Nigeria reports seized Iranian arms shipment to UN

Posted on 17/11/2010 by terrortrends

Nigeria has reported its seizure of a shipment of arms from Iran to the United Nations Security Council.

The Nigerian authorities discovered the weapons, including rocket launchers and grenades, last month in containers labelled as building materials.

The France-based shipping company CMA CGM which transported the shipment said it was hidden in containers labelled as building materials and attempts were made to send it to Gambia before the Nigerian police seized it.

Of course, if CMA CGM wasn’t doing business with the ayatollahs in the first place, they could be certain that the Iranians weren’t smuggling arms through their services, couldn’t they?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11765935

Filed under: Arms smuggling, Jihad, missiles, Nigeria, sanctions | Leave a comment »

‘Ambassador of Death’ unleashed

Posted on 24/08/2010 by terrortrends

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday inaugurated the country’s first domestically built unmanned bomber aircraft, calling it an “ambassador of death” to Iran’s enemies.

The 4-meter-long drone aircraft can carry up to four cruise missiles and will have a range of 620 miles (1,000 kilometers), according to a state TV report — not far enough to reach archenemy Israel.

“The jet, as well as being an ambassador of death for the enemies of humanity, has a main message of peace and friendship,” said Ahmadinejad at the inauguration ceremony, which fell on the country’s national day for its defense industries.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/08/22/ahmadinejad-inaugurates-irans-unmanned-bomber/

Filed under: Ahmadinejad, unmanned bomber | Leave a comment »

Only several days remain for Israel to strike Bushehr

Posted on 18/08/2010 by terrortrends

Israel has until the weekend to launch a military strike on Iran’s first nuclear plant before the humanitarian risk of an attack becomes too great, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said Tuesday.

A Russian company is expected to help Iran start loading nuclear fuel into its plant on Saturday, after which an attack on the Bushehr reactor could trigger harmful radiation, which Israel wants to avoid, Bolton said. So unless the Israelis act immediately to shut down the facility, it will be too late.

“Once it’s close to the reactor … the risk is when the reactor is attacked, there will be a release of radiation into the air,” Bolton told FoxNews.com. “It’s most unlikely that they would act militarily after fuel rods are loaded.”

“Until that time, the position of the government of Israel — as the position of the Obama administration — is that all options will remain on the table,” he said, without commenting directly on Bolton’s remarks.

Though Iranian officials insist the reactor is for peaceful purposes, Bolton warned about the danger of the up-and-running reactor.

“What this does is give Iran a second route to nuclear weapons in addition to enriched uranium,” Bolton said. “It’s a very, very huge victory for Iran.”

He noted that the reactor gives Iran something that both Iraq and Syria were never able to achieve because their facilities were destroyed.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/17/israel-weeks-end-strike-iran-nuclear-facility-bolton-says/

Filed under: Bushehr, Israel, nuclear program, Obama, Russia | 1 Comment »

Iran’s Bushehr plant up and running

Posted on 14/08/2010 by terrortrends

Russia announced Friday it will begin the startup next week of Iran’s only atomic power plant, giving Tehran a boost as it struggles with international sanctions and highlighting differences between Moscow and Washington over pressuring the Islamic Republic to give up activities that could be used to make nuclear arms.

Uranium fuel shipped by Russia will be loaded into the Bushehr reactor on Aug. 21, beginning a process that will last about a month and end with the reactor sending electricity to Iranian cities, Russian and Iranian officials said.

Russia has walked a fine line on Iran for years. One of six world powers leading international efforts to ensure Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon, it has strongly criticized the U.S. and the European Union for following up with separate sanctions after the latest U.N. penalties — which Moscow supported — were passed.

Iran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency quoted Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, who also heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, as saying that the country had invited IAEA experts to watch the transfer of fuel, which was shipped about two years ago, into the Bushehr reactor.

“Fuel complexes are sealed (and being monitored by IAEA). Naturally, IAEA inspectors will be there to watch the unsealing,” ISNA quoted Salehi as saying.

Russia has said the Bushehr project has been closely supervised by the IAEA. But the U.N. watchdog has no monitoring authority at the plant beyond ensuring that its nuclear fuel is accounted for, and U.S. and EU officials have expressed safety concerns.

They note that Iran — leery of opening up its nuclear activities to outsiders — refuses to sign on to the Convention on Nuclear Safety, making it subject to international monitoring of its atomic safety standards.

Filed under: nuclear program, nuclear talks, Russia, sanctions, United Nations | Leave a comment »

5 Reasons Why Meeting with Ahmadinejad is a Stupid Idea–even for Obama

Posted on 13/08/2010 by terrortrends

Obama and Ahmadinejad

A report has surfaced in the British press indicating that President Barack Obama is set to meet with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Increasingly, the British press is playing the role of watchdog when it comes to the Obama administration since US “journolists” have become essentially messengers for the regime.)

In this case, as Obama promised in his presidential campaign, he is reportedly set to meet directly with the Iranian president. Readers may recall that during the campaign Obama spun this idea by claiming that he was “not afraid” to meet with Ahmadinejad.

This is a foolish concept.

Meeting with Ahmadinejad is a mistake on several levels:

1. Meeting with Ahmadinejad represents a poor risk/reward ratio. It is highly unlikely that anything positive will come out of such a meeting, since Iran has been lying about its nuclear intentions all along. On the other had, the Persians invented chess. The Iranians would no doubt dangle carrots in front of Obama, who, like Pavlov’s dog, would salivate at the thought of reaching a grand bargain with Iran. This would buy the Iranians time–and time is really all they need at this point to finish enriching enough uranium (in violation of an international treaty and in defiance of UN resolutions) to arm bombs.

2. Meeting with Ahmadinejad makes no sense from a practical political standpoint. The President of Iran has no authority over foreign affairs or national security. He is essentially the “mayor of the country,” responsible for domestic issues. The final authority over matters involving foreign affairs and national security lies with the Supreme Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a ruthless man who took over from the infamous Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini at the time of his death in 1989. In fact, all the real power in Iran is in the hands of Khamenei, not Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad serves at the pleasure of the Supreme Ayatollah. The Supreme Ayatollah has to approve the candidates for president in the first place and, rest assured, no one opposed to Khamenei will ever get the opportunity to run, much less serve. You can also rest assured that, if Khamenei decided tomorrow morning that he didn’t like Ahmadinejad any more, Ahmadinejad would be on his way out very quickly, one way or another. In other words, Obama, the president of the most powerful nation in the world and the leader of the free world, is set to meet with a deputy, an underling, from a third-rate, rogue power. This will accomplish nothing, except to win more support for Iran in the Islamic world, where that support is not absolutely a sure thing.

3. Meeting with Ahmadinejad is an insult to victims of the September 11th terrorist attacks and their surviving families. On multiple occasions in the past, Ahmadinejad has suggested that the attacks were an “inside job,” the work of the US government, or Israel. He has also said that the casualty toll was exaggerated and that no Jews were killed in the attacks because they were warned ahead of time not to go to work that morning. What good will meeting with such an irrational individual do for the security of the United States?

4. Meeting with Ahmadinejad is an insult to victims of the Holocaust and their surviving families, as well as all veterans of the European Theater of Operations in World War II. On multiple occasions, Ahmadinejad has denied that the Holocaust occurred, or claimed that it was exaggerated. He has even hosted conferences and cartoon contests on this subject. Obama may as well have a beer with David Duke if he is going to meet with Ahmadinejad.

5. Meeting with Ahmadinejad is an insult to US soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen who have served in the War on Terror, particularly in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Iran has provided training, arms and safe haven for insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Keep these five factors in mind when and if Obama decides it’s a good idea to meet with Ahmadinejad.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7940061/Barack-Obama-may-be-prepared-to-meet-Iranian-president.html

Filed under: Ahmadinejad, Obama | 3 Comments »

Poll shows majority of Arabs view nuclear Iran in positive light

Posted on 13/08/2010 by terrortrends

A new poll shows that the percentage of the Arab world that thinks a nuclear-armed Iran would be good for the Middle East has doubled since last year and now makes up the majority.

The 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll found that 57 percent of respondents not only believe that Iran’s nuclear program aims to build a bomb but also view that goal positively — nearly double the 29 percent who thought so in 2009. The percentage of those who view an Iranian nuclear bomb negatively fell by more than half, from 46 percent to 21 percent.

But the Arab Public Opinion Poll’s findings on Iran stand in marked contrast to the stances of most Sunni Arab leaders, who fear the regional implications of an Iranian bomb.

“In my view, the Arab public position on Iran is largely a defiance vote or an ‘enemy of my enemy’ vote,” Mr. Telhami told the Washington Times.

Last month, The Times reported on unusually blunt remarks from the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the U.S., who said he favored airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear sites by U.S. or Israeli forces despite the consequences for the region.

“If you are asking me, ‘Am I willing to live with [the fallout from military action] versus living with a nuclear Iran,’ my answer is still the same: ‘We cannot live with a nuclear Iran,’“ Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba said during a conference in Aspen, Colo.

A day earlier, the Times of London reported that Saudi Arabia had given Israel tacit approval to use its airspace in the event of an aerial attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. Officials from the kingdom vehemently denied the report, but most observers suspect that some Arab leaders would quietly cheer an Israeli attack, even if it generated riots in their capitals.

Iran repeatedly has denied that its nuclear program is devoted to anything but producing energy.

“There is no love for Iran in most of the Arab world,” Mr. Telhami said. “They fear Israel and U.S. foreign policy, so when we ask them, ‘Name the two countries that are most threatening to you personally,’ they identify first and foremost Israel and second the United States, and Iran is down on the list.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/6/poll-majority-of-arab-world-views-nuke-armed-iran-/

Filed under: Israel, nuclear program, Obama, United Nations | Leave a comment »

IRGC General Claims Iran is Digging Mass Graves for U.S. Troops

Posted on 10/08/2010 by terrortrends

Iran has dug mass graves in which to bury U.S. troops in case of any American attack on the country, a commander of the elite Revolutionary Guard has said.

The deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard (known at the Pasdaran), Gen. Hossein Kan’ani Moghadam, said graves for any attacking U.S. troops have been dug in Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province, where Iran buried Iraqi soldiers killed during the ruinous 1980-88 war between the Islamic republic and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“The mass graves that used to be for burying Saddam’s soldiers have now been prepared again for U.S. soldiers, and this is the reason for digging this big number of graves,” Moghadam said, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/08/10/iran-digging-graves-troops-case-attack/?test=latestnews

Filed under: IRGC, military, Pasdaran, Qods Force | Leave a comment »

JFK Airport Terror Plotter Linked to Iran

Posted on 08/08/2010 by terrortrends

Two suspects were convicted in Manhattan for a terrorism conspiracy that revealed ties to Iran and Venezuela.

According to the trial evidence, the plot members attempted to enlist support for the plot from prominent international terrorist groups and leaders, as well as the government of Iran, including Abu Bakr, leader of the Trinidadian militant group Jamaat Al Muslimeen, and Adnan El Shukrijumah, an al-Qaeda leader.

