Free Republic

Snippet: "Iran and its terrorist proxy groups’ influence in Latin America remains a troubling security threat to the region and world, experts said at a congressional hearing on Tuesday."

A top commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards boasted Saturday that his forces have plans in place to attack the United States from within, should the U.S. attack the Islamic Republic. “America, with its strategic ignorance, does not have a full understanding of the power of the Islamic Republic,” Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami said in a televised interview. “We have recognized America’s military strategy, and have arranged our abilities, and have identified centers in America [for attack] that will create a shock.”

IRGC and the spiritual vacuum of Latin American leftists The following is a glimpse of the kind of thing I often see while researching the activities of the IRGC (writ large) in Latin America. Communism fails to provide for the spiritual needs of leftwing political activists, and the Islamic Republic of Iran seems to have done a pretty good job of inserting themselves and the Khomeinist version of Shiism into that void. (Either that or the IRI is throwing lots of money around and the leftists are whores, which is certainly possible, but for the moment I'll take the more...

Note: Photos included. SNIPPET: The IRGC's point man in Peru, Edwar Quiroga "Hussein" Vargas is hard at work these days trying to breath life into not-so-large-or-widespread anti-government protests."

SNIPPET - quote: www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl1955.aspx Treasury Announces New Sanctions Against Iran Actions Target Iran’s Nuclear and Missile Proliferation Activities 5/23/2013     WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury is taking action today against 20 individuals and entities for their involvement in Iran’s nuclear and missile proliferation networks and Iran’s continued attempts to circumvent sanctions. These networks are responsible for moving supplies and providing essential services to Iran’s clandestine nuclear and weapons programs. These actions are designed to increase pressure on the Iranian regime by tightening sanctions against Iran’s energy sector and exposing key proliferation related networks that span the...

Reports have claimed that the Iranian President was arrested this week and warned against releasing information which could prove damaging to the country's Islamic regime. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was allegedly held for seven hours by the Revolutionary Guard on Monday and told to back down with claims that the regime defrauded voters at the last general election and allegations of fraud against political rivals. According to WND.com, the President was returning from a book fair in Tehran when his security advisor was informed that he was requested to appear at the Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei's office on...

SNIPPET: "ALBA is the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, an alliance of Latin American countries started by Cuba and Venezuela, who share a combination of hostility towards the United States and willingness to do business with Iran." SNIPPET: "Soheil Assad is not with the IRI Foreign Ministry - he's an IRGC operative. And there he is, accompanying ALBA ambassadors & their staff on a visit to Qom."

Note: Photos included. SNIPPET: "A new chapter opens in the saga of IRGC activity in Peru, as Soheil Assad leads a march conducted under the rubric of "odio al sistema capitalista e imperialista"."

SNIPPET: "But if the US can transport Abu Ghaith onto US soil and prosecute him for terrorist activities, why couldn't the Obama administration do the same with Musa Ali Daqduq, the senior Hezbollah commander who was captured in Iraq in 2007? The US Department of Justice had planned to prosecute Daqduq and the FBI was building a case against him. Daqduq was directly implicated in the kidnapping and murder of seven US soldiers in Karbala in January 2007. He was in US custody up until December 2011, just before the US withdrew from Iraq. Although the administration argued that it...

SNIPPET: "Washington: A US court has sentenced an Iranian and an American national for their roles in a plot to ship aircraft and its parts to Islamic Republic Iran. While the Iranian citizen Hamid Asefi, 67, was sentenced to 23 months, a US citizen Behzad Karimian, (52), also known as "Tony" Karimian who holds a valid Iranian passport and is employed as a Mesaba Airlines Pilot, was sentenced to 52 months in prison yesterday."

Reports that the Venezuelan intelligence agency is targeting and spying on the Venezuelan Jewish community as well as on Venezuelan companies and organizations with ties to Israel is deeply troubling, asserted the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). “We are deeply troubled by a recent news report alleging that the Venezuelan Intelligence Service (SEBIN) is spying on the Venezuelan Jewish community,” said ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman. “Venezuela under the regime of Hugo Chavez has a history of harassing the Jewish community in that country,” he said. “It is chilling to read reports that the SEBIN received instructions to carry out clandestine...

