Quds Force Commander’s Advice to Gen Petraeus
March 30, 2010 by Steven OHern · 3 Comments
Although it’s previously been reported that Kassim Suleimani (or Qassem Suleimani), the commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, made contact with U.S. forces during the battle for Basra in March 2008, hearing General David Petraeus recall the event is noteworthy. In February, the current CENTCOM commander answered questions at the Institute for the Study of War, the think tank headed by Dr. Kimberly Kagan. From the transcript of the Q&A with General Petraeus comes this insight into the boldness of the Quds Force:
You know, in the middle of the battle with the militia in March and April of 2008, a message was conveyed to me by a very senior Iraqi leader from the head of the Qods Force, Kassim Suleimani, whose message went as follows.
He said, General Petraeus, you should know that I, Kassim Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Qods Force member. The individual who’s going to replace him is a Qods Force member.Now, that makes diplomacy difficult if you think that you’re going to do the traditional means of diplomacy by dealing with another country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs because in this case, it is not the ministry. It’s not Mottaki who controls the foreign policy, again, for these countries, at least. It is, again, a security apparatus, the Qods Force, which is also carrying out other activities.
Details on Suicide Bomb Attack at CIA Base – FOB Chapman
January 11, 2010 by Steven OHern · Leave a Comment
Greetings, readers, if there are any left, of this blog. I will be more active in 2010 – my apologies for the lack of productivity last year.
STRATFOR, the private intelligence and forecasting service, has released the following information about how Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the Jordanian double agent, managed to inflict such substantial damage upon so many CIA personnel at FOB Chapman near Khost, Afghanistan. My thanks to STRATFOR for allowing its republication on The Intelligence Wars blog
THE KHOST ATTACK AND THE INTELLIGENCE WAR CHALLENGE
By George Friedman and Scott Stewart
As Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi exited the vehicle that brought him onto Forward Operating Base (FOB) Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, on Dec. 30, 2009, security guards noticed he was behaving strangely. They moved toward al-Balawi and screamed demands that he take his hand out of his pocket, but instead of complying with the officers’ commands, al-Balawi detonated the suicide device he was wearing. The explosion killed al-Balawi, three security contractors, four CIA officers and the Jordanian General Intelligence Department (GID) officer who was al-Balawi’s handler. The vehicle shielded several other CIA officers at the scene from the blast. The CIA officers killed included the chief of the base at Khost and an analyst from headquarters who reportedly was the agency’s foremost expert on al Qaeda. The agency’s second-ranking officer in Afghanistan was allegedly among the officers who survived.
Al-Balawi was a Jordanian doctor from Zarqa (the hometown of deceased al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi). Under the alias Abu Dujanah al-Khurasani, he served as an administrator for Al-Hesbah, a popular Internet discussion forum for jihadists. Jordanian officers arrested him in 2007 because of his involvement with radical online forums, which is illegal in Jordan. The GID subsequently approached al-Balawi while he was in a Jordanian prison and recruited him to work as an intelligence asset.
Al-Balawi was sent to Pakistan less than a year ago as part of a joint GID/CIA mission. Under the cover of going to school to receive advanced medical training, al-Balawi established himself in Pakistan and began to reach out to jihadists in the region. Under his al-Khurasani pseudonym, al-Balawai announced in September 2009 in an interview on a jihadist Internet forum that he had officially joined the Afghan Taliban.
A Lucky Break for the TTP
It is unclear if al-Balawi was ever truly repentant. Perhaps he cooperated with the GID at first, but had a change of heart sometime after arriving in Pakistan. Either way, at some point al-Balawi approached the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the main Pakistani Taliban group, and offered to work with it against the CIA and GID. Al-Balawi confirmed this in a video statement recorded with TTP leader Hakeemullah Mehsud and released Jan. 9. This is significant because it means that al-Balawi’s appearance was a lucky break for the TTP, and not part of some larger, intentional intelligence operation orchestrated by the TTP or another jihadist entity like al Qaeda.
The TTP’s luck held when a group of 13 people gathered to meet al-Balawi upon his arrival at FOB Chapman. This allowed him to detonate his suicide device amid the crowd and create maximum carnage before he was able to be searched for weapons.
In the world of espionage, source meetings are almost always a dangerous activity for both the intelligence officer and the source. There are fears the source could be surveilled and followed to the meeting site, or that the meeting could be raided by host country authorities and the parties arrested. In the case of a terrorist source, the meeting site could be attacked and those involved in the meeting killed. Because of this, the CIA and other intelligence agencies exercise great care while conducting source meetings. Normally they will not bring the source into a CIA station or base. Instead, they will conduct the meeting at a secure, low-profile offsite location.
Operating in the wilds of Afghanistan is far different from operating out of an embassy in Vienna or Moscow, however. Khost province is Taliban territory, and it offers no refuge from the watching eyes and gunmen of the Taliban and their jihadist allies. Indeed, the province has few places safe enough even for a CIA base. And this is why the CIA base in Khost is located on a military base, FOB Chapman, named for the first American killed in Afghanistan following the U.S. invasion. Normally, an outer ring of Afghan security around the base searches persons entering FOB Chapman, who the U.S. military then searches again at the outer perimeter of the U.S. portion of the base. Al-Balawi, a high-value CIA asset, was allowed to skip these external layers of security to avoid exposing his identity to Afghan troops and U.S. military personnel. Instead, the team of Xe (the company formerly known as Blackwater) security contractors were to search al-Balawi as he arrived at the CIA’s facility.
A Failure to Follow Security Procedures
Had proper security procedures been followed, the attack should only have killed the security contractors, the vehicle driver and perhaps the Jordanian GID officer. But proper security measures were not followed, and several CIA officers rushed out to greet the unscreened Jordanian source. Reports indicate that the source had alerted his Jordanian handler that he had intelligence pertaining to the location of al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri. (There are also reports that al-Balawi had given his handlers highly accurate battle damage assessments on drone strikes in Pakistan, indicating that he had access to high-level jihadist sources.) The prospect of finally receiving such crucial and long-sought information likely explains the presence of the high-profile visitors from CIA headquarters in Langley and the station in Kabul — and their exuberance over receiving such coveted intelligence probably explains their eager rush to meet the source before he had been properly screened.
The attack, the most deadly against CIA personnel since the 1983 Beirut bombing, was clearly avoidable, or at least mitigable. But human intelligence is a risky business, and collecting human intelligence against jihadist groups can be flat-out deadly. The CIA officers in Khost the day of the bombing had grown complacent, and violated a number of security procedures. The attack thus serves as a stark reminder to the rest of the clandestine service of the dangers they face and of the need to adhere to time-tested security procedures.
A better process might have prevented some of the deaths, but it would not have solved the fundamental problem: The CIA had an asset who turned out to be a double agent. When he turned is less important than that he was turned into — assuming he had not always been — a double agent. His mission was to gain the confidence of the CIA as to his bona fides, and then create an event in which large numbers of CIA agents were present, especially the top al Qaeda analyst at the CIA. He knew that high-value targets would be present because he had set the stage for the meeting by dangling vital information before the agency. He went to the meeting to carry out his true mission, which was to deliver a blow against the CIA. He succeeded.
The Obama Strategy’s Weakness
In discussing the core weakness in the Afghan strategy U.S. President Barack Obama has chosen, we identified the basic problem as the intelligence war. We argued that establishing an effective Afghan army would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, because the Americans and their NATO allies lacked knowledge and sophistication in distinguishing friend from foe among those being recruited into the army. This problem is compounded by the fact that there are very few written documents in a country like Afghanistan that could corroborate identities. The Taliban would seed the Afghan army with its own operatives and supporters, potentially exposing the army’s operations to al Qaeda.
