Category Archives: Department of Homeland Security

Soros and Farhana Khera the Islamic Homeland Security Threat

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Soros Money, Muslim Advocates Leader, Helped Weaken Homeland Security Policies
An IPT Investigation

by John Rossomando, IPT

A Muslim legal group, girded with $1.8 million in grant money from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF), has helped influence major policy changes in the war on terror, including the Department of Homeland Security’s screening of individuals with suspected terror ties and the FBI’s training program for its agents working in counterterrorism.

Internal records, made public by the hacking group DC Leaks, show OSF spent $40 million between 2008 and 2010 on programs aimed at weakening U.S. counterterrorism policy.

Muslim Advocates’ Executive Director Farhana Khera played a key role in shaping the foundations’ spending. Khera co-authored a 2007 memo that “informed” the foundations’ U.S. Programs Board’s decision to create the National Security and Human Rights Campaign (NSHRC), a Sept. 14, 2010 OSF document discussing the program’s reauthorization, shows.

The NSHRC’s goals included:

  • Closing Guantanamo Bay, eliminating torture and methods such as the extraordinary rendition of prisoners, and ending the use of secret prisons;
  • Ending warrantless and “unchecked” surveillance;
  • Ensuring that anti-terrorism laws and law enforcement activities do not target freedom of speech, association or religious expression;
  • Reducing ethnic and religious profiling of people of Muslim, Arab or South Asian extraction;
  • Decreasing secrecy and increasing oversight of executive actions, and expose U.S. government or private individuals who abuse or violate the law.

Some of these policies, such as closing Guantanamo and ending enhanced interrogation techniques, already were also advocated by Obama administration. OSF claimed its work laid the groundwork for implementing those policies. The Edward Snowden leaks cast light on the depth of the government’s warrantless surveillance activity. The other goals are more difficult to assess.

Muslim Advocates was founded in 2005 as an offshoot of the National Association of Muslim Lawyers. It often criticizes U.S. counterterrorism strategies that use sting operations and informants as discriminatory.

Papers released by the anonymous hacker group DC Leaks show that OSF budgeted $21 million for the NSHRC from 2008-2010. OSF spent an additional $1.5 million in 2010. The NSHRC also received a matching $20 million contribution from Atlantic Philanthropies, a private foundation established in 1982 by Irish-American Chuck Feeney billionaire businessman.

OSF made 105 grants totaling $20,052, 784 to 63 organizations under the NSHRC program. An Investigative Project on Terrorism tally shows Muslim Advocates received at least $1.84 million in OSF grants between 2008 and 2015.

A funders’ roundtable created by OSF in 2008 helped coordinate the grant making among several left-leaning foundations, ” in order to “dismantle the flawed ‘war on terror’ paradigm on which national security policy is now based.” At least “two dozen” foundations participated in the roundtable’s strategy sessions as of the end of 2008.

Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, called the Soros foundations’ $40 million program both hypocritical and ironic. He noted that the 2011 OSF-funded Center for American Progress report “Fear, Inc.” complained that seven conservative foundations donated $42.6 million to so-called “Islamophobia think tanks between 2001 and 2009.” The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other major Islamist groups routinely use the $42.6 million funding number to portray their opponents as being pawns of dark forces.

“It’s amazing that one foundation donated an amount that CAIR and [Muslim] Advocates say is the huge sum of money that funds the entire anti-jihad campaign,” Jasser said. “… That wasn’t from one foundation. That was an addition of [the money given to] everybody that they threw under the bus.”

By contrast, OSF and Atlantic Philanthropies spent $41.5 million in just three years. OSF dedicated another $26 million to the NSHRC program from 2011-2014.

OSF additionally funded a study by the New America Foundation equating the terror threat posed right-wing extremists with al-Qaida. An Oct. 17, 2011 memo discussing NSHRC grants notes that New America received $250,000, partly to write two reports. The first aimed at creating a “‘safe space’ in which Muslims in America feel free to hold controversial political dialogues, organize without fear of unwarranted government surveillance.” The second aimed to “correct mistaken public beliefs that Al-Qaeda’s brand of terrorism is unique to Islam and that most terrorists are Muslim.”

The paper promised “to show how adherents of each extremist ideology use different language to justify very similar political means and goals. By demonstrating parallels among militant groups, this paper will aim to separate politically focused terrorism from the religion of Islam.”

Arguments from this report continue to help frame how Democrats and their allies talk about the jihadist threat. New America’s statistics and arguments recently came up in a House hearing about the threat from homegrown Islamic terrorists.

“According to the New America Foundation, there have been more incidents of right-wing extremist attacks in the United States than violent jihadist attacks since 9/11. I’m not minimizing jihadist attacks. In that light, can you explain what your office plans to do with respect to domestic right-wing extremism?” Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., asked Department of Homeland Security Office of Community Partnerships Director George Selim during a House subcommittee hearing last month.

New America’s effort to conflate right-wing extremists with al-Qaida glossed over a major difference – namely al-Qaida’s reliance on mass casualty attacks and suicide bombings.

New America’s latest data shows that jihadists have killed more people since 9/11 than right-wing extremists.

“What you’ve uncovered is the fact … that the Soros foundation works to obfuscate on national security,” Jasser said. “Muslim Advocates clearly is a prime example of the sickness in Washington related to dealing with the central reforms necessary to make within the House of Islam.

“You’ll see that the Soros foundation is spending money on organizations that deny the very principles they are defenders of, which are feminism, gay rights, individual rights. Muslim Advocates’ entire bandwidth is spent on attacking the government and blocking any efforts at counterterrorism.”

Muslim Advocates also opposes discussion on reform within the Muslim community and supports those who have theocratic tendencies, Jasser said.

“You have evidence here that the Soros foundation is part and parcel of the reason for the suffocation of moderation voices – reformist voices – in Islam,” Jasser said. “Muslim Advocates really ought to change their name to Islamist Advocates, and what the Soros foundation really is doing is just advocating for Islamists.”

OSF also contributed $150,000 in 2011 and $185,000 in 2012 to a donor advised fund run by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. It used this money to pay Hattaway Communications, a consulting firm run by former Hillary Clinton adviser Doug Hattaway, to develop a messaging strategy for Muslim Advocates and similar organizations. Hattaway’s message strategy painted Muslims as victims of American national security policies.

Khera used Hattaway’s strategy to paint the New York Police Department’s mosque surveillance strategy as “discriminatory.”

Farhana Khera

“Their only ‘crime’ is that they are Muslim in America,” Khera wrote in a June 6, 2012 op-ed posted on CNN.com.

OSF funded groups, including Muslim Advocates, the ACLU, and the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed lawsuits challenging the NYPD’s surveillance program as unconstitutional. Police Commissioner William Bratton ended the policy in 2014.

The NYPD monitored almost all aspects of Muslim life ranging from mosques and student associations, to halal butcher shops and restaurants to private citizens.  A federal district court dismissed the suit, but the Third Circuit Court of Appeals revived it in October 2015. New York settled the lawsuit in January, placing the NYPD under supervision of an independent observer appointed by City Hall.

Downplaying Radicalization and the Jihadist Threat

OSF accused conservative opponents of “borrowing liberally from Joe McCarthy’s guilt by association tactics.” It complained in a Sept. 14, 2010 memo to its U.S. Programs Board that the “homegrown terrorism narrative” resulted in “discriminatory” targeting of Muslims by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI.

Khera often expresses similar sentiments. She accused the FBI of engaging in “entrapment operations” to target “innocent” Muslims after former Attorney General Eric Holder called sting operations an “essential law enforcement tool in uncovering and preventing terror attacks.”

