| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| UPI on US intelligence on Iran |
| 2005-01-27 |
| Just to put some of this open-source stuff in perspective, Ali = Hamid Reza Zakiri (both are pseudonyms) and at least one of the two senior dissidents is Choopan, whom I believe has been mentioned on Rantburg in the past. In a rising tide of rhetoric, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Jan. 20 that if Israel decided unilaterally to attack Iran to halt its alleged covert nuclear weapons program, the Bush administration would probably be unable to halt the military action. In comments published in the Shargh newspaper, Iranian Revolutionary Guards Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari replied to the threats and warned that Iran will carry out an "astonishing" retaliation in the event that the country is attacked by Israel or the United States. Jafari said, "We will counter any stupid action by Israel and its master with firmness and in an astonishing way." Jafari, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards' ground forces, said Iran now had to ability to defeat any invader in the space of just weeks, commenting, "We pushed the Baathist enemy from our country within one and a half years." He added, "With the experience and skills from that war (the 1980-1988 war with Iraq) and in the case of any invasion, the invaders will be defeated in less than one and a half months." Chief of the Revolutionary Guards Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi commented, "Even though the U.S. and Israel do not have the courage to invade the Iranian nation, the Revolutionary Guards are in very good state of readiness to response to threats. The U.S. cannot bring security to the Middle East by pushing Iran aside. And if they plan conspiracies, the Iranian nation and its leadership will stand against expansionism with firmness." Congress has been pressing the Central Intelligence Agency to investigate claims by an Iranian defector identified only as "Ali," over his claims that Iran planned to crash an airliner into a nuclear reactor in the United States. Several members of Congress are reportedly alarmed by the intelligence and one has met with CIA senior officials to press for an investigation. The CIA has thus far refused to interrogate the Iranian, a former senior official in the 1970s. The vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Representative Curt Weldon has met with "Ali" several times in Paris over the last two years. Weldon commented that "Ali" has been accurate in predicting several important developments in the Iranian regime since February 2003, including developments in Iran's suspected nuclear weapons programs and the regime's alleged support for al-Qaida. "Ali" reportedly remains in contact with two dissidents in the inner circle of the Islamic republic who reputedly told of a secret government directive by Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who presides over the nation's strategic weapons programs while financing and controlling groups labeled terrorists by Western governments. On Wednesday, France's domestic counter-espionage service, known as DST, arrested seven people who were allegedly trying to go to Iraq to fight coalition troops. Among those detained by the DST are two women. The militants were taken into custody following raids in a Muslim area of northern Paris. The Paris raids centered on the Addawa mosque in the city's 19th arrondisement, described as a recruitment center for Iraq. It was the first operation of its kind in France since reports surfaced in 2004 that some young French Muslims had been killed in Iraq. The names of those taken into custody were not released. The first French citizen reported killed in Iraq was 19-year-old Redouane al-Hakim. Hakim entered Iraq and was killed during a U.S. aerial bombardment of Fallujah in July. Hakim and his brothers frequently visited a radical Islamic prayer center in the Parisian suburb Levallois Perret, which French authorities investigated and closed in early 2004. Other French citizens killed in Iraq included 24-year-old Paris resident "Tarek N.," who was killed in the Sunni triangle in September and 19-year-old Abdel-Halim B., who was killed a month later. French anti-terrorist services estimated last month that up to 25 young French citizens had left to fight in Iraq. France DGSE country's foreign intelligence service reported that a young Algerian-born French citizen is in charge of a 20-man fighting group in Iraq. French anti-terrorism experts said it is too early to talk of a highly organized French recruitment network similar to that for Afghanistan, but worry that guerrillas would return home as heroes with impressive reputations high, which they could then use to recruit others. French intelligence discovered that most of those heading to the combat zone appeared to have entered Iraq from Syria. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |