Saudi Executes 47, Including Iranian Cleric

Posted on January 2, 2016January 2, 2016 by Denise Simon

And so it begins Iran versus Saudi Arabia, a matter to be watched closely.

Earlier today: A flight left Tehran heading to possibly Riyadh to evacuate Iranians or collect those that Saudi Arabia is expelling.

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Fury in Iran and Iraq as Saudis execute top Shiite cleric

Tehran warns Riyadh will ‘pay high price’ for killing Nimr al-Nimr, accused of role in al-Qaeda attacks; 46 others also put to death

Saudi Arabia on Saturday executed a prominent Shiite cleric behind anti-government protests along with 46 other men, drawing angry condemnation from Iran and Iraq.

A list published by the official Saudi Press Agency included Sunni Muslims convicted of involvement in al-Qaeda attacks that killed Saudi and foreigners in the kingdom in 2003 and 2004.

One of those executed was Fares al-Shuwail, described by Saudi media as al-Qaeda’s top religious leader in the kingdom. He was arrested in 2004.

Mohammed al-Nimr, the father of Ali al-Nimr, a Saudi youth facing execution for taking part in pro-reform protests speaks to AFP in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on September 23, 2015. (STR/AFP)

Notably absent from the list, however, was Nimr’s nephew, Ali al-Nimr, whose arrest at the age of 17 and alleged torture during detention sparked condemnation from rights watchdogs and the United States. More here from TimesofIsrael.

WashingtonInst.: Iran’s history of targeting Saudi Arabia: On April 27, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, lashed out at Saudi Arabia and its recent military intervention in Yemen, accusing the “treacherous Saudis” of “following in Israel’s footsteps” by “shamelessly and disgracefully bombing and mass killing” the Yemeni people. The increased Saudi aggression in the region, he contended, demands a tougher response from Tehran. Similarly, Hezbollah deputy secretary-general Naim Qassem warned in an April 13 interview with the Associated Press that the kingdom will “incur very serious losses” and “pay a heavy price” as a result of its Yemen campaign. Given historical precedent — not to mention numerous other angry statements from Tehran of late (see PolicyWatch 2423, “Yemen’s War Heats Up Iran’s Anti-Saudi Rhetoric”) — Riyadh should take such threats at face value.

TRACK RECORD OF TARGETING SAUDI INTERESTS

Iran has a long history of plotting attacks against its Saudi rivals in response to transgressions real and perceived. These plots, carried out by Iranian agents and Hezbollah proxies, have targeted Saudi interests in the Middle East and elsewhere. One of the most recent — traced back to IRGC Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani and other senior Iranian decisionmakers — was the failed October 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington by bombing a restaurant he frequented. Yet Tehran’s earliest anti-Saudi schemes stretch back nearly to the regime’s founding.

WashingtonInst.: Hassan Rouhani’s victory in Iran’s presidential election has been widely heralded as a protest vote against the hardliners and a window of opportunity for diplomatic breakthrough with Western powers. But such assumptions beg the question: just how much moderation should be expected from a “moderate” Iranian president, particularly with regard to state sponsorship of terrorism? Past precedent suggests that expectations should be tempered.

RAFSANJANI’S TERRORISM REPORT CARD

Rouhani is not the first Iranian “moderate” to win the presidency. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, elected in 1989, was frequently described as a moderate as well. According to U.S. intelligence, however, he oversaw a long string of terrorist plots during his eight years in office.

The CIA linked Rafsanjani to terrorist plots as early as 1985, when he was serving as speaker of parliament. In a February 15, 1985, memo, the agency assessed that “Iranian-sponsored terrorism is the greatest threat to US personnel and facilities in the Middle East…Iranian-backed attacks increased by 30 percent in 1984, and the numbers killed in Iranian-sponsored attacks outpace fatalities in strikes by all other terrorist sponsors. Senior Iranian leaders such as Ayatollah Montazeri,…Prime Minister [Mir Hossein Mousavi], and Consultative Assembly speaker Rafsanjani are implicated in Iranian terrorism.”

In September of 2015: WashingtonInst.: Two weeks ago, according to several media reports, Ahmed al-Mughassil, the military chief of Saudi Hezbollah (Hezbollah al-Hijaz) and the principal architect of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, was apprehended in Beirut — where it was believed he lived under Lebanese Hezbollah protection — and was transferred to the custody of Saudi Arabia. A physically small man, standing at five feet four inches and weighing 145 pounds, Mughassil is accused of orchestrating and then personally executing one of the most spectacular terrorist attacks carried out by Iran and its proxies against the United States.

The circumstances of Mughassil’s capture are still unknown, but the timing raises multiple questions. How did a man who evaded capture for almost 20 years suddenly get caught? And what does it mean that the arrest comes against the background of the Iran nuclear deal and in the context of rising tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia and between their respective allies in Lebanon?

Officials in Beirut, Riyadh, and Washington have yet to confirm Mughassil’s capture, but it is no secret that both Saudi and American investigators have been keen to apprehend him for years. Mughassil was indicted in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for the bombing, and the U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program offers $5 million for information leading to his capture. More reading here from Matthew Levitt, at Washington Institute.

How Saudi fought al Qaida:

A documentary series aired on the Al Arabiya News Channel reveals never-seen-before footage of al-Qaeda’s operations in Saudi Arabia and the subsequent raids and crackdowns on the group by authorities.

In 2003 the then security chief Prince Mohammed bin Nayef launched a counter attack that would see a three-year security crackdown on the group, with thousands of its members thrown into prison.

More than ten years on, the Al Arabiya News Channel is airing TV series on the attacks, promising an inside look into al-Qaeda, after hours of footage from cameras and mobile phones were recovered and released by Saudi security officials.

The documentary series, split into three episodes, was produced for the Al Arabiya News Channel by OR Media, a London-based independent production company. The three videos listed below will play in your video player.

http://saic.alarabiya.net/program/15/12/04/20151204-terrorinksa-002.mp4 Part 1
http://saic.alarabiya.net/program/15/12/05/20151205-terrorinksa-001.mp4 Part 2
http://saic.alarabiya.net/program/15/12/04/20151204-terrorinksa-003.mp4 Part 3

Drug Traffickers Hacking Surveillance Drones

Posted on January 2, 2016January 2, 2016 by Denise Simon

DefenseOne; The drug cartels aren’t just buying golden Uzis anymore. As the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, or CBP, has upped its drone patrols along America’s Mexican border, narcotics traffickers have responded with expensive technology of their own.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and local law enforcement confirmed that Drug Traffickers are hacking surveillance drones on the border.

Small drones are another powerful tool used by the US Department of Homeland Security to monitor its borders, but drug traffickers already adopting countermeasures. In order to avoid surveillance, drug traffickers are hacking US surveillance drones used to patrol the border.

According to Timothy Bennett, a Department of Homeland Security program manager, drug traffickers are using technology to spoof and jam the US surveillance drones.

“The bad guys on the border have lots of money. And what they are putting money into is spoofing and jamming of GPSs, so we are doing funding to look at small UAS that we can counter this,” Bennett said during a panel at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

The principle behind the GPS spoofing attack is that sending to control system of the drone fake geographic coordinates it is possible to deceive the onboard system hijacking the vehicle in a different place for which it is commanded. Non-military GPS signals are not encrypted, this makes drones vulnerable to this kind of attacks.

Using jamming techniques against drones, it is possible to interrupt the GPS receiving transmitted to the UAVs. In this scenario the aircraft could potentially lose the capability to monitor its route and to calculate its location, altitude, and the direction in which it is traveling.

Both attack techniques are adopted by drug traffickers that belong to well-funded organizations that has access to modern advanced hacking technology.

DHS hasn’t provided further details on the attacks, but Bennett confirmed that the attacks are interfering with the operations conduced by members of the law enforcement.

“You’re out there looking, trying to find out this path [they’re] going through with drugs, and we can’t get good coordinate systems on it because we’re getting spoofed. That screws up the whole thing. We got to fix that problem,” Bennett told Defense One.

Terror threats, the New Normal

Posted on January 2, 2016January 2, 2016 by Denise Simon

When the Washington Post publishes an item explaining that Barack Obama has left his terror strategy and messaging to his deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, America is in trouble. Obama think he has a strategy and that all of us across the country ‘just don’t get it’.

Obama thinks his Syria strategy is right — and folks just don’t get it

Throughout the nine-day trip, which had begun less than 24 hours after the terrorist attacks in Paris, they had all heard critics at home and abroad charge that he had no coherent game plan, Obama said. There had even been suggestions that France, with tough talk and a series of retaliatory airstrikes, was now leading the anti-terrorism fight.

Aides agreed that the message they had heard on the road was “jarring,” said a senior administration official who was on the flight.

But while many outside the administration found the strategy itself lacking, Obama felt what they really needed was to do a better job of explaining it. He ordered what the official called an “uptick in our communications tempo.” More here.

Terror threats are the new worldwide normal standard. The question is when will leaders take forceful action both militarily and begin to profile, collaborate and train? Let us not forget, just this past May, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced expedited travel ‘preclearance’ programs with at least 9 foreign countries.

Terror threats will be the new normal for Europe, experts say

Guardian: Terrorism experts believe Europe faces a “new normal” of more threats and disruption to major events as security fears remain high in the months ahead.

Following the attacks in Paris, analysts in the UK and Europe say security services are coming to terms with the fact that Islamic State appears to have the intention and capability to hit European targets in professionally planned and executed attacks.

Munich was partially evacuated following a terror threat on New Year’s Eve, and events in other European cities were either cancelled or scaled down because of security concerns.

Margaret Gilmore, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said more disruption was likely.

“For the last 15 years there have been terrorist organisations who have wanted to carry out attacks in crowded places, so in that sense this is nothing new. And since the attack in 2008 in Mumbai we have been aware of the possibility of the marauding multi-site gun attacks.

“But what is new now is that Isis has proved they are capable, after Paris, of carrying out terrible attacks beyond its traditional arena of the Middle East.”

She said the attack on the French capital had underlined how quickly the group had grown. She said security services in each country would still have to judge each threat on its merits, but the knowledge that Isis has the capability to carry out large-scale attacks would mean more security – and potentially more cancellations of high-profile events.

“It is clear from what we saw in Paris that they are capable of controlling the process – able to train, plan and execute these attacks – and that is something that the security services across Europe will be taking very seriously indeed.”

Prof Rik Coolsaet, a terrorism expert at Ghent University in Belgium, said that although there was nothing new in terrorist groups wanting to attack high-profile public gatherings such as New Year’s Eve, Isis’s appeal meant Europe was entering a new era.

He said the group had become the “object of all kinds of fantasies for all kinds of individuals, from thrill-seekers to the mentally unstable”, who wanted to be part of the Isis, and that made the security services’ job much harder.

“In the months ahead we are going to be facing a new normal,” Coolsaet said. “One day the hype surrounding Isis will have vanished, but until that happens I fear there will be more threats, more disruption, more houses raided and more arrests as countries come to terms with the scale of this group and its intentions … It is something we will have to get used to.”

He also warned there was a danger of people conflating Europe’s refugee crisis with the growing terror threat.

“What I do fear is the combination of these two things into something near hysteria. We must not confuse these two separate issues and we must be wary of any politicians who try and do that for their own ends, to the detriment of the very fabric of our society.”

Entire Police Dept. Busted for Laundering Drug Money

Posted on January 2, 2016January 2, 2016 by Denise Simon

Entire Florida police department busted for laundering millions for international drug cartels

RawStory: The village of Bal Harbour, population 2,513, may have a tiny footprint on the northern tip of Miami Beach, but its police department had grand aspirations of going after international drug traffickers, and making a few million dollars while they were at it.

The Bal Harbour PD and the Glades County Sheriff’s Office set up a giant money laundering scheme with the purported goal of busting drug cartels and stemming the surge of drug dealing going on in the area. But it all fell apart when federal investigators and the Miami-Herald found strange things going on.

The two-year operation, which took in more than $55 million from criminal groups, resulted in zero arrests but netted $2.4 million for the police posing as money launderers. Members of the 12-person task force traveled far and wide to carry out their deals, from Los Angeles to New York to Puerto Rico.

Along the way, the small-town cops got a taste of luxury as they used the money for first-class flights, luxury hotels, Mac computers and submachine guns. Meanwhile, the Bal Harbour PD and Glades County Sheriffs were buying all sorts of fancy new equipment.

Besides these “official” uses of the money, confidential records obtained by the Miami-Herald show that officers withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars with no record of where the money went.

“They were like bank robbers with badges,” said Dennis Fitzgerald, an attorney and former Drug Enforcement Administration agent who taught undercover tactics for the U.S. State Department. “It had no law enforcement objective. The objective was to make money.”

The operation, which was not fully reported to federal authorities, funneled millions of dollars to overseas criminals and interfered with investigations being carried out on known money launderers.

The latest revelations show that at least 20 people in Venezuela were sent drug money from the Florida cops, including William Amaro Sanchez, the foreign minister under Hugo Chavez and now special assistant to President Nicolas Maduro.

They wired a total of $211,000 to Sanchez, even while the U.S. government was investigating Venezuelan government leaders involved in the drug trade. Instead of reporting their knowledge of Sanchez to federal agencies, the cops went on laundering money, taking their cut, and all the while aiding Sanchez in his machinations, which likely included political corruption.

Four other Venezuelan criminals and smugglers were major recipients of the millions being wired from the Bal Harbour PD and Glades County Sheriff’s Office, including a figure tied to one of the largest drug cartels in the hemisphere.

These actions violated strict federal bans on sending illegal money overseas, and the Florida cops never investigated the backgrounds of the people receiving their laundered drug money.

“I can’t think of a more podunk town than Bal Harbour — not in a bad way. But in the sense that these cops would have otherwise been stopping traffic or shooting radar,” said Ruben Oliva, who has represented alleged narco-traffickers since the 1980s. “In reality they were being launderers. The minute they started doing busts, it would have been over.

“This is like a movie. You’ve got these guys and they’re flying all over. They’re saying, ‘Hey, I’m in the big leagues.’ I’ve seen every kind of law enforcement money-laundering investigations. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s really one for the ages.”

After the Department of Justice busted the Bal Harbour PD for misspending seized money to pay police salaries, the Miami-Herald began deeper investigations and found a much bigger pool of money that was never noticed by the feds. Soon after that, the ambitious sting operation—which was really just a money-making scheme—began to fall apart.

“The Miami Herald gained unprecedented access to the confidential records of the undercover investigation, reviewing thousands of records including cash pickup reports, emails, DEA reports, bank statements and wire transfers for millions of dollars. The inquiry found:

▪ Police routinely withdrew cash — thousands at a time — totaling $1.3 million from undercover bank accounts, but to this day there are no records to show where the money was spent. “In all my years of law enforcement, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Chief Overton said.

▪ Bal Harbour officials say they cannot find receipts for hundreds of thousands in expenses, including five-star hotel bookings, dinners that ran up to $1,000 and scores of purchases like laptops, iPads, electronic money counters, flower deliveries, and even iTunes downloads.

▪ While posing as launderers, police delivered nearly $20 million to storefront businesses in Miami-Dade to launder the money for drug groups — gathering critical evidence against the business owners — yet took no action against them. Years later, the businesses are still open, some still suspected by federal agents of laundering for the cartels.”

Cash deposits to SunTrust Bank totaling $28 million do not appear anywhere in police records. It’s no coincidence that the operation was launched “at a time law enforcement agencies across Florida were looking to boost their budgets during one of the state’s toughest economic periods.”

“We had to find a revenue stream,” said Duane Pottorff, chief of law enforcement for Glades. “It allowed us to have resources we wouldn’t normally have.”

Federal authorities and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement have launched probes into the Bal Harbour police, which will surely confirm the rampant abuses of power. However, the fact that these types of shady operations, carried out with the help of agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, can occur at all is even more troubling.

Government creates a black market of drugs and blood money through prohibition, then under the War on Drugs it grants itself the power to break the law and get involved in money laundering operations. While the professed goal is to “sting” the bad guys, government rakes in millions upon millions of dollars to further bolster its prohibition and war on drugs.

Iran to Increase Power of Destructive Missiles

Posted on January 2, 2016January 2, 2016 by Denise Simon

For additional reference on Iran’s compliance and sanction money, the International Monetary Fund releases are here.

TEHRAN (FNA)- The destruction power and precision of Iran’s missiles will increase, Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said Saturday following the recent presidential decree that required the defense ministry to speed up development of Iran’s missile capability.

“Following o the president’s letter, we held numerous meetings with the executive officials, commanders and officials in the missile sector and decided work out appropriate plans as soon as possible to enhance the defensive power and capability as well as the effective deterrence power of our missiles contrary to the will of the hegemonic system which seeks to restrict the Islamic Republic militarily,” Dehqan told reporters in Tehran on Saturday.

He also underscored the country’s serious intention to further develop its missile power.

Stressing that the defense ministry seeks to optimize its ballistic missiles in different aspect, Dehqan said, “Increasing the precision-striking, destructive and blast power of our missiles… are among the defense ministry’s plans in the missile field.”

In his letter on Thursday, President Rouhani noted the United States’

“hostile policies and illegal and illegitimate meddling against Iran’s right to develop its defensive power”, and ordered the defense minister to accelerate production of various types of missiles needed by the Iranian Armed Forces more powerfully.

“As the United States seems to plan to include the names of new individuals and firms in its previous list of cruel sanctions in line with its hostile policies and illegitimate and illegal meddling in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s right to reinvigorate its defense power, the program for the production of the Armed Forces’ needed missiles is required to continue more speedily and seriously,” President Rouhani’s written order to the Defense Minister read.

President Rouhani’s decree came in reaction to the US Treasury Department’s announcement that it is preparing sanctions on two Iran-linked networks helping develop the missile program.

The presidential decree also required the defense ministry to think of new missile production programs at a much wider scale in case Washington continues its sanctions policy against Iran’s defense industries.

“In case such wrong and interventionist measures are repeated by the United States, the Defense Ministry will be duty-bound to make use of all possibilities to bring up new planning to develop the country’s missile capability,” it stressed.

The president further described Iran’s defense capabilities as a contributor to regional stability and security, and not a threat to any other state or party. Rather it is a means to “safeguard the country’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity and to combat the evil phenomenon of terrorism and extremism in line with common regional and global interests”.

President Rouhani further reminded that Tehran has time and again underlined all throughout the nuclear negotiations with the six world powers – that ended up in the nuclear deal in Vienna in July – that it would “never negotiate with anyone about its defense power, including the missile program, and would never accept any restriction in this field, emphasizing its entitlement to the legitimate right of defense”.

“It is crystal-clear that Iran’s missile program is not at all a part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – also known as the nuclear deal – and this is acknowledged by the US officials as well,” said the decree, and added, “As repeatedly stated, nuclear weapons have no room in Iran’s defense doctrine, and therefore, the development and production of Iran’s ballistic missiles which have never been designed to carry nuclear warheads, will continue powerfully and firmly as a crucial and conventional tool for defending the country.”

According to Washington officials, the US is preparing sanctions against firms and individuals in Iran, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates over alleged links to Iran’s ballistic missile program, a move seen by many in and outside Iran as a major blow to the nuclear deal between Tehran and the

5+1 group of powers that include the US, Russia, China, France and 5+Britain plus Germany.

Under the planned restrictions, the US or foreign nationals would be barred from doing business with the firms and people in the networks. US banks would also freeze any US-held assets.

The Washington’s antagonistic move comes after Iran took the first two major steps under the nuclear deal – that included reducing the number of its operating centrifuge machines from around 10,000 to 6,000 and sending its over 8.5 tons of low-enriched uranium stockpile to Russia.

Once Iran takes out the heart of its Heavy Water Reactor in Arak and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirms implementation of these three steps in coming weeks, Iran will be through with fulfilling its undertakings, and it will be the United States’ turn to hold up its end of the bargain and remove all the sanctions against Iran, according to the deal.

But now with the US intensifying sanctions against Iran, those who stood against the deal in Tehran are rallying increasing support for their pessimistic views about Washington’s loyalty to the deal.

After Iran reduced its centrifuges to around 6,000 last month, the US imposed a new sanction against Iran through changes in its Visa Waiver Program.

The US senate passed a bill related to the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) which allows citizens of 38 countries — namely European states, Australia, Japan and South Korea — to travel to the United States without having to obtain a visa but excludes from this program all dual nationals from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Sudan, and anyone else who has traveled to those countries in the past five years.

The bill is seen by the EU as a serious effort to deter expansion of economic and tourism ties between Europe and Iran after the removal of the sanctions against Tehran. Senior EU officials have voiced strong protest at the US for its biased action against the block and are running debates with counterparts in Washington to drop the bill.