ANALYSIS: Revisiting Iran’s 9/11 connection

By Heshmat AlaviSpecial to Al Arabiya EnglishMonday, 11 September 2017

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16 years have passed since that tragic day, September 11, 2001, when over 3,000 innocent people lost their lives in the “the largest mass casualty terrorist attack in US history.” The course of modern history changed as we know it.

For more than 15 of these past years the policy of appeasement has withheld the international community from adopting the will needed to bring all the perpetrators of this hideous crime to justice.

Iran has a history of fueling foreign crises to avoid responding to its own domestic concerns. 9/11 provided the window of opportunity to derail world attention to other states and buy Tehran crucially needed time.

Unfortunately, the regime ruling Iran has been the main benefactor of the 9/11 aftermath. As a result of two wars in the Middle East the entire region has been left wide open for Tehran to take advantage of and spread its sinister ideology and sectarianism.

It is hence necessary to highlight Iran’s role in 9/11 attacks and demand the senior Iranian regime hierarchy involved in blueprinting and implementing this attack to be held accountable before the law.

Warmongering history

For the past four decades Iran has been ruled by a clerical regime that is simply incapable of providing the society’s needs and demands. To this end, Tehran has resorted to a policy of exporting the “Islamic Revolution” by meddling in neighboring and distant countries to create havoc.

History has recorded how Iraq invaded Iranian territories and caused the beginning of the devastating eight-year-long Iran-Iraq War. Several months before Iraq launched its military attack, Ayatollah Khomeini, accused of hijacking Iran’s 1979 revolution, described then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as a “hypocrite” and a “threat for the Iraqi people.”

Khomeini went as far as calling on the Iraqi people to “place their entire efforts behind destroying this dangerous individual” and the Iraqi army to “flee their forts” and to “rise and destroy this corrupt individual, and appoint another individual in his place. We will support you in this regard.”

Fast forward more than two decades, and again with Iraq in its crosshairs, Iran began what has been described as a very complicated effort to literally deceive the US intelligence community.

Ahmad Challabi, dubbed as “The Manipulator” by The New Yorker, was Iran’s front man in feeding the US false information regarding Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction to justify Washington’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. The war ultimately eliminated the main obstacle before Iran’s hidden occupation of Iraq and full blown meddling across the Middle East.

Looking further west in the region, Iran ordered Bashar Assad in Syria and former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to facilitate the escape of thousands of al-Qaeda prisoners. This development, parallel to the ruthless crackdown of the two countries’ Sunni communities, led to the rise of ISIS.

This entire episode provided Iran the necessary pretext to justify its presence in Iraq and Syria, especially through tens of thousands of proxy forces.

Iranian dissidents rally in France for the overthrow of Iran’s theocracy

By The Washington Times - - Monday, July 17, 2017

VILLEPINTE, France — Thousands of supporters of an Iranian dissident group rallied here Saturday for the overthrow of Tehran’s theocratic regime at an event that featured speeches by several Trump administration allies — including Newt Gingrich and Rudolph W. Giuliani — as well as the former head of Saudi intelligence.

The boisterous event, held annually in this town just north of Paris, was organized by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a France-based group of Iranian exiles that brings dozens of current and former U.S., European and Middle Eastern officials together to speak out in support of regime change in Tehran.

While the Trump administration’s posture on the issue is elusive, Mr. Giuliani drew loud cheers by asserting that the new U.S. president’s view is far different from that of his predecessor, who led world powers to ease sanctions on the Islamic republic with the 2015 Iranian nuclear accord.

Mr. Trump is “laser-focused on the danger of Iran to the freedom of the world,” said Mr. Giuliani, who was perceived by many at the rally to be an emissary for Mr. Trump despite holding no formal Cabinet position in the administration.

Unlike the Obama administration, Mr. Trump “is not in a state of denial” on Iran, the former New York City mayor said.

“Iran must be free,” said Mr. Gingrich, a former House speaker who rallied the crowd by condemning Tehran’s record of human rights abuses.

The two, who were advisers to Mr. Trump’s election campaign, headed a U.S. delegation that included several former Democratic lawmakers as well as three active Republican congressmen — Reps. Ted Poe of Texas, Thomas A. Garrett Jr. of Virginia and Robert Pittenger of North Carolina.

But it was an appearance by Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, the former longtime Saudi intelligence chief, that may have been the most significant part of the rally.

“I salute you,” said the prince, who was in attendance for the second year in a row. His presence suggested that Saudi Arabia’s Sunni Muslim monarchy openly supports regime change in Iran — the Middle East’s Shiite powerhouse and Riyadh’s main rival.

Prince Turki bin Faisal’s appearance prompted speculation that the Saudis may even have helped finance the rally, although organizers flatly denied that, asserting instead that funding for the National Council of Resistance of Irancomes entirely in the form of donations from Iranians who are disgusted with the government in Tehran…

The rally was a marathon of speeches and musical performances… In attendance were more than a dozen current and former officials from EU nations, including former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner….

The most aggressive speech came from Maryam Rajavi, leader of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, who condemned the “religious dictatorship” of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and asserted that the regime is run by “executioners” who have imprisoned or killed tens of thousands of opposition figures since coming to power in 1979….

“Overthrow is possible and within reach,” she said. “Iranian society is simmering with discontent, and the international community is finally getting closer to the reality that appeasing the ruling theocracy is misguided.

“The only solution is regime change,” said Mrs. Rajavi, who has led the National Council of Resistance of Iran since its founder — her husband, Massoud Rajavi — went into hiding in 2003.

In an email interview with The Washington Times last year, she said the organization “represent[s] the voice of millions of Iranians who are being oppressed in their country and who seek regime change and the establishment of a democratic, pluralist and non-nuclear government based on the separation of religion and state.”

Supporters of the council say it is the most influential organization on the Iranian opposition landscape.

No one in the Iranian opposition “stands out the way the NCRI stands out” in terms of their “day to day engagement with the Iranian public,” said Ramesh Sepehrrad, a longtime Iranian-American women’s rights activist who works with George Mason University’s School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution.

Ms. Sepehrrad told a panel ahead of the rally that it is difficult to measure the council’s popularity inside Iran because the “regime has made the price very, very high for the Iranian people to express their support” for the movement.

“Thousands of their supporters and their family members have been executed and imprisoned by the regime,” she said.

Shahin Gobadi, a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran’s foreign affairs committee, said the group has become more active inside Iran over the past year. “People are realizing more and more, especially young people, that regime change is the only answer,” Mr. Gobadi told The Times.

• This excerpt is from a Washington Times staff-written news article that first published on July 1, 2017.

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JOHN BOLTON: EVERY TIME YOU HEAR NORTH KOREA THINK OF IRAN

JOHN BOLTON: EVERY TIME YOU HEAR NORTH KOREA THINK OF IRAN

by JOHN HAYWARD

 Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton talked about North Korea’s Fourth of July missile test launch on Thursday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily with SiriusXM host Alex Marlow.

Bolton said intercontinental ballistic missiles are a goal North Korea has been working towards since the early 1990s, as part of the outlaw regime’s quest for “deliverable nuclear weapons,”

but it was still surprising to many observers that a missile with true intercontinental capability was successfully launched this week.

“It’s capable of hitting Alaska. It can’t hit the Lower 48 yet, but that’s only a matter of time,” he said. “The only other thing we need to find out, and I don’t want to be on the receiving end of it, is whether North Korea has miniaturized its nuclear devices – of which it’s already detonated five – to the point they can put it under an ICBM nose cone.”

“I’ve been talking about this for 20 years, and so have many other people. And yet, for the last three U.S. administrations – eight years of Clinton, eight years of Bush, eight years of Obama – people have tried to negotiate with North Korea to talk them out of their nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. It’s failed consistently for 25 years,” he said.

“That’s why Trump has inherited this mess. The issue is whether he can find a way out of it, or whether he succumbs to what I know the State Department, and much of the Defense Department, and much of the intelligence community are telling him: just keep doing what we’ve been doing before. Because that will result in a nuclear North Korea,” Bolton warned.

“And by the way, you can already see the mainstream media and academia preparing us to live in a world where North Korea has nuclear weapons,” he added, citing a New York Times op-ed to that effect from Wednesday.

Bolton judged that Japan would continue to be a reliable ally against North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, since the Japanese are well aware their cities lie within range of North Korea’s missiles. On the other hand, he said “all of the evidence points to China and Russia as, at best, turning a blind eye to what the North has been up to, and more likely facilitating the North’s nuclear and missile programs.”

He said his support from China and Russia was kept low-profile to avoid sanctions, but there was no way to conceal that China supplies North Korea with much of its oil and food, giving Beijing more than enough leverage to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear missile program if it truly wanted to.

“China is playing a double game. They say they don’t want the North Koreans to have nuclear weapons but they haven’t shut it down,” Bolton charged. “It’s a very dangerous situation. Nobody should underestimate it.”

“One other point I would make: Every time you hear the words ‘North Korea,’ think of the word ‘Iran,’” he added. “Because whatever North Korea can do, Iran can do the next day by sending them a check in the appropriate amount. We have stovepiped these two nuclear proliferation threats for a very long time. We need to stop doing that because every day that goes by brings us closer to the day when one or both of them can hit the United States.”

Bolton cited North Korea’s five known nuclear test detonations, and its successful test of ballistic missile technology, to say it is a “more imminent threat” than Iran, but stressed that North Korea and Iran have been working “extremely closely on ballistic missiles” since the Nineties, “and there’s every reason to think they have worked extremely closely on the nuclear program as well.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if a big chunk of Iran’s uranium enrichment program is not in Iran, where we know where it is, but under a mountain in North Korea,” he said. “We have very poor intelligence on North Korea, so it’s a big advantage for Iran to work with them.”

“When the Israelis destroyed that reactor in Syria in September 2007, it was being built by North Koreans,” he recalled. “Well, who paid for that? North Korea doesn’t do anything for free. I doubt that Syria had the resources to do it. Quite likely it was Iran. When that reactor was found by the Israelis and destroyed, the lesson I think to Iran was, ‘Build it someplace where the Israelis can’t find it.’ That’s why they may well have turned to North Korea.”

Bolton noted that U.S. and South Korean military officials have been warning for the past year that North Korea was on the verge of developing missiles that could hit the West Coast of the United States, perhaps as early as 2018.

“In public testimony three or four months ago now, the head of the U.S. Strategic Command told Congress that the only thing he had any doubt about was whether North Korea had fully conquered the miniaturization tasks to take a nuclear device and make it small enough to put under an ICBM nose cone. So even just three or four months ago, he didn’t have any doubt about the range,” he noted.

“There are a lot of other technical steps to overcome here. You can put the nose cone and the warhead up, you can bring it back down, but it’s a pretty rocky ride. You have to make sure that the warhead will detonate at the appropriate time,” he explained.

“We don’t know whether the North has mastered that technology, but I would be very cautious about intelligence that says they can’t do this, and they can’t do that, and they can’t do the other thing, because the first American reaction to this launch was ‘it was an intermediate range ballistic missile, not an ICBM,” and we were wrong. And we didn’t detect this one before the launch. I think we’ve had enough lessons in intelligence being imperfect,” he said.

“Don’t count on our lack of knowledge meaning that the North doesn’t have the capability,” he advised. “They may well have the capability. We may simply not have detected it.