Khera likewise characterized law enforcement training materials discussing the Islamic extremist ideology as “bigoted, false, and inflammatory” in her June 28 testimony before a Senate Judiciary  Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights, Federal Courts.

She and her organization played a central role in late 2011 when Muslim groups called on the Obama administration to purge FBI training materials that they deemed offensive. FBI counterterrorism training materials about Islam contained “woefully misinformed statements about Islam and bigoted stereotypes about Muslims,” she complained in a Sept. 15, 2011 letter. She objected to describing zakat – the almsgiving tax mandate on all Muslims – as a “funding mechanism for combat.”

Yet numerous Muslim commentators describe zakat as a funding mechanism for jihad. A footnote for Surah 9:60 found in “The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an,” says that zakat can be used to help “those who are struggling and striving in Allah’s Cause by teaching or fighting or in duties assigned to them by the righteous Imam, who are thus unable to earn their ordinary living.”

The Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America issued a 2011 fatwa saying zakat could be used to “support legitimate Jihad activities.”

Following Khera’s letter, then-White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan announced a review of “CVE-related instruction across all levels of government.” This review resulted in a purge of 700 pages of material from 300 presentations. This included PowerPoints and articles describing jihad as “holy war” and portraying the Muslim Brotherhood as group bent on world domination.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s bylaws describe these ultimate ambitions and imply the need for violence: “The Islamic nation must be fully prepared to fight the tyrants and the enemies of Allah as a prelude to establishing an Islamic state.”

Khera’s influence with the Obama administration

Khera enjoys close connections with the Obama White House. Visitor logs show that Khera went to the White House at least 11 times.

Khera played a central role persuading the Obama administration to purge Department of Homeland Security records related to individuals and groups with terror ties, former Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) Agent Phil Haney told the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

His superiors ordered him to “modify” 820 CPB TECS records about the Muslim Brotherhood network in America, Haney said. Irrefutable evidence from the 2008 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) Hamas financing trial proved that many of these groups and individuals assisted Hamas, Haney said.

The HLF trial substantiated deep connections between American Islamist groups such as the Islamic Society of North America, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and a Hamas-support network created by the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.

A 2009 OSF funding document claims credit for helping persuade then-Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to order a review of border screening procedures. It also reveals that Muslim Advocates worked with “DHS staff to develop a revised border policy.”

The Muslim Advocates’ report recommended the “review and reform of … [Customs and Border Patrol policies and practices that target Muslim, Arab and South Asian Americans for their First Amendment protected activities, beliefs and associations; and … law enforcement and intelligence activities that impose disparate impacts on Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities.” It also asked DHS to prevent CPB agents from probing about political beliefs, religious practices, and contributions to “lawful” charitable organizations.

Muslim Advocates claimed a pivotal role in getting the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to reverse a new 2010 policy enhancing the screening on travelers from 14 countries, many of them predominately Muslim. The rule was proposed in the wake of the attempt by underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a Detroit-bound plane weeks earlier.

Muslim Advocates and several OSF grantees met with Napolitano and other top DHS officials, and the policy was canceled three months later. Muslim Advocates claimed that the Obama administration “made special mention” of its role in reversing the TSA policy.

“This broke into the open with the great purge of 2011 and 2012,” Haney said, recalling Brennan’s letter to Khera announcing that materials she complained about would be removed.

The purge accompanied a practice of meeting with Islamist groups as community partners, Haney said.

In addition to the purge of training material, documents related to people and groups with terrorism ties such as Canadian Muslim Brotherhood leader Jamal Badawi and the Pakistan-based Tablighi Jamaat movement also disappeared from CPB records. (Tablighi Jamaat often serves as a de facto recruiting conduit for groups such as al-Qaida and the Taliban.)

Investigators might have had a better chance of thwarting the San Bernardino and the June Orlando shootings had those Tablighi Jamaat records remained available, Haney said, because the shooters’ respective mosques appeared in the deleted 2012 Tablighi Jamaat case report.

The Obama administration’s “absolute refusal to acknowledge that individuals who are affiliated with networks operating here in the United States, and their deliberate deletion of any evidentiary pieces of information in the system, has made us blind and handcuffed,” Haney said. “The proof of it is San Bernardino and Orlando.

“They obliterated the entire [Tablighi Jamaat] case as if it never existed.”

Haney’s claims have met with some skepticism. Haney stands by his claims and says critics “made a lot of factual errors.”

Still, Muslim Advocates’ success reversing the TSA policy was among the accomplishments showing that it “has proved itself to be an effective advocate on the national stage,” an April 25, 2011 OSF document said. It recommended renewing a $440,000 grant to “support the core operating costs of Muslim Advocates.”

In doing so, the Soros-funded OSF weakened U.S. national security and potentially left it vulnerable to the jihadi attacks we have been seeing in the homeland since the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

Congressman Issa Still in Court Fighting on the Fast and Furious Case

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Good for him !!

The Flash Memo from the House Oversight Committee, dated April 2016.

House GOP Presses Court on ‘Fast and Furious’ Documents Committee argues Justice lied about botched gun-tracking initiative

House Oversight Committee under Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., probed failed gun-tracking program. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call File Photo) –

RollCall: House Republicans accused the Obama administration of “generally making a mockery” of the congressional oversight process, as they fight in a federal appeals court for documents related to a flawed gun-tracking initiative known as Operation Fast and Furious. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in a brief filed Thursday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, argued that a lower court judge did not fully correct the Justice Department’s “executive abuses” as it responded to a congressional subpoena.

“DOJ responded by lying to Congress; engaging in concerted resistance, delay and gamesmanship; refusing to produce a privilege log for more than three years; belatedly raising new purported grounds for withholding documents long after the fact; and generally making a mockery of the process of negotiation and accommodation that is supposed to facilitate the exercise of Congress’s oversight and investigative powers,” the brief stated.

The lower courts allowed the Justice Department to benefit from that response, the committee argued, preventing the House from completing its obstruction of Congress investigation.

“This court should restore balance to the congressional oversight process by correcting the errors of the district court and compelling DOJ to produce in full, at long last, the entirety of the documents sought in the complaint,” the brief stated.

The appeal challenged rulings in the case, including U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s order Jan. 19 for the administration to turn over internal documents related to the Justice Department’s response to the congressional inquiry. President Barack Obama had asserted executive privilege over those documents on the grounds that disclosure would reveal the agency’s deliberative process.

Jackson’s order applied to documents responsive to the committee’s subpoena in October 2011 as part of the investigation spearheaded by then-Chairman Darrell Issa.

The California Republican has said the records will show that the Justice Department covered up the Fast and Furious program launched in 2009 by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, in which the government lost track of guns it was trying to trace to Mexican drug cartels. The weapons have been traced to crimes such as the 2010 murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. The program was halted in 2011.

The order also applied to nine documents for which no justification for the invocation of privilege had been provided, however the order denied all other requests from the committee for documents from the administration.

WASHINGTON – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) today released the following statement regarding the decision of U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson to deny the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the House of Representatives’ lawsuit concerning administration documents related to the Operation Fast and Furious scandal.

The President asserted executive privilege over these subpoenaed documents on June 20th 2012.

“This ruling is a repudiation of the Obama Justice Department and Congressional Democrats who argued the courts should have no role in the dispute over President Obama’s improper assertion of executive privilege to protect an attempted Justice Department cover-up of Operation Fast and Furious,” said Chairman Issa. “I remain confident in the merits of the House’s decision to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt; this ruling is an important step toward the transparency and accountability the Obama Administration has refused to provide.”