"IRAN SPY NETWORK 30,000 STRONG Pentagon report: Iranian intelligence linked to spying, terror attacks" SNIPPET: "Iran’s intelligence service includes 30,000 people who are engaged in covert and clandestine activities that range from spying to stealing technology to terrorist bombings and assassination, according to a Pentagon report." SNIPPET: "“MOIS provides financial, material, technological, or other support services to Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), all designated terrorist organizations under U.S. Executive Order 13224,” the report said. The spy service operates in all areas where Iran has interests, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Central Asia, Africa, Austria, Azerbaijan, Croatia, France,...

SNIPPET: "Social media is no longer simply a fun way to share updates on the harmless idiosyncrasies of our lives. It can undermine national security, and there ought to be a more robust discussion between the Bay Area technology world and Washington on what to do about it. Cyber-terrorism, especially the potential for electronic tampering with U.S. industrial or military installations, is a paramount national security threat that Washington is working to forestall. We're all working to protect our accounts from hackers. But the cyber-threat getting far less public attention involves the social media networks we use every day and the...

The Honourable Vic Toews, Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, today announced that the Government of Canada has made changes to the Criminal Code list of terrorist entities. “The list of terrorist entities sends a strong message that Canada will not tolerate terrorist activities, including terrorist financing, or those who support such activities,” said Minister Toews. “That is why Canada has made the principled decision to add the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Qods Force to the list.” The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Qods Force is the clandestine branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responsible for extraterritorial operations, and for exporting...

Iran has infiltrated a team of Quds Force terrorist leaders into the United States to attack from within in 2013, according to a source. The source within the office of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic regime, said the team is to create instability in America through terrorism should the U.S. fail to accept the regime’s illicit nuclear program, increase sanctions, confront Iran militarily or intervene in the Syrian civil war. Members of the team, no more than 10 Quds Force officers, each lead cells totaling about 50 terrorists already in the U.S. The source is risking...

'There are numerous Revolutionary Guard cells' inside borders Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is alive and well in the U.S. and the country’s law enforcement officials ignore them at their peril, according to former U. S. Air Force officer Steven O’Hern. O’Hern says that the Revolutionary Guard, long an influential factor in the radical Islamic regime in Iran, does most of its surveillance and intelligence gathering through its proxy force, Hezbollah, considered by many to be a terror group. “In the United States, the Revolutionary Guard uses more than one approach. Hezbollah operatives and sympathizers are present in large numbers in many...

Weeks before the presidential election, President Barack Obama’s administration faces mounting opposition from within the ranks of U.S. intelligence agencies over what career officers say is a “cover up” of intelligence information about terrorism in North Africa. Intelligence held back from senior officials and the public includes numerous classified reports revealing clear Iranian support for jihadists throughout the tumultuous North Africa and Middle East region, as well as notably widespread al Qaeda penetration into Egypt and Libya in the months before the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. “The Iranian strategy is two-fold: upping the...

While negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program are at a standstill, news this week indicates that Iran is clearly losing the economic battle. As in other cases, currency problems in Iran may contribute to an unpredictable and destabilizing political outcome. Iran’s currency fell by more than 18 percent against the dollar on Monday and another 8 percent on Tuesday, marking a new low in Iran’s continuing economic crisis. The figures are grim: a sheaf of rials worth ten thousand dollars a year ago would be worth about $3,750 Monday and $3,500 Tuesday; on Wednesday, there were protests in the bazaar.Short of...

Human Rights Travesty By Kenneth R. Timmerman FrontPageMagazine.com | July 23, 2007 If human rights abuses were ranked like baseball careers, Iran’s ruling clerics and the mighty midget they’ve installed as president would deserve honored places in the 21st Century’s Hall of Shame. On July 10, Iran’s Interior ministry confirmed the sentence, handed down ten days earlier by a court in the north of the country, condemning a man to death by stoning. If you’ve never witnessed a stoning (and most of us haven’t, I trust), you can get a flavor for the barbarity of this Koranic punishment from a...

This didn't get much play in the media because this is one "outreach" item to Iran Obama would just as soon not be widely circulated; his release of 5 Revolutionary Guard commanders belonging to the elite Quds Force who planned dozens of attacks on Americans in Iraq and who George Bush refused to release. Andrew McCarthy in NRO has the sickening details: There are a few things you need to know about President Obama's shameful release on Thursday of the "Irbil Five" - Quds Force commanders from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq...