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State Sponsors of Terror Continue Nefarious Support Unabated
 [PJ] WASHINGTON -- The State Department's Country Reports on Terrorism for 2015 note that Iran got cozier with Hamas last year while the U.S. admittedly "cannot certify" that Syria complied with the chemical weapons disposal deal that the Obama administration forged to avert acting on the president's red line.Cuba was removed from the state sponsors of terrorism list a year ago as part of President Obama's rapprochement with the communist island. "While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range of Cuba's policies and actions, these fall outside the criteria relevant to the rescission of a State Sponsor of Terrorism designation," State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said on May 29, 2015. So the state sponsors of terrorism section of the department's annual report was whittled to three this year: Iran, Sudan and Syria. Iran has been on the list since 1984, and "continued its terrorist-related activity in 2015, including support for Hizballah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and various groups in Iraq and throughout the Middle East." "In addition to its ongoing support for Hizballah in Syria, Iran continued to provide arms, financing, training, and the facilitation of primarily Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani Shia fighters to support the Asad regime's brutal crackdown that has resulted in the deaths of more than 250,000 people in Syria," the report states. "Iran more openly acknowledged the deaths of Iranian personnel in Syria in 2015, including several senior commanders, and increased Iranian troop levels, while continuing to claim publicly that Iranian forces had only deployed in an advisory role." The State Department also noted Tehran's provision of weapons, funding, and training to Shiite forces in Bahrain, including a bomb-making facility discovered by Bahraini authorities last September stocked with 1.5 tons of high-grade explosives. "Although Hamas’s ties to Tehran have been strained due to the Syrian civil war, both sides took steps in 2015 to repair relations. Iran continued to declare its vocal support for Palestinian terrorist groups and its hostility to Israel in 2015," the report added. "Supreme National Security Council Secretary Admiral Ali Shamkhani sought to frame a series of individual Palestinian attacks on Israeli security forces in the West Bank as a new 'Intifada' in a speech on November 25." Tehran has also been rearming Hezbollah in violation of a UN Security Council resolution at the end of the 2006 conflict with Israel, pouring "hundreds of millions of dollars" into arms and training of fighters who have "carried out isolated attacks along the Lebanese border with Israel." "Iran remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qa’ida (AQ) members it continued to detain and refused to publicly identify the members in its custody. Iran previously allowed AQ facilitators to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran since at least 2009, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters to South Asia and Syria." Syria has been on the list since 1979, and the regime continues its three-way relationship with Hezbollah and Iran. Posted by: Besoeker 2016-06-10 |
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