This case takes the problem a step further. The United States relied on Jordanian intelligence to turn a jihadist operative into a double agent. They were dependent on the Jordanian handler’s skills at debriefing, vetting and testing the now-double agent. It is now reasonable to assume the agent allowed himself to be doubled in an attempt to gain the trust of the handler. The Jordanians offered the source to the Americans, who obviously grabbed him, and the source passed all the tests to which he was undoubtedly subjected. Yet in the end, his contacts with the Taliban were not designed to provide intelligence to the Americans. The intelligence provided to the Americans was designed to win their trust and set up the suicide bombing. It is therefore difficult to avoid the conclusion that al-Balawi was playing the GID all along and that his willingness to reject his jihadist beliefs was simply an opportunistic strategy for surviving and striking.
Even though encountering al-Balawi was a stroke of luck for the TTP, the group’s exploitation of this lucky break was a very sophisticated operation. The TTP had to provide valuable intelligence to allow al-Balawi to build his credibility. It had to create the clustering of CIA agents by promising extraordinarily valuable intelligence. It then had to provide al-Balawi with an effective suicide device needed for the strike. And it had to do this without being detected by the CIA. Al-Balawi had a credible cover for meeting TTP agents; that was his job. But what al-Balawi told his handlers about his meetings with the TTP, and where he went between meetings, clearly did not indicate to the handlers that he was providing fabricated information or posed a threat.
In handling a double agent, it is necessary to track every step he takes. He cannot be trusted because of his history; the suspicion that he is still loyal to his original cause must always be assumed. Therefore, the most valuable moments in evaluating a double agent are provided by intense scrutiny of his patterns and conduct away from his handlers and new friends. Obviously, if this scrutiny was applied, al-Balawi and his TTP handlers were still able to confuse their observers. If it was not applied, then the CIA was setting itself up for disappointment. Again, such scrutiny is far more difficult to conduct in the Pakistani badlands, where resources to surveil a source are very scarce. In such a case, the intuition and judgment of the agent’s handler are critical, and al-Balawi was obviously able to fool his Jordanian handler.
Given his enthusiastic welcome at FOB Chapman, it would seem al-Balawi was regarded not only as extremely valuable but also as extremely reliable. Whatever process might have been used at the meeting, the central problem was that he was regarded as a highly trusted source when he shouldn’t have been. Whether this happened because the CIA relied entirely on the Jordanian GID for evaluation or because American interrogators and counterintelligence specialists did not have the skills needed to pick up the cues can’t be known. What is known is that the TTP ran circles around the CIA in converting al-Balawi to its uses.
The United States cannot hope to reach any satisfactory solution in Afghanistan unless it can win the intelligence war. But the damage done to the CIA in this attack cannot be underestimated. At least one of the agency’s top analysts on al Qaeda was killed. In an intelligence war, this is the equivalent of sinking an aircraft carrier in a naval war. The United States can’t afford this kind of loss. There will now be endless reviews, shifts in personnel and re-evaluations. In the meantime, the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan will be attempting to exploit the opportunity presented by this disruption.
Casualties happen in war, and casualties are not an argument against war. However, when the center of gravity in a war is intelligence, and an episode like this occurs, the ability to prevail becomes a serious question. We have argued that in any insurgency, the insurgents have a built-in advantage. It is their country and their culture, and they are indistinguishable from everyone else. Keeping them from infiltrating is difficult.
This was a different matter. Al-Balawi was Jordanian; his penetration of the CIA was less like the product of an insurgency than an operation carried out by a national intelligence service. And this is the most troubling aspect of this incident for the United States. The operation was by all accounts a masterful piece of tradecraft beyond the known abilities of a group like the TTP. Even though al-Balawi’s appearance was a lucky break for the TTP, not the result of an intentional, long-term operation, the execution of the operation that arose as a result of that lucky break was skillfully done — and it was good enough to deliver a body blow to the CIA. The Pakistani Taliban would thus appear far more skilled than we would have thought, which is the most important takeaway from this incident, and something to ponder.
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Copyright 2010 Stratfor.
The Mission, the Men, and Pete Blaber
July 28, 2009 by Steven OHern · 2 Comments
Pete Blaber has written an excellent book, The Mission, the Men, and Me that uses examples from his Delta Force career to illustrate some leadership lessons. But intelligence officers and users of intelligence would gain much from applying the same lessons to the craft of intelligence.