In February 2007, Russell Defreitas recruited Abdul Kadir to join the plot because Kadir, a former member of the Guyanese parliament, was an engineer and had connections with militant groups in Iran and Venezuela. During cross-examination at trial, Kadir admitted that he regularly passed information to Iranian authorities and believed himself bound to follow fatwas from Iranian religious leaders

Defreitas was arrested in New York on June 2, 2007. Kadir was arrested in Trinidad aboard a plane headed to Venezuela, en route to Iran.

http://www.examiner.com/x-2684-Law-Enforcement-Examiner~y2010m8d8-JFK-terror-plot-Convicted-terrorists-linked-to-Iran-and-Venezuela?cid=examiner-email

Filed under: Al Qaeda, Jihad, Terrorism, Terrorist Plot, Venezuela | Leave a comment »

Iran’s Sponsorship of Terror Detailed in New State Department Report

Posted on 06/08/2010 by terrortrends

This week the US State Department released its “Country Reports on Terrorism 2009,” which includes details on state sponsors of terrorism, of which Iran is obviously at the forefront.

We have pasted the entire section on Iran below, but will preface it with a few comments. Much of the report is a rehash of last year’s report and, unfortunately, this is a pattern we have noticed in this State Department report for some time now. Very few new facts seem to emerge from this report and the language is quite similar from year to year.

All one has to do to see this is to check these three links from the 2009, 2008 and 2007 reports (in that order). The facts presented are all the same and the language is very similar:

2009

http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2009/140889.htm

2008

http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2008/122436.htm

2007

http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2007/103711.htm

This calls into question how much work and thought actually goes into this report in the first place. It is a disservice to the American people to regurgitate the same information year after year and it is difficult to regard such a report as authoritative under such circumstances.

There is one aspect of the report’s section on Iran that frankly cannot be emphasized enough:

Iran has given weaponry, training and funding to Sunni terrorist organizations for years. Two primary examples are HAMAS and the Taliban.

The quaint notion that Shia Iran does not sponsor Sunni Jihadist terrorist organizations is one which we cannot afford to allow to persist.

When someone tells you that Iran would never aid a Sunni terrorist organization because of the Sunni-Shia divide, that is a sure sign that they don’t have the slightest idea what they are talking about.

Speaking of Sunni terrorist groups, the State Department continues to be in denial about Iran’s relationship with Al Qaeda. They have basically kept the same language about Iran and Al Qaeda for years now, with no further information or intelligence at all. The boys and girls at Foggy Bottom insist that Iran’s connection to Al Qaeda doesn’t go any further than Iran keeping Al Qaeda members and their families under house arrest. This flies in the face of numerous reports and piles of evidence, including details disclosed way back during the 9-11 Commission Report:

http://article.nationalreview.com/352385/iranian-entanglements/christopher-w-holton

Perhaps when the State Department wonks get a notion in their heads, they don’t want to alter that notion for fear of being shown to have been wrong in the first place. Who really knows, but the year to year copy and paste job that State does on this report is unprofessional and, were it done this way in the private sector, the authors would be told to go back and start again and not to come back with another rehash of last year’s report…

Nevertheless, here is the official US State Department view on Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism during 2009:

IRAN

Iran remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism. Iran’s financial, material, and logistic support for terrorist and militant groups throughout the Middle East and Central Asia had a direct impact on international efforts to promote peace, threatened economic stability in the Gulf and undermined the growth of democracy.

Iran remained the principal supporter of groups that are implacably opposed to the Middle East Peace Process. The Qods Force, the external operations branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), is the regime’s primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad. Iran provided weapons, training, and funding to HAMAS and other Palestinian terrorist groups, including Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). Iran has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in support to Lebanese Hizballah and has trained thousands of Hizballah fighters at camps in Iran. Since the end of the 2006 Israeli-Hizballah conflict, Iran has assisted Hizballah in rearming, in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

Iran’s Qods Force provided training to the Taliban in Afghanistan on small unit tactics, small arms, explosives, and indirect fire weapons. Since at least 2006, Iran has arranged arms shipments to select Taliban members, including small arms and associated ammunition, rocket propelled grenades, mortar rounds, 107mm rockets, and plastic explosives.

