EUROPE APPEASING IRAN AFTER SOLEIMANI'S KILLING~EXTENSIVE IRAN-HIZBALLAH OPERATIONS NETWORK INSIDE U.S.

SHAHRAM HADIAN, EX-MUSLIM, NOW CHRISTIAN PASTOR EXPLAINS THE HISTORY OF IRAN GOING BACK TO 1979, AND SINCE, PLUS EUROPEAN SYMPATHY WITH IRAN
Iranian Christian pastor and former Muslim Shahram Hadian gives an important update as tensions are still high between the US and Iran. He discusses the ongoing escalation between Iran and the US, and will further discuss Bible prophecy as it relates to Iran. What is motivating the Islamic Republic of Iran to do what they are doing? What does chaos have to do with ushering in their Islamic "messiah" - the Mahdi? What motivates the anti-Semitism of the Iranian government? How will the continued cowardice from leftist politicians, with their appeasement strategy towards Iran, ultimately fail? www.tilproject.com For more information on Shahram Hadian and The TIL Project Ministry, to download free radio shows and other resources, to order informative DVDs, or to donate to the ministry, please visit www.tilproject.com To order: www.tilproject.com/order To donate: www.tilproject.com/donate Thank you! Blessings!

EUROPE APPEASING IRAN AFTER 

SOLEIMANI'S KILLING 

BY OLIVIER GUITTA

SEE: https://www.investigativeproject.org/8253/europe-appeasing-iran-after-soleimani-killing; 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research 

purposes:

The lightning American drone strike which killed the Iranian terror master Qasem Soleimani Jan. 3 in Baghdad is without any doubt the biggest win against terrorism for the United States. That includes killing both al-Qaida's Osama bin Laden and Islamic State's Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Indeed, Iran's Soleimani was instrumental in so many terror operations around the world in the past 25 years. While the West should have been ecstatic at the passing of a man that had directly and indirectly killed hundreds of thousands of people, including during the Syrian war, Europe's overall reaction was one of criticism of its American ally. In contrast, when Iran struck bases in Iraq used by American forces Tuesday, the reaction in Europe was much more timid and the E.U. did not condemn Iran's strikes.

First, it is important to note that the Iranian regime has been at war with the West since it came to power in 1979, and that countries such as France and the United Kingdom have directly suffered casualties at the hands of Tehran. After swallowing 40 years of terror attacks, kidnappings, without any real retaliation from the West, the American strike against Soleimani was the first answer.

To put things in perspective, Soleimani had been on the target list of not only Americans, French, and Israelis, but also British. In 2007, the British SAS planned to assassinate him during the Iraq War, when he was identified as the man running the campaign against British troops in Basra. The plans were stopped by a personal intervention from Labor Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who was afraid of the unintended consequences of the kill in the region.

Despite the pedigree and C.V. of terror master Soleimani, reading and listening to some political leaders in Europe – and for that matter, some Democrats in the United States – one has the impression that a regular politician had been killed. The moral stance of those leaders is despicable when one knows how instrumental Soleimani was in helping dictator Bashar al-Assad kill 500,000 of his own people. For proof, spineless European Council President Charles Michel said the "cycle of violence, provocations and retaliations which we have witnessed in #Iraq over the past few weeks has to stop," putting on the same level terror attacks from Iran's proxies in Iraq and the U.S. killing of Soleimani.

The Iranian lobby seems to be quite effective in Brussels. Indeed, the three E.U. "foreign ministers" have been pro-Iranian regime: After Catherine Ashton, the mullah-loving Federica Mogherini and now the Spanish Socialist Josep Borell, who is well-known for his close connections to Tehran. The E.U. is not appeasing Tehran but actually siding de facto with the Iranian regime.

Time and again the E.U. has chosen a rogue regime with European blood on its hands over a long-time steady ally that has saved the continent from tyranny over the 20th century.

Here is Tehran's track record in just the past few months: it attacked oil tankers in the UAE, seized a British tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, attacked Saudi Aramco oil facilities, kidnapped more Western nationals, killed hundreds of protesters in Iraq, killed more than 1,500 of its own people during the recent November demonstrations, shot down a U.S. drone, killed an American contractor and stormed the American embassy in Iraq.