One lesson that is particularly applicable to intelligence that is conveyed by Blaber is “Always listen to the man on the ground.” Blaber learned this lesson both as a leader of a team trying to gather as much information as possible about a target and as the commander of a unit that had information vital to Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan that was ignored by higher commanders. Blaber’s account of Operation Anaconda is gut wrenching as he details what information was available from his teams whose members had infiltrated the high ground of the Shahi Khot Valley and were providing a detailed and current situation report as well as directing devastating air strikes against the al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the valley. Yet that information was not just overlooked, it was ignored by the commanders planning and leading the insertion of a Navy SEAL team and the Quick Reaction Force sent to rescue a SEAL and an Air Force Combat Controller who were stranded during the SEAL team’s attempted insertion.
The higher up (and further back from the battle) commanders were lulled into thinking they had sufficient situational awareness to make decisions without listening to the man on the ground because of their access to satellite radio transmissions and aerial views from UAVs. Blaber describes the UAV imagery as looking through a soda straw. You can see, but only so much and without the context of the wide angle view.
Blaber’s account of Operation Anaconda provides insight to intelligence personnel as it is another example of the military’s and intelligence community’s love affair with high-tech that makes many in those communities prefer what is obtained from technology over information obtained from the use of shoe leather (or synthetic hi-tech boot soles) and from talking to people. Similar to the lessons in The Intelligence Wars, Blaber’s book gives examples of the military’s propensity to not share information. At one point, Blaber was advised that he was cooperating too much by sharing information with the 10th Mountain Group and the CIA. Blaber also does a good job of explaining how rigid the Army’s planning process it and how it locks the Army into bad results by not allowing new information to affect decisions already made, but not implemented.
The man on the ground provides the best sense of what is going on and what is possible – whether the man on the ground is a commando on a mountaintop dug into a well-hidden observation post or a HUMINT operative in the same village where your target is. When will our leaders learn this lesson?
SECDEF Gates: Iran’s Supply of EFPs to Afghanistan Increased
February 1, 2009 by Steven OHern · 1 Comment
Last week, the Washington Post reported that Iran’sshipment of explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) (also known as explosively formed penetrators) into Afghanistan has slightly increased. The Washington Post quoted Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates,
Gates also warned of Iranian interference in Afghanistan, pointing to a slightly increased flow of weapons including components of lethal munitions known as “explosively formed projectiles.” He said Iran wants to “have it both ways,” seeking economic and diplomatic benefits of relations with Kabul while still attempting to impose “the highest possible costs” on U.S. and coalition troops.
Gates also noted that Iran has been busy in the western hemisphere.
Iranian activities have been troubling in other parts of the world, Gates said, including Latin America, where Iran is setting up “a lot of offices and a lot of fronts.”
Analysis: Iran’s supply of EFPs to the Taliban in Afghanistan is not new. A 2007 report by the Washington Post described an interception of EFPs and other weapons from Iran. As the current economic situation occupies the new Obama Administration and leaders in much of the world, Iran and the IRGC Qods Force, the primary Iranian group responsible for such intervention outside of Iran, continue to work largely unimpeded and even little noticed.
How the IRGC Routes Weapons to Gaza
January 26, 2009 by Steven OHern · 2 Comments
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) uses two routes to supply its weapons to Hamas in Gaza, according to Times Online. Uzi Mahnaimi writes that the IRGC appears to be using two methods of smuggling weapons into Gaza that have been used since Iran supplied weapons to Yasser Arafat.
[T]he Iranians are attempting to smuggle munitions from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, where the arms shipments are loaded onto commercial vessels. . . .
once in the Red Sea the cargo is taken on one of two routes. The first is to dock in Somalia and Sudan, where professional smugglers carry the cargo overland to Sinai. In Sinai, Bedouin specialists smuggle the shipment into Gaza through the notorious border tunnels.
Despite intensive Israeli bombing, some tunnels remain open. Palestinian sources in Rafah, the Gaza Strip’s southern town, estimate that 100 tunnels are still in action, about 20% of the pre-war total.