 

This is the premise of Congressman Issa’s argument, a hearing from 2014. Essentially a Constitutional crisis.

China’s Chemical Weapon for Sale and Killing Thousands

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Chemical weapon for sale: China’s unregulated narcotic

   

SHANGHAI (AP) — For a few thousand dollars, Chinese companies offer to export a powerful chemical that has been killing unsuspecting drug users and is so lethal that it presents a potential terrorism threat, an Associated Press investigation has found.

The AP identified 12 Chinese businesses that said they would export the chemical — a synthetic opioid known as carfentanil — to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium and Australia for as little as $2,750 a kilogram (2.2 pounds), no questions asked.

Carfentanil burst into view this summer, the latest scourge in an epidemic of opioid abuse that has killed tens of thousands of people in the United States alone. Dealers have been cutting carfentanil and its weaker cousin, fentanyl, into heroin and other illicit drugs to boost profit margins.

Despite the dangers, carfentanil is not a controlled substance in China, where it is manufactured legally and sold openly online. The U.S. government is pressing China to blacklist carfentanil, but Beijing has yet to act, leaving a substance whose lethal qualities have been compared with nerve gas to flow into foreign markets unabated.

“We can supply carfentanil … for sure,” a saleswoman from Jilin Tely Import and Export Co. wrote in broken English in a September email. “And it’s one of our hot sales product.”

China’s Ministry of Public Security declined multiple requests for comment from the AP.

Before being discovered by drug dealers, carfentanil and substances like it were viewed as chemical weapons. One of the most powerful opioids in circulation, carfentanil is so deadly that an amount smaller than a poppy seed can kill a person. Fentanyl is up to 50 times stronger than heroin; carfentanil is chemically similar, but 100 times stronger than fentanyl itself.

“It’s a weapon,” said Andrew Weber, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs from 2009 to 2014. “Companies shouldn’t be just sending it to anybody.”

The AP did not actually order any drugs so could not conduct tests to determine whether the products on offer were genuine. But a kilogram of carfentanil shipped from China was recently seized in Canada.

Carfentanil was first developed in the 1970s, and its only routine use is as an anesthetic for elephants and other large animals. Governments quickly targeted it as a potential chemical weapon. Forms of fentanyl are suspected in at least one known assassination attempt, and were used by Russian forces against Chechen separatists who took hundreds of hostages at a Moscow theater in 2002.

The chemicals are banned from the battlefield under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

In fiscal year 2014, U.S. authorities seized just 3.7 kilograms (8.1 pounds) of fentanyl. This fiscal year, through just mid-July, they have seized 134.1 kilograms (295 pounds), according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data obtained by the AP. Fentanyl is the most frequently seized synthetic opioid, U.S. Customs reports.

Users are dying of accidental respiratory arrest, and overdose rates have soared. China has not been blind to the key role its chemists play in the global opioid supply chain. Most synthetic drugs that end up in the United In States come from China, either directly or by way of Mexico, according to the DEA. China already has placed controls on 19 fentanyl-related compounds. Adding carfentanil to that list is likely to only diminish, not eliminate, global supply.

Despite periodic crackdowns, people willing to skirt the law are easy to find in China’s vast, freewheeling chemicals industry, made up of an estimated 160,000 companies operating legally and illegally. Vendors said they lie on customs forms, guaranteed delivery to countries where carfentanil is banned and volunteered strategic advice on sneaking packages past law enforcement.

Speaking from a bright booth at a chemicals industry conference in Shanghai last month, Xu Liqun said her company, Hangzhou Reward Technology, could produce carfentanil to order.

“It’s dangerous, dangerous, but if we send 1kg, 2kg, it’s OK,” she said, adding that she wouldn’t do the synthesis herself because she’s pregnant. She said she knows carfentanil can kill and believes it should be a controlled substance in China.

“The government should impose very serious limits, but in reality in China it’s so difficult to control because if I produce one or two kilograms, how will anyone know?” she said. “They cannot control you, so many products, so many labs.”

Several vendors recommended sending the drugs via EMS, the express mail service of state-owned China Postal Express & Logistics Co., as a fail-safe option.

“EMS is a little slow than Fedex or DHL but very safe, more than 99% pass rate,” a Yuntu Chemical Co. representative wrote in an email. “If send to the USA, each package less than 250g is the best, small and unattractive, we will divide 1kg into 4-5 packages and send every other day or send to different addresses.”

EMS declined to comment.

A Yuntu representative hung up the phone when contacted by the AP and did not reply to emails seeking comment. Soon after, the company’s website vanished.

Not all of the websites used to sell the drugs are based in China. At least six Chinese companies offering versions of fentanyl, including carfentanil, had IP addresses in the United States, hosted at U.S. commercial web providers, the AP found.

___

“NOBODY WAS MOVING. THEY PUT THE PEOPLE THERE LIKE DOLLS”

In 2002, Russian special forces turned to carfentanil after a three-day standoff with Chechen separatists, who had taken more than 800 people hostage in a Moscow theater. They used an aerosol version of carfentanil, along with the less potent remifentanil, sending it through air vents, according to a paper by British scientists who tested clothing and urine samples from three survivors.

The strategy worked, but more than 120 hostages died from the effects of the chemicals.

Olga Dolotova, an engineer who survived the attack, remembers seeing white plumes descending before she lost consciousness. When she awoke, she found herself on a bus packed with bodies. “It was such a horror just to look at it,” she said. “Nobody was moving. They put the people there like dolls.”

The theater siege raised concerns about carfentanil as a tool of war or terrorism, and prompted the U.S. to develop strategies to counter its use, according to Weber, the former Defense Department chemical weapons expert.

The U.S., Russia, China, Israel, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom and India are among the countries that have assessed carfentanil and related compounds for offensive or defensive applications, according to publicly available documents and academic studies.

“Countries that we are concerned about were interested in using it for offensive purposes,” Weber said. “We are also concerned that groups like ISIS could order it commercially.”

Weber considered a range of alarming scenarios, including the use of carfentanil to knock out and take troops hostage, or to kill civilians in a closed environment like a train station. He added that it is important to raise awareness about the threat from carfentanil trafficking.

“Shining sunlight on this black market activity should encourage Chinese authorities to shut it down,” he said.

Fentanyls also have been described as ideal tools for assassination — lethal and metabolized quickly so they leave little trace.

Agents from Israel’s secret intelligence service, Mossad, sprayed a substance believed to be a fentanyl analog into the ear of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal as he walked down a street in Amman, Jordan, in a botched 1997 assassination attempt.

The U.S. began researching fentanyl as an incapacitating agent in the 1960s and, by the 1980s, government scientists were experimenting with aerosolized carfentanil on primates, according to Neil Davison, the author of “‘Non-Lethal’ Weapons” who now works at the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The U.S. says it is no longer developing such chemical agents. But two state-owned companies in China have marketed “narcosis” dart guns, according to Michael Crowley, project coordinator at the University of Bradford’s Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project. He said the ammunition “might very well be fentanyl or an analog of fentanyl,” adding that in the 1990s, the U.S. explored similar guns loaded with a form of fentanyl.

Among the problems with fentanyls is that the line between life and death is too thin.

“There is no incapacitating chemical agent that can be used in a tactical situation without extreme risk of injury or death to everybody in the room,” Crowley said.

___

“HURRY TO BUY”

DEA officials say they are getting unprecedented cooperation from China in the fight against fentanyls, noting unusually deep information sharing in what can be a fractious bilateral relationship.

The DEA has “shared intelligence and scientific data” with Chinese authorities about controlling carfentanil, according to Russell Baer, a DEA special agent in Washington.

“I know China is looking at it very closely,” he said. “That’s been the subject of discussion in some of these high-level meetings.”

Last October, China added 116 synthetic drugs to its controlled substances list, which had a profound impact on global narcotics supply chains. Acetylfentanyl, for example, is a weaker cousin of carfentanil that China included on last year’s list of restricted substances. Six months later, monthly seizures of acetylfentanyl in the U.S. had plummeted by 60 percent, DEA data obtained by the AP shows.

Several vendors contacted in September were willing to export carfentanil, but refused to ship the far less potent acetylfentanyl. A Jilin Tely Import & Export Co. saleswoman offered carfentanil for $3,800 a kilogram, but wrote, with an apologetic happy face, that she couldn’t ship acetylfentanyl because it “is regulated by the government now.”

Contacted by the AP, the company said it had never shipped carfentanil to North America and had offered to sell it just “to attract the customer.”

Seven companies offered to sell acetylfentanyl despite the ban, however. Five offered fentanyl and two offered alpha-PVP, commonly known as flakka, which also are controlled substances in China.

Liu Feng, deputy general manager of Zhejiang Haiqiang Chemical Co., said his company sent a large order of carfentanil to India last year and has sold smaller amounts to trading companies in Shanghai. He said they also had put false labels on packages for customers.

“Everyone in the industry knows it,” he said. “But we just do not say it.”

Another company went out of its way to recommend acetylfentanyl. “Our customer feedback that the effect is also very good,” Wonder Synthesis emailed in broken English. The company says it has warehouses in the United States, Europe, Russia and India.

Wonder Synthesis did not respond to emails seeking comment and the phone number provided did not work. The AP visited its published address in Beijing and found a beauty parlor.

The problem with carfentanil is not limited to the United States. In late June, Canadian authorities seized a kilogram of carfentanil shipped from China in a box labelled printer accessories.

The powder contained 50 million lethal doses, according to the Canada Border Services Agency — more than enough to wipe out the entire population of the country. It was hidden inside bright blue cartridges labelled as ink for HP LaserJet printers. “Keep out of reach of children,” read the labels, in Chinese.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers in Vancouver sealed themselves inside hazmat suits, binding their wrists, ankles, zippers, and face masks with fat yellow tape. With large oxygen containers on their backs and chunky respirators, it looked as if they were preparing for a trip to the moon.

“Cocaine or heroin, we know what the purpose is,” said Allan Lai, an officer-in-charge at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Calgary, who is helping oversee the criminal investigation. “With respect to carfentanil, we don’t know why a substance of that potency is coming into our country.”

In August and September, high-level delegations of Chinese and U.S. drug enforcement authorities met to discuss joint efforts on synthetic opioids, but neither meeting produced any substantive announcement on carfentanil.

Nonetheless, some Chinese vendors are already bracing for a new wave of controls. In an email, Wonder Synthesis wrote, “If you need any chems, just hurry to buy.”

Creative Methods Cartels use to Move Narcotics in America

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Cannon used to launch Mexican marijuana into US

Cannon used to launch Mexican marijuana into the United States

InsightCrime: Every day, Mexico‘s cartels attempt to ship untold quantities of drugs across the US border. And every day, Mexican and US authorities try to stop them. The drugs are usually hidden in commercial or passenger vehicles transiting official checkpoints. But in recent years, crime groups have begun to experiment with a wide range of innovative methods for moving illicit cargo past one of the world’s most heavily guarded borders and into the most lucrative drug market. Below, InSight Crime looks at five of the most creative.

Tunnels

16-10-04-USMex-Border-Tunnel

The first “narco-tunnel” from Mexico to the US was discovered in 1990. According to the Los Angeles Times, the tunnel ran 273 feet from a luxury home in Agua Prieta, Mexico to a warehouse in Arizona, and it was equipped with electric lighting, a drainage system and a trolley for moving the drugs. US anti-drug officials described it to the newspaper as “something out of a James Bond movie,” perhaps because access to the tunnel on the Mexican side was provided by a “hidden switch inside the luxury home that, when activated, boosted a pool table and the concrete slab below it high into the air to open the way to a narrow shaft below.”

SEE ALSO: Coverage of US/Mexico Border

Since then, dozens of tunnels have been discovered along the border — many of them incomplete, and many of them linked to the powerful Sinaloa Cartel. Its top boss, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán, famously escaped from a maximum-security prison by way of an elaborate mile-long tunnel in July 2015.

One of the biggest narco-tunnels ever discovered in the United States was found in April 2016. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, it ran half a mile from a house in Tijuana, Mexico to an industrial property in the San Diego area, and it was equipped with lights, rails and a ventilation system. Authorities indicated the tunnel was likely used to move multiple tons of drugs that included marijuana and cocaine. By all indications, this method will remain a popular option for smuggling narcotics across the border.

Catapults

16-10-04-USMex-Border-Catapult

Another ancient technology adapted for modern use, drug trafficking groups do not seem to have adopted the catapult with the same zeal as the tunnel. There is, however, at least one documented case — captured on grainy surveillance camera footage — in which suspected smugglers appear to load packages of marijuana into a large contraption on the Mexican side of the border and launch them into the United States. A Mexican official told the Associated Press the catapult was capable of flinging more than four pounds of marijuana over the border at a time.

Mexican authorities have discovered several other catapults suspected of being used for drug trafficking in recent years. But the relative inefficiency and inaccuracy of these machines means that they are unlikely to attain widespread use as a method for transporting drugs across the border.

Cannon

16-10-04-USMex-Border-Cannon

The shortcomings of the catapult method do not appear to have deterred traffickers from seeking ways to shoot drugs from Mexico into the United States. Authorities in the Mexican state of Sonora recently discovered a vehicle modified to serve as a mobile air cannon capable of launching packages of drugs across the border. It is not clear whether the apparatus — described by the news outlet Fusion as something that looked like it “came out of the Mad Max movie” — was ever used, nor is it clear if it even functioned as intended.

There are other documented instances in which traffickers have used cannon to launch drugs across the border, including another truck-mounted device discovered by Mexican authorities in 2013. However, the conspicuous appearance of such contraptions, combined with the substantial amount of effort they likely take to build and operate, make it unlikely that machines like these will come into widespread use by trafficking groups.

Ultralight Aircraft

16-10-04-USMex-Border-Light

Using aircraft to fly drugs over the US border is nothing new for Mexico-based trafficking groups. Decades ago, the late Juarez Cartel kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes earned the nickname “Lord of the Skies” (“El Señor de los Cielos”) for the fleet of small airplanes his organization used to ferry drugs from Mexico to the United States. More recently, however, trafficking groups have begun to use “ultralight” aircraft in fly-by-night operations. These machines are much smaller and slower than their full-size counterparts, and due to their limited range they are typically used for recreation rather than transportation. But crime groups have begun outfitting ultralight aircraft with special equipment like all-terrain landing gear and extra cargo space to enhance their ability to stealthily carry illicit loads over the border.

SEE ALSO: Mexico News and Profiles

Ultralight aircraft typically fly relatively lower to the ground, which — along with their small size — makes them difficult to detect. And in addition to requiring relatively little training to operate, they are fairly cheap and easy to construct, increasing their appeal for traffickers. Moreover, these vehicles can carry hundreds of pounds of drugs at a time. These advantages make ultralights an economical option for enterprising smugglers, and authorities expect their use in drug trafficking to continue, or even increase, in the future.