What did Europe's diplomacy do to sanction Iran for its nefarious actions? Nothing.

They actually rewarded Iran. The E-3 (France, Germany and the U.K.) decided last year to set up a mechanism, called INSTEX, to circumvent the U.S. sanctions on Iran. Germany has historically had excellent relations not only with Iran, but also with Lebanese terror proxy Hizballah. Germany has been very tolerant about illegal Hizballah activities in the country, and in some areas of Berlin, it is not rare to see Hizballah flags proudly displayed outside homes.

Europe has witnessed some of Iran's most aggressive action in the past two years. Iran has tried to carry out terror attacks in France, the Netherlands and Denmark. The most sophisticated attack, which was foiled by European security services, was a 2018 plot to bomb a huge rally near Paris organized by the MeK, the largest exiled Iranian opposition group, and attended by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani among other personalities.

Worsening French-Iranian relations after this foiled attack caused French authorities to fear redux of the 1985-86 Iran-led terror campaign in France. This pushed French President Emmanuel Macron to defuse the tension by having a much more lenient foreign policy vis-à-vis Iran. Thus, France, which had been leading the global anti-Iran front since the 1980s, began bending backwards last year to please Iran. For instance, Macron instructed French secret services to tone down their criticism of Iran, especially regarding the state terrorism accusations. He also proposed offering Iran a $15 billion line of credit in September if it returns to the fold. While France tried to placate Iran, Tehran decided last summer to take two French citizens hostage.

The tool of kidnapping Western citizens is something of a trademark for the rogue regime in Tehran: at least 14 foreign and dual nationals, especially French and British, are known to be detained in Iran. Europe has been sadly apathetic and has historically given in to the Iranian regime's demands in order to get their citizens freed. Recently, Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has confirmed that the U.K. offered the release of £400m "owed" to Iran from a decades-old deal in return for Tehran freeing British-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

The U.K. has been the main European target of Iranian nefarious acts along with France. This should not be a surprise since in 2016, Khameini, Iran's supreme leader, said, "For centuries, Britain has always been the source of wickedness and evil among nations of our region. The strikes that these Britons have blown against the lives of our neighbors are incomparable to others."

So, Iran conducted an aggressive campaign against the U.K., not only by kidnapping citizens, but also by conducting a brutal cyberattack on the British Parliament in 2017 that hit dozens of MPs and 9,000 email accounts, including that of then-Prime Minister Theresa May. Also, in Scotland, dissidents were being terrorized last year by "armed" Iranian agents who threatened to kill them and their families in Iran if they did not halt their political opposition.

After the U.K. bravely placed Iran's most potent terror proxy, Hizballah, on its terror organizations list last year, including both the political and military wings, a mind-boggling story came out. The British government covered up its 2015 discovery of a Hizballah bomb factory near London. Reportedly, the discovery was covered up to not shed a bad light on Iran after the nuclear deal was signed.

One of the main reasons for Europe to be very timid with Iran is concern that Iran could carry out, through its proxies, a major terror campaign on the continent. This argument is not taken lightly in European capitals, especially since Iran called last year for Europe to normalize trade ties with the Islamic Republic despite U.S. sanctions, or face "consequences."

While continental Europe has been appeasing Iran, as we saw after the killing of terror master Soleimani, the U.K. is showing some signs of rebellion. Indeed, in a very British understated way, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he "will not lament" the death of Iran's top general, who "posed a threat to all our interests" and warned the Iranians not to attempt "retaliation or reprisals" against America.

Olivier Guitta is the Managing Director of GlobalStrat, a security and geopolitical risk consulting company for companies and governments. Olivier tweets @OlivierGuitta

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Prosecutions Expose Extensive Iran-Hizballah Operations Network Inside U.S.

BY ABHA SHANKAR 

SEE: https://www.investigativeproject.org/8252/ipt-report-prosecutions-expose-extensive-iran; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

To read the full IPT report on U.S. prosecutions involving Hizballah and Iran support, click here.

Iran fired a volley of a dozen ballistic missiles toward Iraqi airbases where Americans are stationed Tuesday night in retaliation for the Jan. 3 U.S. drone strike which killed its general and terrorist leader Qasem Soleimani.