A second arms smuggling route into Gaza has also been used by Tehran, according to well briefed sources. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has sent shipments through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean to anchor off the Gaza coast, inside Egyptian territorial waters, where the Israeli navy is barred.
After dark, Iranian frogmen transfer weapons in sealed containers to Palestinian fishing boats. This can prove dangerous as the Israeli navy may open fire without warning, but according to the sources it has worked well in the past.
Analysis: Note the tunnel infrastructure available to Hamas — according to the article about 100 tunnels are still active out of approximately 500 tunnels that were open before the recent Israeli military action in Gaza. Also, the Times Online article reports that a U.S. Navy warship boarded a freighter for inspection and found weapons during its search. U.S. forces have a more active role in monitoring and deterring Iran’s supply of weapons to Hamas than is widely reported in the U.S. media.
IRGC Sustained Losses in Gaza While Advising Hamas Rocket Units
January 25, 2009 by Steven OHern · 2 Comments
Iranian Revolutionary Guards were killed in Gaza during the recent fighting reports The Bulletin (a Philadelphia based newspaper.) David Bedein, Middle East Correspondent for The Bulletin writes that the IRGC was in Gaza to assist Hamas with firing rockets and building new, larger ones:
IRGC officers helped the Hamas regime and Islamic Jihad fire BM-21 Grad rockets from urban areas.
“We believe there were dozens of IRGC personnel in Gaza during the war,” an Israeli source said. “Some were killed; others went into hiding; and others escaped.”
Israeli intelligence sources IRGC sent officers to the Gaza Strip to help Hamas improve the range and accuracy of its rockets.
IRGC was also authorized to help establish facilities to produce the Grad and other extended-range Katyusha-class rockets in the Gaza Strip.
Israel expects Iran to expand the IRGC presence in the Gaza Strip amid the cease-fire. Iran is expected to build a Hamas arsenal of rockets with ranges of up to 50 miles, which would include the Fajr-3 and Fajr-4 rockets.
The IRGC presence was arranged in 2008 by the late Hamas Interior Minister Said Siyam, the sources said. Siyam was killed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza City on Saturday, hours before the unilateral cease-fire began.
“Siyam’s death removes Hamas’ key liasion with Iran,” an Israeli source said. “But there are others who could fill his shoes.”
Analysis:It’s unlikely that the death of Said Siyam, the liaison between Hamas and the IRGC, was collateral damage in an attack against another target. Most likely, Siyam was targeted as evidenced by Israeli “sources” providing detailed information to various media sources about the IRGC assistance to Hamas.
Israel Destroys Hamas Unit Trained by IRGC
January 16, 2009 by Steven OHern · Leave a Comment
The “Iranian Unit” of Hamas, composed of Hamas members trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been “destroyed” by the Israeli Defense Force, according to Haaretz.com. The website reported,
most of the unit’s members were killed in fighting in the Zeytun neighborhood, where they had been deployed by the military leadership of Hamas.
The unit numbered approximately 100 men who had traveled to Iran and Hezbollah camps, mostly in the Beka’a Valley, where they were trained in infantry fighting tactics. The militants were also trained in the use of anti-tank missiles, the detonation of explosives, among other skills.
They managed to return to the Gaza Strip through tunnels in the Rafah border area, although a few also crossed during one of the few times that Egypt agreed to open the border crossing as a gesture of good will to Hamas.
Analysis:Clearly, Israel has targeted Iranian supplied and trained forces during its ground operations in Gaza. Although such attacks on Hamas units trained by the IRGC degrade the abilities of such units to attack Israel, such action does not address the more persistent threat of the influence and capability Iran gains by recruiting, training, equipping, and guiding proxy forces in Gaza.
The Telegraph: Iran’s Involvement in Gaza
January 11, 2009 by Steven OHern · 1 Comment
Con Coughlin analyzes the Israel-Gaza conflict as part of a larger continuing attack by Iran upon Israel in The Telegraph.
