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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Tehran's Unfriendly Skies |
| 2006-04-12 |
| A group of well financed Islamo-fascist terrorists buy current models of American-built jets, paint them to look like passenger or cargo aircraft, then fly suicide missions against targets in the West. That sounds like the plot of one of my novels. But according to a well-placed source of mine, it's exactly what the Iranian government has been trying to do for more than a year now. Commercial aircraft brokers on at least two continents have received shadowy inquiries they believe originate in Tehran to buy eight-year-old or younger B737 new generation airplanes, and B747-400 aircraft of the same vintage, price no object. The fact that Iran may be trying to buy American made jet aircraft clandestinely and is willing to pay sky's-the-limit prices is hugely worrisome. According to Joshua R. EDKINS [pseudonym], a retired supergrade CIA clandestine service operative, “Buying aircraft is very competitive and the first question usually asked is, ‘How much.?' When price doesn't matter, something's wrong. Such is the case here. If Iran buys these aircraft, what better way to deliver a nuke?” EDKINS and others with knowledge of the Tehran regime believe that it would be operationally feasible for Iran to buy an aircraft, fit it with a primitive nuclear device, and launch the plane against an American target. The suicide crew might be Iranian, or the mission could be jobbed out to one of Iran's owned-and-operated Shia surrogates like Hezbollah, or even sub-contracted to a Sunni al-Qa'ida or al-Qa'ida in Iraq cell. “They'll train a crew and insert a Plutonium bomb using dated Fat-Boy technology -- which is why they need a fat belly aircraft,” says EDKINS. Indeed, flight training could be conducted in Iran. The pilots could conceivably become proficient enough to fly Iran Air flights in order to learn commercial procedures and develop confidence dealing with air control centers. Operationally, a mission against the US would be incredibly tough -- but not impossible. And the Iranians have both patience and a long-term weltanschauung when it comes to these sorts of terror operations. You want weltanschauung? Long before the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, the nucleus of what would become his Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was training in Lebanon's Beka'a Valley under the protection of the PLO's Yasser Arafat. So by the time Arafat and his minions left Beirut for Tunis in 1982, Iran had already established itself to fill the terror vacuum in Lebanon by creating what would become Hezbollah and the Islamic Jihad Organization. And patience? After the 1979 seizure of the American Embassy, hundreds of pages of shredded CIA documents were painstakingly reconstructed strand by strand. So now, Tehran can take its time too. The Iranians can spend weeks, even months monitoring and recording communications between commercial aircraft and regional FAA control centers or even NORAD by using scanners, thus familiarizing the suicide crew with what they'd have to say as they approached U.S. airspace. The same techniques could be used to glean language from flight control in Western Europe. The airliners could go through a series of identity changes that would make them nigh on impossible to trace. And when it came time to use them, they wouldn't have to be painted to look like jets belonging to United Airlines or other U.S.-based carriers, either. Any airline that flies 737s or 747s would do -- even FedEx or other airfreight carriers. The list of false IDs would also probably also include aircraft from South America, where Iran is currently deepening its ties with such anti-US leaders as Venezuela's rabidly anti-American president Hugo Chavez. Indeed, the growing Tehran-Caracas axis is troubling on a number of levels. When I was in Paris recently, a source of mine with well-placed intelligence connections in Tehran mentioned that as far back as early 2005 the mullahs had budgeted more than $200 million to spread around in South America, where a growing number of the continent's new leaders, epitomized by Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, are turning both leftward and increasingly anti-US in their policies. Venezuelan president Chavez is a vocal supporter of Iran's nuclear program. As far back as March of 2005, the then-president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, received a warm welcome from the Venezuelan strongman. Khatami did not visit Chavez empty-handed either. He delivered 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles (an impressive number of weapons considering the fact that the Venezuelan armed forces number only slightly more than 80,000) as well as a cadre of Iranian experts -- several hundred “engineers” and “technicians” to help set up joint commercial ventures. Those joint ventures also provide perfect cover for status for clandestine officers from Iran's intelligence service, the Ministry of Security and Information, thus allowing Iran's Seppah-e Pasdaran (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), to establish a fertile and hospitable hub from which to recruit agents, gather intelligence, and organize terror operations against the United States. Chavez and the new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have also exchanged warm greetings in recent months. Ahmadinejad, who has called for the eradication of Israel and claimed the Holocaust never took place, is said to have been impressed by Chavez's 2005 Christmas Eve broadcast, during which the Venezuelan made a number of anti-Semitic remarks. And how does the current Caracas-Tehran love-fest dovetail with Iran's attempts to buy American aircraft and fly one at a U.S. target? The answer is that the Venezuelan president might actually be loony enough to be persuaded to allow Tehran to substitute its suicide mission for a Venezuelan flight. Fiction? Like I said, it sounds like the plot of one of my novels. But stranger things have actually happened. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #5 I for one was surprised that there were not a second wave of 9/11 attacks based on this idea in late 2001 early 2002. In fact it was used in a really cheesy Glenn Ford/Vince Edwards movie done for TV called Evening in Bytantium http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077521/fullcredits |
| Posted by: Cheaderhead 2006-04-12 17:58 |
| #4 Paint it like El Al and let the festivities begin! |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2006-04-12 15:59 |
| #3 They really are trying to achieve glass parking lot status. :-( |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-04-12 15:52 |
| #2 sigh. Its like we are living in the middle of a bad Superman or Spiderman comic book. |
| Posted by: 2b 2006-04-12 15:04 |
| #1 Paint would be irrelevant to an air traffic controller. What about the transponder on the plane? Or for that matter, why not just use an Emirates Air jet? They land all over the US. |
| Posted by: eLarson 2006-04-12 14:32 |