Drones

16-10-04-USMex-Border-Drone

The rapid growth in the market for commercially produced unmanned aircraft systems, commonly referred to as “drones,” has been accompanied by a simultaneous increase in their use by drug smugglers. In August 2015, two men pleaded guilty in US court to receiving a package of 28 pounds of heroin that was flown across the border from Mexico using a drone. Federal authorities told the Los Angeles Times that the case was “the first cross-border seizure by US law enforcement involving the new smuggle-by-air tactic.” Earlier that year, a drone carrying six pounds of methamphetamine crashed in Mexico just south of the US border. And according to Popular Mechanics, there had reportedly been more than one hundred similar attempts during previous years to use drones to carry drugs over the border.

Still, officials say that drone-based drug trafficking has its limitations. US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) spokesperson Amy Roderick told the Los Angeles Times in 2015 that drones “will only allow a small amount of drugs to be flown at a time, and that coupled with the ease of detection, does not make this method very profitable to these drug trafficking organizations whose motivation is money.”

***** From the Center of International Maritime Security:

Drug cartels today are much more organized, adaptive, and strategic. Over time, they have acquired vast financial resources that allow them to invest in technologies geared towards providing them with a strategic edge. Drug cartels have learned to adapt to a changing environment where law enforcement authorities and militaries are also seeking to find their own effective ways of disrupting the flow of illicit drugs. Technology has become a source of competitive advantage and both drug cartels and militaries have been investing in engineering and technological tools that will allow them to counteract one another.

On one side, drug cartels attempt to optimize their operational efficiency while mitigating the risk of detection, seizure, and capture. On the other side, we have law enforcement and militaries’ efforts to improve their surveillance and detection capabilities. This race to out-flank and counteract one another has led to the development of narco-submarines.

During the past twenty years, Colombia’s various drug cartels have engaged in investing in and developing narco-submarine technology that will yield a competitive edge. Over time, their increasing need to evade capture and confiscation of narcotics led drug cartels to move away from using go-fast boats and planes, and instead turn towards developing in-house, homemade, custom built narco-submarines.

A narco-submarine (also called narco-sub) is a custom-made, self-propelled vessel built by drug traffickers to smuggle their goods. Over the years, their engineering, design and technology have improved, thus making them more difficult to detect and capture. Moreover, from a cost-benefit perspective, the yielded benefits are far superior to the associated costs of building these vessels.

Although militaries and law enforcement agencies have become progressively collaborative in their efforts to reduce the flows of narcotics, the use of narco-submarines enables narcotics to continue to reach their destinations while reducing the probability of detection. Albeit, there have been some confiscations of narco-submarine vessels over the last several years. These appropriations in turn have led to our understanding of how narco-submarines are designed, engineered, and used to deploy narcotics.

Cocaine smuggling from the Andean region of South America to the United States generates yearly revenues in the high tens of billions of dollars (e.g. 2008 UN estimate of USD $88 billion retail) and over the last thirty-five years has produced in the low trillions of dollars in retail sales. The use of narco-subs and related vessels represents one component of a broader illicit distribution strategy that also relies upon go-fast boats, airplanes, the hiding of narcotics inside bulk containers and smaller commodities, drug mules, and other techniques to covertly get this high value product into the U.S.

In fact, as of June 2012, maritime drug smuggling accounts for 80% of the total illicit flow from the Andean region into Honduras, Mexico and other mid-way transportation regions prior to entry into the U.S. About 30% of the maritime flow is estimated by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to utilize narco submarines. Overall, however, maritime interdiction rates are very low. In March 2014, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command testified to Congress that:

“Last year, we had to cancel more than 200 very effective engagement activities and numerous multilateral exercises, Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. And because of asset shortfalls, Southcom is unable to pursue 74 percent of suspected maritime drug trafficking, the general said.

“I simply sit and watch it go by,” he continued. “And because of service cuts, I don’t expect to get any immediate relief, in terms of assets, to work with in this region of the world.”

As a result, it can be seen that narco-submarines and related maritime drug trafficking methods are being carried out with relative impunity, with only about 1 in 4 craft presently being interdicted.

Per the testimony of Rear Admiral Charles Michel, JIATF-South Director, in June 2012, the following statistics pertaining maritime contact numbers and interdictions are provided:

JIATF-South detected an SPSS [Self-Propelled Semi-Submersibles] at sea for the first time in 2006. By 2009, the interagency detected as many as 60 SPSS events were moving as much as 330 metric tons per year. Prior to 2011, SPSS had only been employed by traffickers in the Eastern Pacific. However, since July 2011, JIATF-South has supported the disruption of five SPSS vessels in the Western Caribbean, each carrying more than 6.5 metric tons of cocaine.

There have been a total of 214 documented SPSS events, but only 45 were disrupted due largely to the difficulty of detecting such low-profile vessels.

The numbers of these vessels which now exist is also highly debatable with potentially dozens of them being produced every year by criminal organizations in Colombia such as the FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), Rastrojos, and Urabeños. One point greatly influencing the numbers of these vessels which exist at any specific time is if they are utilized once and then scuttled after their delivery (the traditional U.S. military viewpoint) or if they are utilized multiple times (the traditional Colombian military viewpoint). Depending on the perspective held, greater or lesser numbers of narco subs would be required to be produced each year to replenish the vessels lost due to capture, accidental sinking, intentional-scuttling to avoid capture, and, potentially most importantly, at the end of a delivery run.

What is known is that the capability of these vessels has grown over the last two decades with their evolution and, if the Colombian cartels’ dream of making the journey (using fully submersible narco-subs) to West Africa and Europe is realized, such subs would very well represent a valuable cross Atlantic trafficking resource that would not likely be scuttled at the end of such a profitable illicit trade route.

Given this context concerning the immense values associated with the cocaine trade to the U.S. and the large amount of these illicit drugs not being interdicted during the initial leg in their journey to the United States, we have written a paper, “Narco-Submarines – Specially Fabricated Vessels Used For Drug Smuggling Purposes”, soon to be released by the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) and intended to be an initial primer on the subject of narco-submarines, that is, those specially fabricated vessels utilized principally by Colombian narco traffickers and developed to smuggle cocaine into the U.S. illicit drug market.

narco2This work is anticipated to appear in the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) website as unclassified research conducted on defense and security issues that are understudied or under-considered. The work contains a preface written by Dr. James G. Stavridis, and a number of essays written by U.S. Navy Captain Mark F. Morris, Adam Elkus, Hannah Stone, Javier Guerrero Castro, and Byron Ramirez discussing and analyzing narco-submarines. The paper also comprises a comprehensive photo gallery, arranged in chronological order, which allows the reader to observe the evolution of narco-submarine technologies. It also contains a cost benefit analysis of using narco-submarines, as well as a map and a table that highlights where these distinct narco subs were interdicted. The data that we came across seems to propose that cartels have been using different types of narco-submarines concurrently; hence, they seem to be employing a mixed strategy.

This study is important and relevant to the present challenges faced by law enforcement authorities and militaries. This effort seeks to add value to the existing literature on the subject as it contains several essays which describe the complexity of the challenges that narco-submarines present. The document also provides the background and context behind the emergence of these vessels. Furthermore, the work illustrates the evolution of narco-submarine technology and the advances in their design, features, and technical capabilities.

Finally, it is important that we collectively consider the potential of these types of vessels to transport more than just narcotics: the movement of cash, weapons, violent extremists, or, at the darkest end of the spectrum, weapons of mass destruction.