"They were slapped last night but such actions are not enough," Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote soon after the attack. "The corruptive presence of the US in the region of West Asia must be stopped #SevereRevenge," Khamenei wrote in a subsequent post.

If tensions escalate further, the U.S. homeland could be a potential target of an Iran-sponsored attack, based on an Investigative Project on Terrorism report on criminal prosecutions of Iranian operatives and those of its Lebanese proxy Hizballah.

The report shows there are countless supporters of Iran and Hizballah living in the United States. Most cases involve financial and other forms of material support. But talk of "sleeper cells" has been around for years, and at least one operative told law enforcement that Iran could activate them to carry out attacks in "certain scenarios."

They tried it at least once.

A senior officer from Iran's deadly Quds Force participated in a plot to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington. Meanwhile, senior members of Hizballah's Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO) have been prosecuted for scouting potential targets for attack in the United States.

These plots were crafted while arch-terrorist Qasem Soleimani led the Quds Force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) elite overseas unit.

Soleimani was the mastermind behind Iran's global terror operations that included last month's rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that killed an American civilian contractor and injured several U.S. military service members, and the New Year's Eve attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

"General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region." the Department of Defense said after the drone strike. The agency held Soleimani and the Quds Force "responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more."

Last April, the Trump administration designated the IRGC, including its Quds Force, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).

"The IRGC FTO designation highlights that Iran is an outlaw regime that uses terrorism as a key tool of statecraft and that the IRGC, part of Iran's official military, has engaged in terrorist activity or terrorism since its inception 40 years ago," said a State Department fact sheet announcing the designation.

Under Soleimani's leadership, the Quds Force trained Iraqi terrorists to make powerful roadside bombs to kill American troops after the 2003 invasion. Also under his watch, the IRGC and Quds Force exploited the turmoil in the wake of the Arab Spring revolts to advance Iranian imperialism in the Middle East and beyond. This included recruiting hundreds and thousands of Shias from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other places to prop up Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's murderous regime.

Soleimani was also the brains behind the establishment of terrorist networks in the Golan Heights, using Hizballah, Druze, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) operatives to target Israel. Under his command, Shi'ite militia operatives fired rockets toward Israel, and the IRGC and Hizballah launched terror attacks against Jewish targets in Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Thailand, Georgia, and Kenya. In addition to killing Americans and destroying hundreds of thousands of lives in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Israel, and Gaza, Soleimani has also been responsible for the deaths of Iranians, including during the recent brutal crackdown on Iranian protesters.

Even as America's overseas assets are more likely targets for Iran, the U.S. homeland remains vulnerable. A senior Quds official, Ali Gholam Shakuri, was indicted in 2011 for his involvement in a plot to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States. Texas car salesman Manssor Arbabsiar, who was arrested in connection with the plot, told law enforcement agents that "he was recruited, funded and directed by men he understood to be senior officials in Iran's [Quds] Force."

According to the complaint, IRGC officials believed they were dealing with a "sophisticated and violent" Mexican drug cartel to carry out the hit on the ambassador. A $100,000 down payment on the hit shows the Iranians were comfortable dealing with the cartel representative, who, in fact, was a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informant.

While the complaint does not name the Los Zetas, it describes the cartel the Iranians thought that they were dealing with as having "engaged in numerous acts of violence, including assassinations and murders."

A leaked September 2010 Tucson Police Department internal memo talked of growing ties between Hizballah operatives and Mexican drug traffickers. There was an increasing use of improvised explosive devices and car bombs by Mexican drug trafficking organizations that suggest a growing collusion with the Hizballah militant groups which specialize in such explosive devices, the report noted.

Additionally, agents of the Islamic Republic and its Lebanese proxy Hizballah have an established presence in the United States.

A 1997 FBI report, declassified in 2008 and obtained by the IPT through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), said that Hizballah members in the U.S. "raised and collected hundreds of thousands of dollars which were sent to support Hizballah activities in Lebanon."

Foreign intelligence surveillance wiretaps from that period show those members "receive directions for their terrorist activities in the United States from leaders of Hizballah who reside outside of the United States."

A ranking Hizballah operative in the United States serves as a "direct communications link between Hizballah leadership in Lebanon and Hizballah members in the United States and he collects funds for Hizballah headquarters in Lebanon," the memo said. The funds are used to support the group's terrorist activities.

While high-level Hizballah operatives conduct complex, interstate criminal enterprises to bankroll the group's international terror activities, senior members from the Shiite extremist group have been prosecuted for plotting attacks in the United States. These prosecutions are detailed in the IPT report that provides links to the actual court documents. The prosecutions show how Hizballah operatives have engaged in drug running, human smuggling, money laundering, racketeering, and tax evasion to raise funds for the terrorist group. The report also includes prosecutions of Iranians who have engaged in espionage or conspiracy to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran.

In September, a Hizballah operative living in Morristown, N.J., was indicted for conducting surveillance of targets to help the terrorist group prepare for future attacks. Alexei Saab, also known as Ali Hassan Saab, joined Hizballah in 1996 and subsequently became a member of the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO), Hizballah's overseas unit that is tasked with plotting attacks outside of Lebanon. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen after lying on his immigration documents that he had never been "a member of or in any way associated with ... a terrorist organization."

While here, Saab scouted several prominent New York City targets, including the United Nations headquarters, the Statue of Liberty, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, the Empire State Building, and local airports, tunnels, and bridges. Saab also carried out operations for the IJO, including the attempted murder of a man he suspected was an Israeli spy. He also conducted intelligence-gathering for Hizballah in Turkey.

In December, Hizballah operative Ali Kourani was sentenced to 40 years in prison for carrying out covert activities for IJO. Kourani scouted out possible weapons suppliers, identified people affiliated with Israeli Defense Forces, and gathered intelligence on JFK International Airport along with federal buildings and military and law enforcement facilities in New York City.

Kourani had attended a Hizballah weapons program in Lebanon prior to entering the United States lawfully in 2003. He was recruited to the IJO in 2008, a year before he became an American citizen. Soon after his naturalization, Kourani traveled to Guangzhou, China to locate potential suppliers of the explosive chemical ammonium nitrate for the IJO.

Samer El Debek of Dearborn, Mich. was arrested along with Kourani in 2017. El Debek received military training from Hizballah in Lebanon from 2008 through 2014, including extensive training as a bomb maker. A naturalized U.S. citizen, El Debek carried out missions for Hizballah in Thailand and Panama. In Bangkok, he was tasked with cleaning up explosive materials in a house vacated by Hizballah operatives who had to leave because they were under surveillance. During a 2011 Panama visit, El Debek surveilled the U.S. and Israeli embassies, checked out the security detail at the Panama Canal and the Israeli Embassy and located hardware stores where explosive materials could be purchased.

In November, Ahmadreza Mohammadi-Doostdar, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, and Majid Ghorbani, an Iranian citizen living in California, pleaded guilty to conducting surveillance on U.S. nationals who were members of the Mujahedin-e-Khaliq (MEK), an Iranian revolutionary group that seeks the overthrow of Iran's clerical regime. In his plea, Doostdaar confessed that he traveled three times to the U.S. from Iran to meet Ghorbani and communicate directions from the Iranian government that included photographs and hand-written notes identifying MEK leaders.

In February, a former U.S. service member and counterintelligence agent was indicted for sharing national defense secrets with the Iranian government. Monica Elfriede Witt, who defected to the Islamic Republic in 2013 and is at large, helped the IRGC target her former colleagues in the U.S. intelligence community. Iranian nationals recruited by the IRGC tried to use fake social media accounts to install malware that would provide them covert access to the computer networks of Witt's former colleagues.

There have been cases of operatives entering the United States through the Mexican border, given the growing influence of Iran and Hizballah in Latin America. According to the 9/11 Commission Staff Report on Terrorist Travel, Salim Boughader-Mucharrafille, a Mexican of Lebanese descent who owned a café in Tijuana, smuggled "Lebanese nationals sympathetic to Hamas and Hezbollah into the United States" from Mexico. Trained Hizballah fighter Mahmoud Youssef Kourani surreptitiously entered the U.S. through the Mexican border in early 2001 in the trunk of a car.

These and other prosecutions reveal a long and active presence of Iranian and Hizballah operatives in the United States. Although Iran or Hizballah operatives have yet to conduct a major attack on U.S. soil, it would be imprudent to overlook their potential to strike key targets in the country.