http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/08/18/iran.guard/
Iranian Guards vow to ‘punch’ U.S.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said they would not bow to pressure and threatened to “punch” the U.S., in their first response to Washington’s plan to list them as a terrorist organization, newspapers reported Saturday. Local press in the Iranian capital of Tehran quoted Revolutionary Guards leader Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi saying that he could understand Washington’s ire toward the group because of their “leverage” against the U.S.
“America will receive a heavier punch from the guards in the future,” he was quoted as saying in the conservative daily Kayhan. “We will never remain silent in the face of U.S. pressure and we will use our leverage against them.” There was no elaboration on what Safavi meant by the punch or the organization’s “leverage.” . . .
Iranian armed forces spokesman Gen. Ali Reza Afshar hit out precisely against this attempt to declare a state body terrorist in an editorial Saturday in the country’s largest circulation newspaper, calling it illegal. “America’s long time hostility against the Guard is clear and understandable, but this move against organization that is part of Iran’s armed forces is illegal,” he wrote in the daily Hamshahri. The estimated 200,000-strong Revolutionary Guards is an elite force separate from Iran’s regular military and has its own ground, naval and air units.
>>>>>”Iranian Guards vow to ‘punch’ U.S.”<<<<<
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP47303
(excerpted)
. . . According to Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Zakiri had worked as a supervisor and director of intelligence for the Revolutionary Guards, and had then moved to the Security Ministry, where he served in several positions for a number of years. Later, he joined the security apparatus of the Leader’s Office, where he was a supervisor in charge of the apparatus’s secretariat, and learned of the secret links between the Revolutionary Guards and Iranian security apparatuses, and revolutionary forces in the region.
. . . Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: “Did you know about the plans to attack the World Trade Center in New York?”
Zakiri: “No, but we had in our headquarters models of the [WTC] two towers, the White House, the Pentagon, and the CIA building at Langley. Thus, Imad Mughnia came to Iran, met with a number of top officials in the security apparatus of the Leader [Khamenei] and gave them a letter from Dr. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, which said: ‘We need your help to carry out a most important mission in the land of the ‘Great Satan.’’ The issue was presented but his request was denied. Afterwards, it was decided by the head of our department and Natiq Nouri’s deputy, head of the investigations section in the Leader’s [Khamenei’s] Office and his representative in the Higher Council for Security, to entrust Mughnia with keeping the relations with Al-Zawahiri and his comrades, provided he did not get involved in their activity.”
http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP134706
(excerpted)
In early October 2006, Sunni Islamist websites affiliated with the jihad groups in Iraq posted what they claimed was a top-secret Iranian document. The document, dated May 2001, indicates contacts between top Al-Qaeda figures and the highest echelons of the Iranian intelligence apparatus, which is part of the office of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and can be viewed at the end of this document. . .
The following is a translation of the document:
“The Islamic Republic of Iran, the Intelligence Apparatus of the Supreme Leader - Top Secret.
“Date: May 14, 2001.
“Reference: 4-325-80/s/m
“By: Head of the Intelligence Apparatus of the Supreme Leader
“To: Head of Operations Unit No. 43 [in the Iranian Intelligence Ministry]
“Re: Orders regarding the decisions of the Honorable Leader [Khamenei]
“[Dear] Hujjat Al-Islam Wal-Muslimin [Mustafa] Pourkanad, [director-general of Operations Unit No. 43], we wish your dedicated and courageous team every success. The results [described] in your recent reports have been examined, along with other opinions. After consideration, and in order to remove the existing lack of clarity regarding support for Al-Qaeda’s future plans, the Honorable Leader [Khamenei] has emphasized that ‘the battle against the global arrogance headed by the U.S. and Israel is an integral part of our Islamic government, and constitutes its primary goal. Damaging their economic systems, discrediting all other institutions of these two allied enemies of the Islamic government [in Iran] as part of [our] political confrontation [with them], and undermining the stability and security [of the U.S. and Israel] are [all] obligatory duties that must be carried out.’
“The Honorable [Leader Khamenei] stressed the need for each of you to be vigilant in his field of activity, and asks you to be particularly attentive [in dealing with the issue at hand]. He also stressed [the need] to be alert to the [possible] negative future consequences of this cooperation [between Iran and Al-Qaeda].
“The Honorable [Khamenei] said that this struggle must be stepped up by tightening the collaboration with other security and intelligence apparatuses in Iran and with supporters outside Iran, thereby hindering the enemy’s steadily expanding activities.
“[Khamenei further instructed] that in carrying out your duties, you must operate under the direct supervision of the security division of the headquarters of the organization [i.e. the intelligence apparatus of the Supreme Leader]. Naturally, identifying [potential] damage is the responsibility of the vigilant and diligent Unit [No. 43 of the Iranian Intelligence Ministry].