While this is a volume that will be of general interest to anyone with an interest in global security, the intended readers are military, homeland security, and law enforcement personnel who wish to learn more about these vessels and their respective capabilities. Policymakers and analysts may also find the work useful for understanding the detection and interdiction challenges that these vessels generate. Increasing the area of knowledge about narco-submarines should enrich and deepen our understanding of the threat they pose to our domestic security, and indeed to the global commons.

Why Iran Funds Foreign Militias

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Primer:

In part from Washington Post: As the Obama administration scrambles for options in Syria, officials lament that the United States has no leverage over the Assad regime, Russia or Iran to persuade them to halt their ongoing atrocities, especially in Aleppo. But behind the scenes, the White House is actually working to weaken a sanctions bill lawmakers in both parties see as providing leverage against all three.

According to lawmakers and staffers in both parties, the White House is secretly trying to water down the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, a bipartisan bill that would sanction the Assad regime for mass torture, mass murder, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The bill, guided by House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking Democrat Eliot Engel (N.Y.), would also sanction entities that aid the Syrian government in these atrocities; that includes Russia and Iran.

The bill, named after a Syrian defector who presented the world with 55,000 pictures documenting Assad’s mass torture and murder of more than 11,000 civilians in custody, has 70 co-sponsors, a majority of whom are Democrats.  More here.

****

MiddleEastEye/Karim El-Bar

In wake of Arab Spring, Iran’s backing of foreign militias has drawn much attention. Why is this support so central to Iranian foreign policy?

At a military parade commemorating the 36th anniversary of the Iran-Iraq War, the chief of the Iranian armed forces spoke clearly and bluntly. Tehran holds sway over five Arab countries.

Major General Mohammed Bagheri listed them as Lebanon, Yemen, Palestine, Syria, and Iraq.

Their enemy, as Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif controversially wrote in the New York Times last month, is Wahhabism, the ultraorthodox brand of Sunni Islam propagated by Saudi Arabia.

In some of these countries, like Lebanon, Iran has a long history. In others, such as Yemen, they have only recently involved themselves. The Palestinian cause, and by extension enmity to Israel, is a cornerstone of the theocratic regime’s domestic legitimacy.

In recent years, however, it has been Syria and Iraq that have dominated global headlines and Iranian foreign policy. Damascus and Baghdad, historically the twin capitals of the Sunni Islamic caliphate, are now under the control of predominately Shia Iran – a twist not lost on large swathes of the local population.

The sectarian dimension of Iran’s involvement in Syria’s civil war is hard to ignore. Late last month, the leader of the Iraqi Shia Najbaa Movement visited Aleppo. In a propaganda video released after his visit, a song can be heard in the background with the chorus “Aleppo is Shia.”

At the time of publication, over 10,000 Shia troops are currently massing outside rebel-held east Aleppo as joint Syrian-Russian airstrikes have all but obliterated it.

Translation: “The leader of the Iraqi Shia Najbaa Movement visits the city of Aleppo”

What unites Iran’s foreign policy in all these countries, and across the decades since the 1979 Islamic revolution, is Tehran’s unwavering support for these foreign militias and non-state actors across the Middle East.

The question is: Why?

Messianism or nationalism?

A declassified CIA report, written in 1986, said that while Tehran’s support for non-state actors abroad was meant to further its national interest, it also stemmed from the belief that “it has a religious duty to export its Islamic revolution and to wage, by whatever means, a constant struggle against the perceived oppressor states.”

The messianic nature of Iran’s ruling ideology is often cited as an explanation for Iran’s support of foreign groups, with the preamble to its constitution famously committing it to “the establishment of a universal holy government and the downfall of all others.”

There has been a long-running debate over whether Iran’s support for foreign groups is rooted in national interest or in ideology.



Iranian opposition leader in exile Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini gives a speech at Roissy airport near Paris on 31 January, 1979 before boarding a plane bound to Tehran (AFP)

“I think it’s very easy to latch on to this ideological concept of exporting the revolution as a justification or explanation for Iran’s policies,” Dr Sanam Vakil, an associate fellow at Chatham House, told MEE.

“It’s more about the pragmatic element,” she said. “It’s about the national interest.”

Ellie Geranmayeh, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, agreed: “Iran is not doing this out of an ideological zeal.”

Geranmayeh said Iran’s policy in the region has much more to do with national security policy “rather than any sort of large ambition to export revolutionary ideals across the region.”

She pointed to the fact that many of Iran’s predominately Shia citizens would not religiously associate Assad’s Alawite regime with their own religion.

Regional intervention

This has not prevented Iran from throwing the kitchen sink at the Syrian civil war to preserve its sphere of influence, even recruiting poorer Shia from countries as far away as Côte d’Ivoire, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight on their behalf in Syria. This is in addition to the roles of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and its elite branch, the Quds Force.

Hezbollah was reticent to involve themselves at first. Their involvement is still a point of controversy in the movement, with former leader Subhi al-Tufayli recently slamming their “aggression” in Syria and labelling anyone fighting alongside the Russians, or Americans, as an “enemy” to God.

“Iran has nurtured and maybe even given birth to Hezbollah, but as any parent will tell you children don’t always listen to you over the course of their life,” Vakil said.

Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, reportedly only agreed after receiving a personal appeal from Khamenei.

“Hezbollah is not necessarily a puppet of Iran as described in the media, even though a large part of the funding comes from Iran. It has a lot of domestic goals and considerations inside Lebanon which are very important for the success of the movement,” Geneive Abdo, a senior policy fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Middle East Eye.

“Neither are the Shia militias in Iraq,” she added, some of which are more loyal to the influential Iraqi Shia cleric Ali al-Sistani than to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali al-Khameini.

“It’s very complicated,” Abdo said. “At the same time that Iran or the revolutionary guards have a great influence on these forces, it doesn’t mean necessarily mean they control them 100 per cent.”

Vakil expresses a similar level of caution: “Saying that Iran is responsible for everything is demeaning on so many levels.”

“Iran has influence, it has money, but it doesn’t have total control of every situation,” she said. “It is important not to overstate Iran’s ability to manage everything. I think that there’s a lot of overstating and as a result everyone assumes that Iran is bigger than it is, more powerful and more influential than it is.

“That in effect plays into the hands of the IRGC and Qassem Soleimani and creates this sort of mythic impression around the region of what’s happening,” she added.

Relations between Hamas and Iran deteriorated sharply following the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011. The following year, the group’s leadership left Damascus after being based there for more than a decade. Their funding was reduced drastically shortly thereafter.



Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal delivers a speech on 16 November, 2003 in front of a giant painting of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a ceremony in Beirut (AFP)

“Our position on Syria affected relations with Iran. Its support for us never stopped, but the amounts [of money] were significantly reduced,” a senior Hamas official said in 2013.

In response to this turn of events, Iran ramped up funding for other Palestinian groups, most notably the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Iran’s heightened involvement in the Middle East “began in Iraq with the US invasion and the United States’s role in creating a Shia-led government in Iraq,” according to Abdo.

“That paved the way for Iran’s involvement beginning in 2003 not only in Iraq but now we see in other Arab countries,” she said.

For example, the Quds Force have reportedly been arming the Houthis since 2012. In 2013, the Yemeni coast guard intercepted a boat full of arms, explosives, and anti-aircraft missiles suspected to have come from Iran.

In January 2014, the Bahraini authorities also intercepted a boat departing from Iraq with more than 220 pounds of explosives and other weapons such as C-4 explosives, mines and grenades.

Legacy of the Iran-Iraq war

Any analysis of Iran’s role in Iraq, and indeed the wider Middle East, must include reference to Iran’s bloody, eight-year long war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Geranmayeh emphasised the autonomy of the local actors themselves: “Given the near and imminent fall of Baghdad in 2014, Iran offered its help to Baghdad and that help was legitimately accepted by the central government of Baghdad.”

