic state model.”
Interview excerpts also reveal that the militant group discussed future plans with the Taliban and pitched IBDA-C’s goal of destroying the secular and democratic governance in Turkey and establishing what it called the Great Eastern Islamic State. The new state’s capital would be in Istanbul and include other so-called Islamic states as well.
The cover of the Baran magazine, a publication of the IBDA-C terrorist group, featured a Taliban official in its November 2022 issue.
IBDA-C is listed as terrorist entity by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Many members were arrested, indicted, tried and sentenced to prison, including Salih İzzet Erdiş (aka Salih Mirzabeyoğlu, or the Commandant), the late leader of IBDA/C who was convicted on terrorism charges.
Erdiş established the organization in 1985 and turned it into a deadly terrorist group, with dozens of attacks between 1990 and 1998, according to an indictment filed with the court on January 12, 1999. The group attacked Armenian, Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches as well as synagogues and American colleges in Turkey with bombs and Molotov cocktails. They specifically targeted banks, stores that sell alcoholic beverages, designer shops, political party buildings, newspapers and associations that were opposed to the IBDA/C ideology.
The IBDA-C also claimed responsibility for a range of terrorist acts in Turkey including what authorities said was a joint plot with al-Qaeda in carrying out the 2003 bombings in İstanbul of two synagogues, an HSBC bank branch and the British Consulate General, and a 2008 attack on the US Consulate General in İstanbul. The attacks killed dozens of people.
IBDA/C publications openly praise the late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and promote him as a martyr who stood up against imperialists. IBDA/C leader Erdiş described him as “a man who struck the US in the heart.”
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and his deputy Saleh al-Arouri in November 2022 in Istanbul.
On February 4, 2001 the Bakırköy 3rd High Criminal Court convicted Erdiş on multiple charges and sentenced him to death, but his sentence was converted to life imprisonment in 2004 after Turkey abolished the death penalty. However, on July 22, 2014 then-prime minister and now president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan secured the release of Erdiş from prison and later his acquittal of all charges after a hastily arranged retrial.
The establishment of ties between the Taliban and IBDA/C means Turkish jihadists have found a new sanctuary in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, as was the case in the past. Dozens of Turks travelled to Afghanistan in the late ’90s and early 2000s to fight for al-Qaeda groups and were trained in arms and explosives there. Some of them were arrested in Turkey upon their return, but they were all released thanks to Erdoğan government interventions in the criminal justice system.
While he was in Turkey, Mujahid attended a conference organized by the Union of Islamic Scholars and Madrasahs (Alimler ve Medreseler Birliği, or İTTİHADUL ULEMA), an affiliate of Turkish Hizbullah, which is funded and supported by the IRGC. The group, predominantly catering to Kurds in Turkey, seeks to establish an Iranian-style mullah regime in the country.
The chairman of the Union of Islamic Scholars and Madrasahs is a man named Enver Kılıçarslan, who was convicted in February 2002 of membership in Hizbullah and sentenced to seven years, six months. He was trained in Iran in 1987 and assigned to serve under the late Turkish Hizbullah leader Hüseyin Velioğlu, who was killed in a gunfight with police during a raid on a safe house in Istanbul in January 2000.
A Taliban spokesperson attended a conference as keynote speaker for the Iran-backed International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS).
At a conference organized in Turkey by the Iran-backed International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), Mujahid told the audience that Islamic scholars led the ranks of the jihad against the enemy in Afghanistan and that the victory in 2021 was made possible thanks to this.
Mujahid also met with Muslim Brotherhood figures in Turkey such as Ali Muhiuddin Qara Daghi, general secretary of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and his deputy Saleh al-Arouri.
Turkey’s Islamist government, led by Erdoğan, hailed the Taliban’s comeback. Speaking on July 20, 2021 Erdoğan said his government would negotiate with the Taliban, whom he said should feel comfortable talking with Turkey, as opposed to the Americans. He justified his reasoning by underlining that “Turkey has nothing against the Taliban’s ideology, and since we aren’t in conflict with the Taliban’s beliefs, I believe we can better discuss and agree with them on issues.”
The Taliban responded to Erdoğan’s calls, with Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, the son of Taliban founder Mullah Omar, telling The Independent Turkish service that they see Turkey as an ally and want to build close relations with it. The same talking points were repeated by Mujahid in the speeches he delivered in Turkey in November 2022.
Remember when everyone mocked me??
@88m3 @ADevilYouKhow @wire28 @dtownreppin214 @Leasy @Neo The Resurrected ONE
@dza @wire28 @BigMoneyGrip @Dameon Farrow @re'up @Blackfyre @NY's #1 Draft Pick @Skyfall @2Quik4UHoes
Israel’s spy agency Mossad behind arrest of Iranian in Germany - report - I24NEWS
The Iranian citizen had obtained cyanide and ricin in order to carry out a major attack - Click the link for more details.
www.i24news.tv
Israel’s spy agency Mossad behind arrest of Iranian in Germany - report
Pia Steckelbach
January 09, 2023 at 02:01 AM
latest revision January 09, 2023 at 03:38 AM
3 min read
Illustration - German police during an anti-terrorist operation.
Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/dpa via APIllustration - German police during an anti-terrorist operation.
The Iranian citizen had obtained cyanide and ricin in order to carry out a major attack
Israel’s spy agency, the Mossad, provided information that led to the arrest of an Iranian who planned a major attack in Germany, a report said on Sunday.
German police detained a 32-year-old Iranian citizen suspected of obtaining deadly poisons, such as cyanide and ricin, to carry out an "Islamist-motivated" attack, German authorities said. Israeli sources confirmed the Mossad's involvement after German Bild newspaper reported that a friendly nation's intelligence agency provided crucial information.
The suspect's residence in the town of Castrop-Rauxel, western Germany, was searched as part of the investigation, according to a joint press release from the Düsseldorf public prosecutor's office and the police of the towns of Recklinghausen and Muenster. German police also arrested a second person, who turned out to be the suspect's brother, aged 25.
Both men were staying in Germany since 2015. The warning that local authorities have received only referred to one of the brothers but the other man was already known to the police and was in the apartment at the time of the police raid.
The interior minister of the federal state, where they resided, said that the warning was very concrete and prompted police to act immediately. Firefighters and chemicals experts were deployed to assist the police signaling that the situation was treated as a potential terrorist attack from the beginning.
In Israel, security officials are conducting further investigations to determine whether the Iranian suspect intended to attack Jewish or Israeli targets. An arrest warrant was issued for the two brothers which allows the authorities to imprison them as the investigation continues. If plans for the attack prove to be true the two men could face a sentence between three and 15 years in prison. If the Islamist motive behind it is confirmed the sentence could be even longer.
According to German domestic intelligence, the number of members or supporters of Islamist causes fell by 1.5 percent to 28,290 people in 2021, due to the "split" of the militant group Islamic State. Sunday's arrests come a month after German authorities arrested 25 members and supporters of a far-right group that the prosecutor's office said was plotting a violent coup d'état.
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
Iran Executes Former Defense Official, a Dual U.K. Citizen, on Spy Charges (Published 2023)
Alireza Akbari, previously a senior military and defense official, had moved to Britain a decade ago. He had been detained since 2019.
Iran Executes Former Defense Official, a Dual U.K. Citizen, on Spy Charges (Published 2023)
Alireza Akbari, previously a senior military and defense official, had moved to Britain a decade ago. He had been detained since 2019.www.nytimes.com
Iran executes former deputy defense minister, accusing him of being an MI6 spy
IRAN ANNOUNCED ON SATURDAY one of the most high-profile executions in its recent history, involving Alireza Akbari, who served as the Islamic Republic’s deputy minister of defense in the 2000s.
intelnews.org
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/archetype/IGA6JABO2JHNJJAZM7IQWX2FEY.jpg)
US sent ‘hunt-forward’ team to Albania in wake of Iranian cyberattacks
Iran targeted Albanian networks in July and September, forcing offline key government services including the Total Information Management System.
www.defensenews.com
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
Conflict in Syria Escalates Following Attack That Killed a U.S. Contractor
U.S. officials said the main air defense system at the coalition base was “not fully operational” at the time of Thursday’s attack, which killed a U.S. contractor and wounded six other Americans.