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Under the terms of the nuclear deal with Iran, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), key restrictions would expire if the IAEA formally reaches a “broader conclusion” that Tehran’s nuclear program is entirely peaceful. Such a conclusion would result in the lifting of the UN’s remaining non-nuclear sanctions, including the ban on ballistic missile testing and the conventional arms embargo. Furthermore, the U.S. and EU would delist additional entities from their sanctions lists. Notably, the EU would delist all entities affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the organization responsible for both terrorist activities abroad as well as key aspects of the nuclear program.
Spurring the IAEA to reach a broader conclusion as quickly as possible appears to be Iran’s goal. In a televised speech in the middle of May, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani expressed his intention to engage in “lifting all the non-nuclear sanctions during the coming four years” – at least two years earlier than the JCPOA would otherwise allow. Unless additional steps are taken to redress the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) closing of Iran’s possible military dimension (PMD) file in December 2015, it is technically possible for the IAEA to reach a broader conclusion within four years.
What is Required for the IAEA to Reach a Broader Conclusion?
To reach a broader conclusion, the IAEA needs to be able to conclude – based on extensive verification and analysis of all information available to it – that all nuclear material has remained in peaceful activities, which means that there are no indications of diversion of nuclear material from peaceful activities and no indications of undeclared nuclear material or activities in Iran as a whole.
Despite the IAEA’s previous conclusion that Iran had, in fact, carried out a wide range of activities ‘relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device,’ the IAEA Board of Governors reached a political decision in December 2015 to “close” the investigation into the possible military dimensions (PMD) of Iran’s nuclear program, a decision necessary to ensure the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). This decision has amplified the IAEA’s shortcoming in its ability to form a composite picture of, and thereby fully monitor, proscribed nuclear weapons development activities in Iran. Such monitoring and verification is essential to determine the nature of Iran’s nuclear program.
*** Further, is Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United States or other countries prepared? Was this a threat?
NCRI – Cleric Alamal-Hoda, Khamenei’s representative and Friday prayer leader in Northeastern city of Mashhad, while confessing to low participation of people in Qods Day march, threatened to launch rocket attack into Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He said: “Those who did not really participate in the ceremony without excuse, they are those, who were not present at the battlefield against infidels”.
This Mullah added: “Today, after 38 years, our ballistic missile are shaking the world and makes the world upside down.” We have reached to such power. This precise pointing of missile deployment to Deiralzor is not much more difficult, than, the pointing of the Saudi Arabian palace in Riyadh, that is, if the missile flowing from the Gulf to the heart of Al-Saud’s palace, it will have the same targeting spot, and will remove this unclean descent spot, Al-Ain from the page of Islam”.
Khamenei’s representative in Mashhad called on rival factions in the government and parliament to stop compromising with the enemy and accept the failure of JCPOA. At the same time, he argued that JCPOA pursuit was under Khamenei’s control. Almal-Hoda stated: Our policy makers in the executive branch, in the legislature and the parliament are not so eager to compromise with the enemy. You wanted it, your policy was implemented, you saw it failed. We brought the core of nuclear activities to brink of none, as sanctions were not lifted (Astan Qods Razavi TV, March 24, 2017).
FP: On Nov. 25, 2001, two CIA officers discovered a bearded 19-year-old English speaker among a group of captured Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
The bedraggled teen stood out. “Irish? Ireland?” a CIA officer asked the prisoner, who gave no reply.
He turned out to be an American. And hours later, one of his CIA interrogators was killed when the captured Taliban prisoners staged an uprising.
Photographed naked and bound, California-born John Walker Lindh became detainee #001 in the global war on terrorism and dubbed the “American Taliban.” Branded a traitor and terrorist back home, he was convicted of supporting the Taliban and sentenced to 20 years in prison in a media firestorm that captured the zeitgeist of the post-9/11 era.
Now 36 years old, Lindh is set to be released in less than two years. And he’ll leave prison with Irish citizenship and a stubborn refusal to renounce violent ideology, according to the U.S. government. Foreign Policy obtained two government documents that express concerns about Lindh: One details the communications of Lindh and other federal prisoners convicted of terrorism-related charges, and the second, written by the National Counterterrorism Center, addresses the intelligence community’s larger concerns over these inmates, once released.
“As of May 2016, John Walker Lindh (USPER) — who is scheduled to be released in May 2019 after being convicted of supporting the Taliban — continued to advocate for global jihad and to write and translate violent extremist texts,” reads the National Counterterrorism Center document prepared earlier this year.
The report, marked “For Official Use Only” and dated Jan. 24, 2017, provides a window into how the intelligence community looks at the prospect of releasing American citizens still considered potential threats. The document indicates that intelligence and law enforcement agencies are already worried that “homegrown violent extremists,” like other criminals, could have high rates of recidivism.
The document, which cites various Federal Bureau of Prisons intelligence summaries, claims that in March of last year, Lindh “told a television news producer that he would continue to spread violent extremist Islam upon his release.”
The television news producer is not identified, no specific statements are quoted, and there is no public record that Lindh has participated in media interviews.
While Lindh’s case is the most prominent among these prisoners, it’s not unique. U.S. authorities are monitoring dozens of other inmates who they deem to be “homegrown violent extremists” and who will be released within the next several years.
By the end of 2016, according to the National Counterterrorism Center, there were 300 terrorism offenders in prison, including 80 arrested in the past two years. “We assess that at least some of the more than 90 homegrown violent extremists incarcerated in the US who are due to be released in the next five years will probably reengage in terrorist activity,” the report says, “possibly including attack plotting, because they either remain radicalized or are susceptible to re-radicalization as has already been demonstrated overseas.”
Back in 2002, Lindh’s case posed difficult challenges for a government just starting to grapple with how to prosecute the war on terrorism on the battlefield and in the courts. Fifteen years later, as Lindh approaches his release from prison, the federal government will again be venturing into unchartered waters as sentences for other convicted extremists expire.
Now it will be up to President Donald Trump to decide one of the trickiest legacies of the war on terrorism: how to treat so-called homegrown terrorists after they’ve served their time.
Several attorneys who worked on terrorism cases told FP the government doesn’t have any specific conditions in place for extremists once they’re released. Most of the emphasis is on the prosecution up front, and not what happens after they leave prison, they say.
Most sentences for terror-related cases involving U.S. citizens in the post-9/11 era “are ripening into release just now,” said Joshua Dratel, a lawyer who has defended suspected terrorists in federal court. “The government is just starting to run into the dilemma of what to do with them.”
Lindh’s journey from a liberal suburb in Marin County, California to northern Afghanistan began as an adolescent, when he watched the film Malcolm X. He told FBI interrogators that the movie inspired him to convert to Islam. In 1998, at just 17 years old, he dropped out of school and went to Yemen to learn Arabic, with his parents’ support.
From there, he traveled to Pakistan, where he spent time with a paramilitary group fighting for Kashmir’s independence from India. Then he made his way to Afghanistan, prior to the Sept. 11 attacks, to fight with the Taliban, which controlled much of the country and was waging a war with the Northern Alliance. It was then that he lost contact with his family, who wouldn’t hear from him again until after his capture.
Lindh spent seven weeks at a training camp near Kandahar, which was used to prepare Taliban militants for combat and al Qaeda volunteers for terrorist attacks. He met Osama bin Laden at least once and spoke briefly with the al Qaeda leader, who thanked the American and other foreign fighters for taking part in the jihad, according to the FBI’s account of his interrogation.
In November 2001, U.S. forces found Lindh among a group of Taliban fighters whose commander had surrendered to the Northern Alliance near Mazar-i-Sharif. Hours after Lindh was interrogated, his fellow prisoners staged a revolt in which some 500 were killed, including a CIA operations officer, Johnny Michael Spann. Lindh was shot in the leg during the fighting. He was one of only 86 who survived the uprising.
Lindh’s parents only learned of his whereabouts when CNN aired an interview with him shortly after his capture.
During more than 50 days of detention, U.S. authorities sometimes had Lindh blindfolded, naked and bound to a stretcher with duct tape. Although his family had retained a defense lawyer and told U.S. authorities about it, Lindh knew nothing about his attorney for a month.
Left: 14-year-old John Walker Lindh (Photo credit: Courtesy Frank Lindh); Right: The home of Frank Lindh on Dec. 3, 2001 in San Rafael, California. (Photo credit: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/Getty Images)
Brought back to the United States, Lindh found himself facing charges of terrorism, even though there was no evidence he plotted against Americans. In the frenzied aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft described Lindh as an al Qaeda-trained terrorist who “chose to embrace fanatics.”
In the first legal case of the “war on terror,” Lindh was charged with providing material support for terrorism. The government’s case eventually collapsed over questions about Lindh’s treatment and confession while he was held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan and on U.S. naval ships.
With the defense team ready to shine an embarrassing light on Lindh’s treatment, federal prosecutors — at the urging of the Defense Department — dropped nine of the ten counts, including charges he tried to kill a CIA officer or support terrorism. Lindh ultimately pleaded guilty to violating an executive order prohibiting aid to the Taliban, and for carrying weapons in Afghanistan, and he agreed to drop any claims that he was abused by the U.S. military.
At his sentencing, Lindh, then 21, denounced Osama bin Laden, expressed regret over joining the Taliban, and renounced terrorism. “I condemn terrorism on every level — unequivocally,” he said in a prepared statement. “My beliefs about jihad are those of mainstream Muslims around the world.”
More than 15 years after he was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan, Lindh’s case remains the subject of debate and intense speculation. Is he a dangerous traitor or the victim of an angry nation lashing out after a terrorist attack?
“We’ll never know what actually happened to John Walker Lindh,” said Wells Dixon of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “John Walker Lindh, in many respects, was a victim of the time. It was the aftermath of 9/11.”
Marc Sageman, a former CIA operations officer and a terrorism expert, said Lindh’s rise to public infamy and lengthy prison term was an “overreaction” to the new threat of terrorism in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. “Of course he pled guilty to some kinds of charges. Because the country was ready to lynch him,” Sageman said.
For Sageman, Lindh was more of a foot soldier fighting for a U.S. adversary rather than a terrorist plotting attacks. “People bandy about the word terrorism when they describe him,” he added. “I don’t see him as a terrorist.”
John Walker Lindh knows he won’t walk out of prison as just another ex-convict, and will likely face a hostile American public. While in prison, he came up with the plan of possibly moving to Ireland, according to a Bureau of Prisons intelligence summary. The document, prepared by the Federal Bureau of Prisons Counter Terrorism Unit, summarizes communications of prisoners convicted of terrorism-related crimes, and includes excerpted emails in which Lindh discuss his desire to leave the United States after his release.
Lindh secured Irish citizenship in 2013, according to the intelligence summary. Sources familiar with the matter confirmed his Irish citizenship to FP, and said it was obtained thanks to his paternal grandmother, Kathleen Maguire, an Irish citizen from Donegal born in 1929.
His father, Frank Lindh, hopes that his son could build a new life in Ireland after his release. But under Irish law, even with his new citizenship, the Irish government could refuse to issue a passport on grounds that Lindh posed a threat to national security. The U.S. government also could bar him from traveling abroad for at least three years, under the terms of his “supervised release” from prison, and even after that, legal experts say.
When asked about Lindh’s case, the Irish Embassy in Washington said it “does not comment on individual cases.” U.S. authorities also declined to comment.
In his initial years in prison at Terre Haute, Indiana, John Walker Lindh was kept under what are known as “special administrative measures,” which heavily restricted his communications with the outside world. Those measures were lifted in 2009, though the Bureau of Prisons declined to say if any specific restrictions are currently applied to Lindh.
Whether by choice or government constraint, Lindh has communicated little about his life in Terre Haute, though some details can be gleaned from his lawsuits against the Bureau of Prisons. In 2013, he won the right for communal prayer, and in December 2014, Lindh joined another legal battle, this time arguing for the right to wear his pants above his ankle, in line with Muslim tenets.
The Bureau of Prisons intelligence summary obtained by FP indicates that Lindh does have email contact with his father and an advocacy group working on his behalf.
“Regarding the Ireland issue, I really don’t know what to expect from the Irish government. I know virtually nothing about them. I think the only reasonable way to present my case to them is to explain my unique circumstances that make my survival in the US practically impossible,” Lindh wrote to CAGE, a nongovernmental organization that advocates on behalf of prisoners and detainees caught up in the war on terrorism. “Essentially I am seeking asylum from one country where I am a citizen in another country where I am also a citizen. The worst they can do is to decline my request. I figure it is worth at least trying,” Lindh wrote.
In an email to his son in December 2016, Frank Lindh recounted his “hope-inducing conversation” with CAGE about emigrating. But first, CAGE required the assistance of an American defense lawyer to communicate with U.S. government officials, Frank Lindh informed his son.
There was one hitch: The renowned attorney who represented Lindh in his 2002 trial, James Brosnahan, had “dropped” his client, according to the intelligence summary. (Brosnahan did not respond to a request for comment.)
Frank urged his son “to mend fences with Jim,” referring to his former lawyer, adding that Brosnahan would likely demand that Lindh explicitly reject violence.
“We can discuss this in our next phone call, but one thing I anticipate Jim will absolutely demand is that you be willing to condemn, in all sincerity, publicly if needed, and without any reservation whatsoever, depravity of any kind, whoever commits it,” he wrote.
“You can visualize yourself what the list of depraved acts might consist of. I believe such a request should be easy for you, to fulfill as a devout Muslim and person of conscience.”
But John Walker Lindh refused. Replying to his father, he wrote: “I am not interested in renouncing my beliefs or issuing condemnations in order to please Brosnahan or anybody else.”
The Bureau of Prisons document says that “inmate Walker Lindh made pro ISIS statements to various reporters and was subsequently dropped by counsel.” It does not indicate which counsel, nor does it cite any specific statements.
CAGE has been at the center of its own controversy in recent years; proponents praise its work with detainees while critics accuse of it apologizing for terrorists. Amnesty International dropped its partnership with CAGE in 2015 and still refuses to share a public platform with the group, according to an Amnesty spokesperson. Despite the political baggage, it appears Frank Lindh is pinning his hopes on this organization.
Over the years, John Walker Lindh’s father has campaigned to win a possible commutation of his son’s sentence. In 2009, he participated in an interview with GQ in which he said, “I’m proud of my son.”
Lindh’s father has sought to portray his son as a spiritual, well-intentioned young man unjustly labeled as a terrorist. “Like Ernest Hemingway during the Spanish Civil War, John had volunteered for the army of a foreign government battling an insurgency,” he wrote in a 2011 New York Times op-ed. “His decision was rash and blindly idealistic, but not sinister or traitorous.”
Frank Lindh declined several requests for comment. A letter sent to John Walker Lindh at Terre Haute went unanswered. The Bureau of Prisons said that John Walker Lindh declined a request to comment for this article.
In October 2016, in the waning days of the Barack Obama’s presidency, the writer Paul Theroux published an op-ed in the New York Times asking that Lindh’s sentence be commuted, arguing that what Lindh did was comparable to his own youthful experience supporting rebels in Malawi in the 1960s. Theroux said that Lindh was “taking risks to help people perceived as oppressed; and like me, he did not fully understand the bigger picture, was in over his head, and was overtaken by events.”
The next month, Donald Trump, who has railed against the threat of Islamic extremism, was elected president, potentially snuffing out any chance of a commutation. It is now unclear how the government will deal with Lindh or others convicted of terrorism-related charges upon release.
It’s difficult to create a one-size-fits-all rehabilitation program for extremists because there are so few of these cases and each one is unique, said a former U.S. attorney who prosecuted numerous high-profile terrorists. “In this area of trying to rehabilitate extremists, it is really all over the map,” said the former U.S. attorney, who requested to remain anonymous. “The threshold question is what’s effective?
The National Counterterrorism Center suggested one option would be to widen government programs designed to counter violent extremism to include probation and parole officers, and to track convicted terrorists upon release. There’s a precedent with Megan’s Law, the document notes, which requires sex offenders to register their home address and check in frequently with law enforcement.
Lindh, for his part, does not appear to be optimistic. He tells his father in a December 2016 email quoted in the intelligence summary that he likely will have to “abandon this project” to move to Ireland. He says an earlier request to be released to Puerto Rico had not been answered, and that he anticipates having to endure threats and hostility on the U.S. mainland.
“I will just have to stay here for a while and deal with the lynch mobs as best as I can,” he writes. “It is a daunting predicament that I’m in, but many people around the world are in even more difficult situations and find ways to manage, so I am not worried.”
Journalists and activists in Mexico accused the government of spying on them with the powerful surveillance software Pegasus developed by the NSO Group.
Journalists and activists in Mexico accused the government of spying on them with a powerful surveillance software. According to the journalists, the authorities used an Israeli spyware to hack their mobile devices. The surveillance software is the questionable Pegasus that is developed by the Israeli surveillance NSO Group and sold exclusively to the governments and law enforcement agencies.
NSO Group is owned by US private equity firm Francisco Partners Management. it made the headlines after the investigation conducted by The New York Times.
People familiar with the NSO Group confirmed that the company has an internal ethics committee that monitors the sales and potential customers verifying that the software will not be abused to violate human rights.
Officially the sale of surveillance software is limited to authorized governments to support investigation of agencies on criminal organizations and terrorist groups.
Unfortunately, its software is known to have been abused to spy on journalists and human rights activists.
“There’s no check on this,” said Bill Marczak, a senior fellow at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. “Once NSO’s systems are sold, governments can essentially use them however they want. NSO can say they’re trying to make the world a safer place, but they are also making the world a more surveilled place.”
The discovery is the result of an investigation conducted by Mexican NGOs and the CitizenLab organization.
R3D, SocialTic, Article 19 and CitizenLab published a report that details the surveillance illegally operated by the Mexican government through the spyware.
Authorities have been sending malicious links to individuals’ phones, in order to trick victims into opening the messages they were specifically crafted and in some cases, the attack involved also family members if the victims were not compromised.
“The targets received SMS messages that included links to NSO exploits paired with troubling personal and sexual taunts, messages impersonating official communications by the Embassy of the United States in Mexico, fake AMBER Alerts, warnings of kidnappings, and other threats.” states the report. “The operation also included more mundane tactics, such as messages sending fake bills for phone services and sex-lines. Some targets only received a handful of texts, while others were barraged with dozens of messages over more than one and a half years. A majority of the infection attempts, however, took place during two periods: August 2015 and April-July 2016″.
The Pegasus spyware leverages zero-day exploits to compromise both iOS and Android devices.
The government targeted individuals that exposed evidence on government corruption and activists who revealed human rights violations by the Mexican Government.
The researchers observed at least two periods of intense targeting:
Period 1 (August 2015) when the Mexican President was officially exonerated for his role in the “Casa Blanca” scandal on which Carmen Aristegui, a well-known reporter, had first reported, and Carlos Loret de Mola was questioning the government’s role in extrajudicial killings. Aristegui revealed that President Enrique Pena Nieto’s wife had bought a $7 million Mexico City mansion from a government contractor.
Period 2 (April- July 2016) when revelations of government involvement in human rights abuses and extra-judicial killings were made public.
According to the New York Times report, at least three Mexican federal agencies have purchased some $80 million of spyware from NSO Group since 2011.
Companies like the NSO Group operate in the dark, in a sort of “legal gray area,” despite the Israeli government exercises strict control of the export of such kind of software, surveillance applications could be abused by threat actors and authoritarian regimes worldwide.
Let me close with Key Findings of the report
Over 76 messages with links to NSO Group’s exploit framework were sent to Mexican journalists, lawyers, and a minor child (NSO Group is a self-described “cyber warfare” company that sells government-exclusive spyware).
The targets were working on a range of issues that include investigations of corruption by the Mexican President, and the participation of Mexico’s Federal authorities in human rights abuses.
Some of the messages impersonated the Embassy of the United States of America to Mexico, others masqueraded as emergency AMBER Alerts about abducted children.
At least one target, the minor child of a target, was sent infection attempts, including a communication impersonating the United States Government, while physically located in the United States.
***
Then comes former National Security Council advisor for President Trump Michael Flynn.
He earned nearly $1.5 million last year as a consultant, adviser, board member, or speaker for more than three dozen companies and individuals, according to financial disclosure forms released earlierthis year.
Two of those entities are directly linked to NSO Group, a secretive Israeli cyberweapons dealer founded by Omri Lavie and Shalev Hulio, who are rumored to have served in Unit 8200, the Israeli equivalent of the National Security Agency.
Flynn received $40,280 last year as an advisory board member for OSY Technologies, an NSO Group offshoot based in Luxembourg, a favorite tax haven for major corporations. OSY Technologies is part of a corporate structure that runs from Israel, where NSO Group is located, through Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S.
Flynn also worked as a consultant last year for Francisco Partners, a U.S.-based private equity firm that owns NSO Group, but he did not disclose how much he was paid. At least two Francisco Partners executives have sat on OSY’s board.
Flynn’s financial disclosure forms do not specify the work he did for companies linked to NSO Group, and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. Former colleagues at Flynn’s consulting firm declined to discuss Flynn’s work with NSO Group. Executives at Francisco Partners who also sit on the OSY Technologies board did not respond to emails. Lavie, the NSO Group co-founder, told HuffPost he is “not interested in speaking to the press” and referred questions to a spokesman, who did not respond to queries.
Many government and military officials have moved through the revolving door between government agencies and private cybersecurity companies. The major players in the cybersecurity contracting world ― SAIC, Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI Federal and KeyW Corporation ― all have former top government officials in leadership roles or on their boards, or have former top executives working in government.
But it’s less common for former U.S. intelligence officials to work with foreign cybersecurity outfits. “There is a lot of opportunity in the U.S. to do this kind of work,” said Ben Johnson, a former NSA employee and the co-founder of Obsidian Security. “It’s a little bit unexpected going overseas, especially when you combine that with the fact that they’re doing things that might end up in hands of enemies of the U.S. government. It does seem questionable.”
What is clear is that during the time Flynn was working for NSO’s Luxembourg affiliate, one of the company’s main products — a spy software sold exclusively to governments and marketed as a tool for law enforcement officials to monitor suspected criminals and terrorists — was being used to surveil political dissidents, reporters, activists, and government officials. The software, called Pegasus, allowed users to remotely break into a target’s cellular phone if the target responded to a text message.
Last year, several people targeted by the spyware contacted Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity research team based out of the University of Toronto. With the help of experts at the computer security firm Lookout, Citizen Lab researchers were able to trace the spyware hidden in the texts back to NSO Group spyware. After Citizen Lab publicized its findings, Apple introduced patches to fix the vulnerability. It is not known how many activists in other countries were targeted and failed to report it to experts.
NSO Group told Forbes in a statement last year that it complies with strict export control laws and only sells to authorized government agencies. “The company does NOT operate any of its systems; it is strictly a technology company,” NSO Group told Forbes.
But once a sale is complete, foreign governments are free to do what they like with the technology. Read more here.
Iran launched 6 missiles, striking targets in Syria. Revolutionary Guards say in retaliation for last week’s Tehran terror attacks.
Using missiles is a major escalation of Iran’s role in the Syrian conflict. Until now it provided military advisors, volunteers, money. The missiles were launched from western Iran, flew over Iraq striking targets in Deir ez Zor, in eastern Syria. Iranian official Amirabdollahian says attack was “soft revenge” for twin terror attacks in Tehran last week. 800km away. Israeli defense systems followed the missiles and deemed the operation largely a failure due to some missiles failing and others missing targets.
Meanwhile there is some significant activity occurring at a North Korean nuclear test site. Intelligence officials in the United States and in the region are watching and analyzing the activities including using all high tech systems including spy satellites to determine a probable action by North Korea. There have been recent upgrades and currently several tunnels have seen additional people and vehicle movements.
(CNSNews.com)– Iran has intensified its development of ballistic missiles in recent years, particularly since the conclusion of the nuclear deal, and is doing so with significant collaboration with fellow pariah state North Korea, according to the exiled opposition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
The regime has established at least 42 facilities for the production, testing and launching of ballistic missiles, the NCRI reported on Tuesday, revealing for the first time information on 12 previously-unknown sites.
The report was released by Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the NCRI’s Washington office, at a briefing in Washington.
The revelations come at a critical time, days after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for the first time fired ballistic missiles from Iranian territory at targets in Syria – ostensibly at ISIS terrorist positions. It’s believed to be the first time Iran has fired missiles at targets beyond its borders since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
Jafarzadeh said the missiles fired at targets in Syria were launched from an underground IRGC facility called Panj Pelleh, an older site in Kermanshah province in western Iran which he said had been the launchpad for missiles fired at targets in Iraq during the Saddam era.
The new NCRI report also comes shortly after the U.S. Senate passed, by a 98-2 vote, sanctions legislation targeting both Iran’s ballistic missile programs and the IRGC. The Countering Iran’s Destabilizing Activities Act, which Jafarzadeh praised as a good step, has been sent to the House.
The information released Tuesday, based on the opposition group’s sources inside the regime and IRGC, points to Iran having established missile facilities based on North Korean models, with the help of visiting North Korean experts.
“These North Korean experts who were sent to Iran, trained the main IRGC missile experts in IRGC garrisons, including the Almehdi Garrison situated southwest of Tehran,” the report says.
The IRGC has built a special residence in Tehran for the North Korean experts, who have been involved in helping develop warhead and guidance systems for Iranian missiles.
IRGC Aerospace Force personnel regularly visit North Korea to exchange knowledge, the report says.
Defying international condemnation, North Korea’s nuclear-armed regime has carried out a series of missile launches and Kim Jong-un has threatened to soon test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
The NCRI report includes satellite imagery and information on the locations of many of 42 identified IRGC-controlled missile-related facilities across Iran – including 12 which the group says have been hitherto-unknown.
The sites include missile manufacturing plants, launching pads, training facilities, missile storage and maintenance units. Some are located or partly located underground, or in mountainous areas.
None of the sites are in eastern Iran. Most are in the central region, or in Iran’s western and southern provinces. The locations of missile launch sites have evidently been selected taking into account potential targets in the Gulf or westward towards Israel and Europe.
“The sites that are involved with deployment, launching operations and testing are on the western side or on the southern border, here, with a clear objective of threatening the neighbors,” Jafarzadeh noted, pointing at the map, observing that Europe and the West lie in that direction too.
“Western countries as well as countries in the region, those are the countries that they threaten, and have been threatening,” he said.
Reaction to missile tests has been ‘mild’
Jafarzadeh said the objective of the ballistic missile program is two-pronged – to deploy shorter-range missiles to threaten their neighbors in the region, and to develop the capability of putting a nuclear warhead on a longer-range missile.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal negotiated between Iran and six powers, did not touch on the missile program – at Tehran’s insistence – but the Obama administration asserted that by placing verifiable restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program it shut off all paths to developing a nuclear weapon.
In response to a question, Jafarzadeh said the NCRI does not link the expanding missile work directly to the JCPOA, but “when you lose leverage you want to make up for it somewhere else,” he said of the regime. “There is more emphasis on their missile program now than there was a few years ago.”
He pointed out that the JCPOA left Iran with a lot of “room to maneuver” when it comes to ballistic missile activity, and that international reaction to its missile tests has been “mild, to say the least.”
Of the facilities discussed on Tuesday, one extensive complex (Semnan), in a mountainous area south-east of Tehran, is actively associated with the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (Persian acronym SPND), which is believed to be a body tasked with the development of a nuclear weapons capability.
SPND’s existence was first unveiled by the NCRI in 2011, and in August 2014 the U.S. Treasury Department added the organization to its “specially designated nationals” list, making it subject to U.S. sanctions.
“The Iranian regime has remained in power in Iran by relying on two pillars: internal
repression and external export of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism,” the report states, lumping the ballistic weapons program into the latter “pillar.”
“As the regime becomes more isolated domestically and its grip on Iranian society weakens,
it resorts more frantically to the second pillar of its bid to keep power,” it says.
The report noted that Iran re-asserted its intention to continue advancing its missile program after the U.S.-Arab-Islamic summit in Riyadh last month. The summit saw the U.S. and most of the world’s Sunni Muslim states take a hard line on Iran.
The NCRI called for effective and comprehensive sanctions targeting the ballistic missile program; the designation of the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization; and for IRGC and proxy militias to be evicted from countries in the region, especially Syria and Iraq.
The NCRI and affiliated People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran (MEK) has in the past provided valuable intelligence to the West, including pivotal information in 2002 that exposed nuclear activities Tehran had hidden from the international community for two decades.
The NCRI/MEK was designated a foreign terrorist organization under U.S. law until 2012, and is reviled by the clerical regime in Tehran, not least because it supported Saddam Hussein in his bloody eight year-long war against Iran in the 1980s.
It enjoys strong support from some current and former policymakers from both parties in Washington, as evidenced by the list of confirmed speakers at the NCRI’s annual convention, scheduled for July 1 in Paris.
Among them are former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Sen. Joe Lieberman, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former Marine Corps commander Gen. (Ret.) James Conway.
President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner meets with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu hoping for a breakthrough on peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. After this session, Kushner goes to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas. This is the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Mideast war where Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
One of the big issues with the Palestinians is the construction of ‘settlements’ which this site takes extreme exception to that term. The other term used by the Palestinians which should never be accepted is ‘occupation’.
So, as the title of the article includes the ‘Allen Plan’….exactly what is that?
It refers to General Allen and 1967 lines, proposed during Obama’s term as president. Israel is always prepared for these types of meetings and had already formally rejected any re-proposal for The Allen Plan.
Does this look like Israel can defend itself reverting to 1967 lines? Further, that proposal demands Israel to relinquish the most sacred historical territory.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Trump White House is currently reexamining the Allen Plan, an Obama-era proposal that calls for a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders with no IDF presence whatsoever. This plan is dangerous. If it is implemented, Israel will have to rely on foreign forces for its security, a situation that has not worked in the past. More than that, it is antithetical to the Israeli ethos of self-defense and self-preservation in the Jewish homeland.
Col. Kris Bauman’s appointment as Israel adviser to the US National Security Council is a noteworthy event. He assisted Gen. John Allen in formulating recommendations for security arrangements for Israel in the context of a permanent settlement, to which then-Secretary of State John Kerry aspired. This set of recommendations came to be known as the Allen Plan.
Gen. Allen’s vision was detailed in a comprehensive document prepared at a US research institute by two Israelis and two Americans: Gen. (res.) Gadi Shamni and Nimrod Novik, along with Ilan Goldenberg and Col. Kris Bauman.
The plan envisages a Palestinian state with full sovereignty inside the 1967 borders, its capital in east Jerusalem, with minor modifications for settlement blocs. The plan is based on complete acceptance of the Palestinian demand for full sovereignty. This means no IDF soldiers anywhere in their state, which would extend from the Jordan River to the 1967 line.
In lieu of Israel’s demands regarding defensible borders, which include an Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley to ensure the Palestinian state’s demilitarization, the plan proposes a varied and complex security solution. One element would be a US military force that would operate in the Jordan Valley. As the document’s Executive Summary states,
The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that well-thought-through security measures in the context of the two-state solution can provide Israelis and Palestinians with a degree of security equal or greater to that provided today by Israel’s deployment into the West Bank…
The basic problem is the notion that Israel will rely for its security on foreign forces. Not only is it difficult to ensure that such forces would fulfill their duty successfully, but it is uncertain whether or not they would stay in place – particularly after they have suffered casualties like those they have suffered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past decade.
Recall that during the waiting period before the Six-Day War, the security guarantee given by President Eisenhower to Ben-Gurion after the 1956 Sinai Campaign evaporated. When he demanded that Israel withdraw unconditionally from the Sinai Peninsula, Eisenhower promised that if the Straits of Tiran were ever again closed to Israeli shipping, the US would intervene. Yet when Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban came to Washington in May 1967, President Johnson candidly explained to him that Eisenhower’s promise – however estimable – was no longer a practical proposition. With his army bogged down in Vietnam, Johnson apparently could not have gained the nation’s or Congress’s support for an intervention in the Straits of Tiran even if he had wanted to.
The main concern is that the existence of the Greater Tel Aviv area – indeed, the daily routine of the State of Israel – will come to be dependent on the goodwill of foreign forces. That is the heart of the matter. Do we want Israel to be no more than a haven for persecuted Jews where they can subsist under foreign protection? Or do we want Israel to be a place of freedom, a homeland, in which we alone are responsible for our own security and sovereignty?
The authors of the Allen document emphasize that Israel’s security would continue to be based on the IDF’s power. But it is hard to imagine under what circumstances Israel would attain the international legitimacy to pursue an offensive deep within the Palestinian state, should the need arise. Regarding the conditions that could justify an IDF operation in Palestinian territory, the document says:
The Palestinians will never agree to an Israeli right of re-entry, but there could be a side agreement between Israel and the United States on the conditions under which the United States would support unilateral Israeli action. Ultimately, Israel is a sovereign state that enjoys the right of self-defense. Thus, it can unilaterally violate the sovereignty of another state, but with the attendant risks that would have to be weighed by Israeli leadership.
Should the IDF evacuate the territories completely, as envisaged by this plan, the Palestinians would certainly employ their carefully honed tactical and strategic talent for nonaccountability and ambiguity. They would take care to ensure that the Palestinian state cannot be defined as a hostile entity against which a “just war” can be declared. Whether deliberately or not, they would be able to let “rogue,” non-state forces do their work for them, and avoid taking responsibility. What then?
There is also good reason to doubt whether conditions for demilitarization can be maintained. In an era of global arms proliferation, and of forms of smuggling that elude surveillance (as in the flow of weapons to Hamas in Gaza and to Hezbollah in Lebanon), along with increasingly sophisticated local arms manufacture, there is no way to guarantee real demilitarization without a constant effort to keep the territory fully isolated and to operate within it.
We must also take into account the possibility that war could erupt in more than one arena at at a time. If war were to break out with the state of Palestine in the West Bank, it could happen simultaneously in Lebanon, Gaza, and so on. The IDF would be unable to concentrate its efforts in the West Bank arena – which, because of its geographic proximity to Israel’s population centers, could inflict a heavy blow. Under the new conditions of war, which are fundamentally different from those that prevailed in June 1967, reconquering the territory would be incomparably more difficult.
And what of the document’s validity under changing conditions? The security solution the document proposes must be weighed in terms of the time dimension, and in circumstantial contexts that are subject to change. If a solution is responsible and workable, what time span is envisaged? Who knows under what evolving circumstances the solution will be required to provide protection to a state of Israel that has been trimmed down to the coastal plain? Is there not also a need for responsible risk management regarding contingencies that are still beyond the horizon?
We must ask to what extent we ourselves, with the excessive emphasis we have placed on security concerns in recent decades as a key criterion by which to assess any prospective solution, have laid the groundwork for Gen. Allen’s plan. His security document is, after all, intended expressly to offer a technical solution to all the familiar security issues. It would leave the Israeli leadership without the faintest possibility of invoking a security pretext to ward off the “peace solution.”
In describing Kerry’s efforts, Thomas Friedman asserted (TheNew York Times, February 17, 2013) that in light of Gen. Allen’s solution for Israel’s security concerns, the Israeli government had reached a juncture where it would have to choose between peace and ideology.
Perhaps we have forgotten that protecting the national existence, in terms of how the IDF defines national security, does not pertain solely to ensuring the physical existence of the citizens of the country but also to safeguarding national interests. A national interest – such as the sovereignty of the people of Israel in their capital, Jerusalem – can go far beyond the technical contents of a plan for security arrangements, however worthy. Security is only a means, not an end in itself.
From a practical, professional standpoint, Gen. Allen’s plan leaves much to be desired. But on a deeper level, it completely ignores the possibility that the people of Israel, in renewing their life in their homeland, are motivated by something much greater than the need for a technical solution to security concerns.
Clarion
TheBlaze
Geek.com