Despite its pledge to support the stabilization of Iraq, Iranian authorities continued to provide lethal support, including weapons, training, funding, and guidance, to Iraqi Shia militant groups that targeted U.S. and Iraqi forces. The Qods Force continued to supply Iraqi militants with Iranian-produced advanced rockets, sniper rifles, automatic weapons, and mortars that have killed Iraqi and Coalition Forces, as well as civilians. Iran was responsible for the increased lethality of some attacks on U.S. forces by providing militants with the capability to assemble explosively formed penetrators that were designed to defeat armored vehicles. The Qods Force, in concert with Lebanese Hizballah, provided training outside of Iraq and advisors inside Iraq for Shia militants in the construction and use of sophisticated improvised explosive device technology and other advanced weaponry.

Iran remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qa’ida (AQ) members it continued to detain, and refused to publicly identify those senior members in its custody. Iran has repeatedly resisted numerous calls to transfer custody of its AQ detainees to their countries of origin or third countries for trial; it is reportedly holding Usama bin Ladin’s family members under house arrest.

Senior IRGC, IRGC Qods Force, and Iranian government officials were indicted by the Government of Argentina for their alleged roles in the 1994 terrorist bombing of the Argentine-Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA); according to the Argentine State Prosecutor’s report, the attack was initially proposed by the Qods Force. In 2007, INTERPOL issued a “red notice” for six individuals wanted in connection to the bombing. One of the individuals, Ahmad Vahidi, was named as Iran’s Defense Minister in August 2009.

Filed under: Al Qaeda, Country Reports on Terrorism, HAMAS, Hezbollah, Iraq, IRGC, Israel, Lebanon, Qods Force, Terrorism, US State Department | 1 Comment »

Obama’s Iran policy changes, thanks to the Saudis

Posted on 05/08/2010 by terrortrends

The Israeli intelligence website DebkaFile has reported that Obama is now seriously considering an attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities. His change of heart is not, according to Debka, prompted by the Israeli Netanyahu — whose nation is most directly threatened by Iranian nukes — but by an ultimatum from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who told Obama that his nation could not tolerate Iranian WMD, and would develop its own if Iran was allowed to acquire them. In other words, Netanyahu’s threat of a Middle Eastern conflict that could devastate Israel and escalate to all-out nuclear war carried less weight with Obama than the far less severe consequences threatened by the Saudis. Nevertheless, their threat moved them to the head of the queue. We know that Obama doesn’t want a nuclear weapons arms race, but is he also afraid of offending the Islamic monarchs before whom he dutifully genuflects?

It is, finally, all of a piece. Obama once promised an even-handed approach to the Middle-Eastern conflict, but in practice his seeming neutrality has barely disguised a decidedly Pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian bias. Thus, without first taking serious steps to check Palestinian terrorism, he has pushed for the two-state solution that would inevitably lead to Hamastan, and the conversion of the West Bank into yet another launching pad for Katyusha missiles. In addition, Obama continually leans on Israel to sign a nuclear non-proliferation treaty that would cripple its major deterrent against an all-out attack by surrounding Arab nations. Smelling blood, those neighbors, now including the once-friendly Turkey, are becoming provocative and their terrorist residents are agitating for war. Angry because Israel would not stop building new housing for its growing population in Jerusalem, Obama went out of his way to publicly humiliate Netanyahu. He only relented and made nice when it became evident that his Israel-bashing was going to cost him many Jewish votes and much Jewish money.

Obama’s evident bias has been much noted and much discussed. The rationalizers and explainers usually refer to the influence of his radical base at a time when Israel has become the Left’s Little Satan. Others have pointed to his long-term associations with the noisily anti-Semitic Reverend Jeremiah Wright, as well as with his fellow Chicagoans, Rashid Khalidi and Ali Abunimah, both of them plausible academic propagandists for the Palestinian cause.

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/08/05/obamas-muslim-daddies

Filed under: missiles, nuclear program, Obama | Leave a comment »

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