She sees Iran’s experience in the Iran-Iraq war as crucial to Iran’s approach to foreign militias around the Middle East in general, and Iraq in particular: “The (Iranian) military was weakened during the eight-year war with Saddam Hussein and so a kind of more voluntarily, locally organised Basij paramilitary force emerged in Iran. A lot of people who are in the Iranian military have that experience themselves of the Iran-Iraq war of how to mobilise local operations into a security architecture in times of need and in times where there is essentially a security vacuum in place. So they have certainly transported some of that know-how into Iraq.”



Iraqi soldiers walk after their victory in the battle at al-Howeizah swamps, north of Basra, on 22 March, 1985 (AFP)

She says that a similar dynamic is at play in Syria and the pro-government National Defence Forces (NDF): “What they (Iran) would say with the NDF is that they are in Syria with the legitimately recognised, UN-recognised government of Syria, the Assad regime, having blessed their cooperation in the Syrian sphere. They would see their role as advisory on the ground to local groups fighting at a time essentially when there is a security vacuum.”

“The IRGC has always played a critical role in Iran’s foreign policy,” Geranmayeh continued. “They have a long history, [with] a lot of these people of course fighting in the Iran-Iraq war, they understand the neighbouring countries very well because they spent a lot of time in those countries.”

“They (the IRGC) are most well-known for their defence of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war and the translation of that defence into supporting non-state actors in other countries throughout the world and in the Middle East itself; Hezbollah being their baby, they have created it,” Vakil said. “It’s the same sort of concept in Syria, they are responsible for the Syria portfolio, and they are responsible for any of the other portfolios around the region.”

The rise of the fiercely anti-Shia Islamic State group has increased the IRGC’s domestic popularity in recent years, Geranmayeh claims: “The IRGC is viewed much more now as a security apparatus that is protecting Iran from being contaminated by ISIS fighters… in Syria, for example, the choice is seen as one between Assad or ISIS.”

Abdo emphasised that the IRGC are an “an economic force, they’re a political force, and they’re an ideological force.”

“We have to be specific, it’s the revolutionary guards who are controlling and funding the militias,” she said.

Follow the money

Iran is one of only three countries considered an official state sponsor of terror by the US; it was added to the State Department’s list on 19 January, 1984. The only other countries listed are Sudan and Syria.

The US foreign ministry’s 2013 Country Reports on Terrorism stated that Iran supports non-state actors in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and Iraq.

“I think that an opportunity has been opened for Iran in the Arab world,” Abdo said. “For many decades, Iran didn’t have the opportunity that it has now in the Arab world… It’s a result of the post-Arab uprising era.”

Naame Shaam, an independent campaign group focused on Iran’s role in Syria, published a report in December 2015 in which they estimated the level of support Iran provided non-state actors across the region.

This is a difficult task to say the least, according to Vakil.



A picture taken on 11 April, 2011 shows Iran’s biggest denomination currencies in Tehran (AFP)

“The key is that we just don’t know what those figures are, they’re estimates and guestimates from different sources and outlets,” she said. “The accurate reflection of Iran’s investment in Syria is a big question ultimately. We know it’s a lot but we just don’t know how much it is. And because they’ve invested a lot obviously it’s a clear indication that this strategy means something for them and they have some sort of long-term plan. But, again, there is a lot of opacity as to what that could be.”

With this in mind, Naame Shaam – comprised of Iranian, Syrian, and Lebanese activists and journalists – used publicly available data to make the following estimates:

  • Lebanon: From the 1980s to the beginning of the Arab Spring, Hezbollah received between $100m and $200m annually from Iran. Domestic economic decline and the increasing intervention in Syria led to this number between being cut to around $50m to $100m per year from 2010 onwards.
  • Iraq: From the 2003 invasion of Iraq until the end of Bush’s presidency, Iran provided a range of Iraqi Shia militias with $10m to $35m a year, a number which skyrocketed after 2009 to $100m to $200m a year.
  • Palestine: From its consolidation of power in 2007 to the start of the Arab Spring in Syria and elsewhere in 2011, Hamas received approximately $100m to $250m per year from Iran. Hamas’s refusal to back Assad led to a dramatic decline in funding.
  • Yemen: The Houthis have received anywhere between $10m and $25m a year since 2010.
  • Syria: Assad government forces and its allied militias received between $15bn and $25bn over the first five years of the conflict, amounting to between $3bn and $5bn per year.
  • Overall: Naame Sham estimated that over the period of time mentioned above, Iranian expenditure on foreign militias and non-state actors ranges between a low estimate of $20 billion – and a high estimate of $80 billion.

The money comes partly from public budgets, but largely from the huge sums of money under the direct control of the supreme leader and the IRGC. These funds come from clandestine business networks pumping out billions of dollars of revenue, and are untraceable as they are not accountable to the public, according to Naame Shaam.

History and consistency



Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan (L) attends the 5th Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS) in Moscow on 27 April, 2016 (AFP)

Iran’s defence minister is Hossein Dehghan – a former militia commander who orchestrated the bombing of a US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, an attack that killed 241 American troops. This was the deadliest terrorist attack in US history before 9/11. Fifty-eight French soldiers were also killed in the same operation on a French military barracks.

The following year saw Hezbollah’s abduction of CIA station chief William Francis Buckley, who was tortured and executed.

In 1992, the Israeli embassy in Argentina was bombed, killing 29 people. Two years later a Jewish cultural centre was bombed in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people.

Iran and its Lebanese proxies were linked to both attacks. Argentina ordered the arrest of infamous Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah for his participation in the 1992 attack, as well as Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Khamenei, for orchestrating the latter attack.

In 1996, a further 19 US soldiers were killed by an Iran-backed group, this time in Saudi Arabia as a result of the Khobar Towers bombing. Ahmed al-Mughassil, the suspected mastermind of the attack, was arrested last year in Beirut, having lived under Hezbollah’s protection since the attack.

Iran’s reach is not limited to the Arab world either. Its Shia majority, but staunchly secular, neighbour Azerbaijan has also felt the long reach of Tehran’s arm.

In 2006, Baku arrested 15 of its citizens with links to Iran and Hezbollah, who were planning a wave of attacks against Israeli and Western visitors in the country.

Two years later, Azerbaijan foiled a joint Iran-Hezbollah plan to bomb the country’s Israeli embassy in revenge for the 2008 assassination of Mughniyah.

In 2012, Baku carried out another wave of arrests to prevent another planned bombing campaign, again found to be linked to Iran and Hezbollah.

The same year saw five Israelis killed in Bulgaria in an attack that Sofia said had “obvious links” to Hezbollah.

In his 2014 testimony to the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Dr Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said the Quds Force’s increase in activities goes back to Hezbollah’s repeated failures to avenge the assassination of Mughniyah in Azerbaijan and elsewhere, leading to growing frustration within IRGC ranks.

“The IRGC would no longer rely solely on Hezbollah to carry out terrorist attacks abroad,” he told the committee. “It would now deploy Quds Force operatives to do so on their own, not just as logisticians supporting Hezbollah hit men.”



Handout mugshot obtained 12 October, 2011 courtesy of the Nueces County, Texas sheriff’s Office shows Manssor Arbabsiar (AFP PHOTO/NUECES COUNTY SHERIFF)

For these reasons, the State Department reported in 2012 “a marked resurgence of Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism, through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF), its Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), and Tehran’s ally Hezbollah. Iran and Hezbollah’s terrorist activity has reached a tempo unseen since the 1990s.”