“It has also been decided that, in the upcoming meetings, discussions must be held in order to formulate clear goals and remove the main obstacles and difficulties in achieving these goals and in promoting the issue of expanding the collaboration with the fighters of Al-Qaeda and Hizbullah [Lebanon].
“Finally, I wish to convey [Khamenei’s] full satisfaction with Unit [No. 43] and his full support [of this unit] in the implementation of its future plans. The Honorable [Khamenei] is aware of the important and dangerous [nature of] the tasks you perform. [He] emphasizes that, with regard to cooperation with Al-Qaeda, no traces must be left that might have negative and irreversible consequences, and that [the activity] must be limited to the existing contacts with [Hizbullah Operations Officer ‘Imad] Mughniyah and [Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman] Al-Zawahiri.
“May Allah grant you success.
“Sincerely,
“20th of [the Muslim month of] Safar.
“[Seal and Signature:] Ali Akbar Nateq Nouri . . .
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/14/wiran14.xml
Iran plotting to groom bin Laden’s successor
By Con Coughlin and George Jones, Political Editor
Last Updated: 2:30am GMT 14/11/2006 (excerpted)
Iran is trying to form an unholy alliance with al-Qa’eda by grooming a new generation of leaders to take over from Osama bin Laden, The Daily Telegraph can reveal. Western intelligence officials say the Iranians are determined to take advantage of bin Laden’s declining health to promote senior officials who are known to be friendly to Teheran. . .
But intelligence officials have been most alarmed by reports from Iran that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is trying to persuade al-Qa’eda to promote a pro-Iranian activist to a senior position within its leadership. The Iranians want Saif al-Adel, a 46-year-old former colonel in Egypt’s special forces, to be the organisation’s number three. Al-Adel was formerly bin Laden’s head of security, and was named on the FBI’s 22 most wanted list after September 11 for his alleged involvement in terror attacks against US targets in Somalia and Africa in the 1990s. He has been living in a Revolutionary Guard guest house in Teheran since fleeing from Afghanistan in late 2001. Alarm over al-Qa’eda deepened yesterday with a Foreign Office warning that the group was determined to acquire the technology to carry out a nuclear attack on the West. A senior Foreign Office official said that the terrorists were trawling the world for the materials and know-how to mount an attack using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. The official said: “We know that the aspiration is there, we know attempts to gather materials are there, we know that attempts to gather technologies are there.” . . .
http://www.nysun.com/article/58507
Iran Is Found To Be a Lair of Al Qaeda
Intelligence Estimate Cites Two Councils
BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
July 17, 2007 (excerpted)
WASHINGTON — One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate’s senior leadership structure.
That is a consensus judgment from a final working draft of a new National Intelligence Estimate, titled “The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland,” on the organization that attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The estimate, which represents the opinion of America’s intelligence agencies, is now finished, and unclassified conclusions will be shared today with the public. . .
“We know that there were two Al Qaeda centers of gravity. After the Taliban fell, one went to Pakistan, the other fled to Iran,” Roger Cressey, a former deputy to a counterterrorism tsar, Richard Clarke, said in an interview yesterday. “The question for several years has been: What type of operational capability did each of these centers have?”
A senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Iran expert, Vali Nasr, said he did not know that the Shura Majlis had reconstituted in eastern Iran, but he did say his Iranian contacts had confirmed recent NATO intelligence that Iran had begun shipping arms to Al Qaeda’s old Afghan hosts, the Taliban in Afghanistan. . .
The link between Iran and Al Qaeda is not new, in some cases. The bipartisan September 11 commission report, for example, concluded: “There is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of Al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers.” According to the commission, a senior Al Qaeda coordinator, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, said eight of the September 11 hijackers went through Iran on their way to and from Afghanistan. In 2005, both Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and the then ambassador at large for counterterrorism, Cofer Black, disclosed that America believes that senior Al Qaeda leaders reside in Iran.
http://www.nysun.com/article/55920
Police, FBI Plan To Examine Iran Links in JFK Plot
BY ELI LAKE - Staff Reporter of the Sun
June 5, 2007 (excerpted)
WASHINGTON — As New York police and the FBI interview suspects in an alleged plot to attack John F. Kennedy International Airport, one thread the ongoing investigation will explore is why one of the suspects was planning to go to Iran.
A former Guyanese legislator, Abdul Kadir, was arrested in Trinidad on Friday on a plane bound for Caracas, Venezuela. According to Mr. Kadir’s wife, Isha Kadir, he was in the island nation to pick up an Iranian visa so he could attend an Islamic conference in Tehran. Two of Mr. Kadir’s children are studying in Iran, according to Mrs. Kadir.
Trinidad’s counterterrorism police are also investigating whether one of Mr. Kadir’s alleged co-conspirators, a 56-year old Shiite imam in Trinidad named Kareem Ibrahim, had ties to Shiite organizations in southern Iraq and Iran through an Islamic discussion group he hosted, according to the Trinidad Express. . .