The previous year, Iran even tried to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, in the nation’s capital Washington, D.C.

Manssor Arbabsiar, an Iranian-American citizen, pleaded guilty to the plot in June 2013 and admitted to “conspiring with members of the Iranian military in the formulation of the plot,” CNN reported at the time.

Iran vehemently denied involvement, but the plot was allegedly foiled when Arbabsiar’s contact in the Mexican drug cartel he tried to recruit to carry out the assassination turned out to be an undercover US agent.

Al-Qaeda connections

Iranian tensions with America only heightened after the 11 September attacks in 2001.

As the executive and legislative branches in America struggled over whether to allow families of 9/11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia, Iran’s role has also been a point of controversy.

Iran quickly condemned the terrorist attack, but the 9/11 Commission Report, published three years after the attack, found that eight of the 10 hijackers travelled through Iran between late 2000 and early 2001.

They were taking advantage of an agreement with the Iranian government that meant the passports of al-Qaeda members were not stamped as they passed through the country.

In a similar vein, a leading figure of al-Qaeda in Iraq – Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – was given shelter in Iran in 2001 and 2002, with Tehran reportedly refusing to extradite him to Jordan. The links are said to have continued and in 2012, the US Department of the Treasury slammed the Iran’s main intelligence organisation, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), for its “support to terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda in Iraq… again exposing the extent of Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism as a matter of Iran’s state policy.”



A US soldier stands between two images of al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi during a US military briefing 8 June, 2006 in Baghdad (AFP)

In July, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on three senior al-Qaeda members – all of whom are located in Iran. Faisal al-Khalidi is a former al-Qaeda commander and plays a leading role in weapons acquisition, while veteran member Yisra Bayumi served as a mediator with Iranian authorities as early as 2015 and facilitated the transfer of al-Qaeda funds, and Abu Bakr Ghumayn in 2015 assumed control of the financing and organisation of al-Qaeda members in Iran.

With regards to Iran sheltering al-Qaeda members, Vakil said Tehran was “perhaps using them as bargaining chips.”

“There is very limited love between Iran and al-Qaeda, they have no ideological symmetry in just about anything,” she said. “If they are doing anything, it is quite a pragmatic effort trying to get something out of it and that is what this regime is known for.”

Rouhani and the regime

Hassan Rouhani has often been portrayed as a moderate, at least in comparison to his hard-line predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His focus is said to be on rebuilding Iran’s shattered economy and normalising relations with the West.

Experts agree, however, that his impact on foreign policy has been minimal.

“It’s very difficult for one person alone to fundamentally redirect and rearrange regional policy without a consensus being formed at top leadership level,” Geranmayeh said.



Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani (C) leaves after addressing the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on 22 September, 2016 (AFP)

Vakil agrees: “Rouhani doesn’t actually have that much control and influence over Iran’s foreign policy portfolio.”

“One would assume the president is in charge of these things, but in fact he’s not,” she added. “The purview of foreign policy is primarily in the hands of the supreme leader.”

“I think his impact has been minimal,” Abdo said of Rouhani and Iran’s foreign policy. “I think that he has been used as an instrument in the similar way that Mohammed Khatami was used an instrument to achieve a certain regime objective. In Rouhani’s case it was the nuclear deal, in Khatami’s case, it was to try to improve relations with the West.”

Through this prism, the nuclear deal was not “necessarily a Rouhani victory,” she said, but what the supreme leader authorised.

Nuclear deal

In 2006, then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: “Iran has been the country that has been in many ways a kind of central banker for terrorism in important regions.”

A decade later, Obama’s nuclear deal meant Iran received more than $100bn in sanctions relief as well as reintegration into the pivotal SWIFT international banking system. Rouhani has also made a number of visits to the West to increase economic ties.

The lifting of financial sanctions is a contentious issue, so much so that when the Obama administration sent $400m in cash to Iran last month, he kept his own military out of the loop.

“There was a lot of opposition to the lifting of sanctions on Iran, particularly in the US, based on the argument that the money is going to be funnelled to fund Iran’s regional policies that are essentially opposed to Western interests,” Geranmayeh said of opponents of the nuclear deal.

This was certainly the position of Naame Shaam, who wrote in the conclusion to their report that: “There have been fears that, next to domestic investment needs, part of the released funds could end up fuelling conflicts in the Middle East even further due to increased military spending and financial backing of allied militias and governments like the Assad regime in Syria.

“The increase in Iran’s 2015/16 current defence budget may be a first sign of this,” it continued. “In recent months, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Iranian Minister of Defence, Hossein Dehqan, both made it clear that they had no intention to cut their support to Hezbollah, Hamas, the (Palestinian) Islamic Jihad, the Houthi militias in Yemen, the Syrian and Iraqi governments and their militias, despite a nuclear deal.”



Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif addresses the parliament in Tehran on 2 October, 2016 (AFP)

Geranmayeh takes a different view, however: “The majority of the money is going to fund local investment projects to reduce unemployment, to promote job growth, and to tackle issues to do with inflation.”

Vakil agrees: “The country does need the money internally because if Iran is going to hit all of its growth markers for the next 10 years there has to be a lot of investment in the Iranian economy. For the Iranian regime that is a huge part of why it signed the nuclear deal. It wasn’t about anything else except the economy, and trying to get the economy going, and trying to generate foreign and internal investment into different sections of the Iranian economy. It’s about the long-term sustainability of the Islamic republic.”

The consensus is far from unanimous though.

“I think the money will be directed toward non-state actors abroad,” Abdo said. “I think that it’s very unfortunate, but I think that the regime’s strategy is that they will basically maintain the minimum economic commitment required to prevent dissent and uprising, and as long as they can maintain this low level of service to their own people – which means that the subsidies are cut and the value of the currency is low and so forth – they will continue to do this if this means freeing up resources for regional domination.”

“It’s very clear if you go to Iran, the wages are low, the economy is in a bad situation,” she said. “But they’re spending enormous amounts of money on their regional ambitions.”

Sectarianism and survival

Iran supports non-state actors in the Middle East “because they want to have a foothold politically in the Arab world,” Abdo said.

“I think also there is a religious dimension to this and many people disagree with me,” she said. The topic is one she discusses at greater length in her new book, The New Sectarianism, due to be published on 1 December 2016.

“If you go back and look at Khamenei’s speeches during the early years of the Arab uprising, he talked a lot about the Islamic awakening. This is just pure rhetoric,” she said. “In fact what has happened is that the Iranians are supporting Shia groups in the Arab world.”

“Nasrallah has made very clear over the last two years that Hezbollah now functions as a Shia militia,” Abdo said. “Both Iran and Hezbollah never played the Shia card, they never said that they are the military force for Shia in the region, but they departed from that approximately two years ago and now there is no question that both Hezbollah and Iran are military forces to support Shia in the region.”

“This is what I think is very important in what has changed their historic rhetoric since the revolution,” she said.

There is an ethnic, as well as a religious, dimension to the complexity of Iran’s support for foreign militias, Abdo continued, because these groups are comprised mainly of Arab, not Persian, Shia.

“The Iranians are making inroads because the Shia in many of these countries are not gaining any support from their own governments,” she said. “Iraq is a perfect example of this.”

Zarif’s article in the New York Times has refocused attention on this sectarian proxy war currently raging across the Middle East.

“No doubt the Saudis are definitely instrumental in driving this conflict, but I think the important difference is that ideologically the Saudis don’t need this conflict for their survival,” she says. “The Iranian state depends upon conflict with the West ideologically and conflict with its neighbours to maintain its survival and its legitimacy.”

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