Israel’s relentless offensive to crush the radical Palestinian Hamas movement in Gaza is the opening salvo of the country’s wider campaign to confront the mounting threat posed by Iran to the survival of the Jewish state.
While the Israeli military’s immediate focus is to destroy Hamas’s ability to terrorise Israel’s southern border, the military campaign should be seen within the wider context of Israel’s growing resolve to deal with the combined danger of Iran’s continuing support for Islamic terrorist groups and its controversial uranium enrichment programme. The Israeli government sees both of these as direct threats to the country’s existence.So far as Israel is concerned, 2009 is the year that, given Iran’s current rate of progress with uranium enrichment, will decide whether the mullahs succeed in their dream of becoming a nuclear power. Given the repeated statements President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has made about destroying Israel, the Israelis are rightly concerned that a nuclear-armed Iran would constitute a grave threat to its future survival.
At the same time the Israeli authorities are deeply alarmed by Iran’s continued support for radical Islamic groups located on the country’s northern and southern borders, both of which are committed to Israel’s ultimate destruction. Both the radical Shia Hizbollah militia in southern Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza are funded and equipped by the Iranian regime, whose Revolutionary Guards travel regularly to the region to brief the groups on strategy.
Even more detail is provided by a recent article in The Cutting Edge News.
Those 40 km missiles Hamas is unleashing against Israeli cities are certainly not “amateur rockets… nagging the residents” of Israeli cities, as a Palestinian journalist recently wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.
The press calls the rockets “Grads” or “Katyushas,” the Russian name given several generations ago to the original Soviet-made surface-to-surface missiles. Today, it would be more correct to label some of the missiles by their real name, the “Arash,” the name given to them by their Iranian manufacturers. The long-range 120 mm mortars raining down on Israel are also Iranian in origin. The mortars are equipped with auxiliary motors to increase their range from six to ten kilometers.
The longest range “Grads” were manufactured in China and but (sic) many of these too were smuggled to Hamas via Iran. Visitors to Sderot’s rocket heap museum of spent missiles can view Iranian-made weapons for themselves.
Analysis:Most of the media is focusing on the death and destruction suffered by Gazans, many of whom are not guilty of any actions against Israel. But that focus benefits Iran as it continues to orchestrate a swirling maelstrom around Israel while continuing progress on the enrichment of Uranium. As both the Telegraph and The Cutting Edge News note, Israel recognizes the larger threat posed by this plan. The challenge for Israel is to find an effective strategy to counter Hamas in Gaza while retaining sufficient credibility to convince allies of the Iranian encirclement (threats from Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, and, in the future, nuclear armed rockets) strategy.
What Really Scares the IRGC?
January 11, 2009 by Steven OHern · Leave a Comment
The IRGC is so concerned about the danger posed by the free exchange of information available on the internet and via text messaging, that it seeks to dominate Iranian net-thought with a force of 10,000 bloggers. Blogger Hamid Tehrani has posted an interesting and well written post in the Internet & Democracy blog.
Tehrani describes the effort:
IRGC’s official press organ, Sobh Sadegh, writes that it considered the Internet and other digital devices including SMS as a threat to be controlled. It announced that the 10,000 blogs will promote revolutionary ideas. IRGC considers the Internet as an instrument for a “velvet revolution” and warned that foreign countries have invested in this tool to topple the Islamic Regime.
As Tehrani notes, the Iranian government (i.e. the IRGC, as the Supreme Leader’s tool) already controls all “old media” – newspapers, radio, and television. But the internet, filled with blogs by anonymous Iranians presents a real threat. For that reason, the IRGC seeks to have the Basij raise a force of 10,000 bloggers.
Analysis: Iran’s clerics and the IRGC know that Iranians are thirsty for objective news and information. The lesson from Iraq is not lost on Iran’s rulers. Iraq’s people, as soon as they were unshackled from Saddam Hussein’s restrictions, purchased satellite dishes and cell phones by the ton. Internet cafes sprang up in many neighborhoods. Once a repressed people have experienced unrestricted access to information, they are loathe to return to big brother’s (or Supreme Leader’s) version of the news.
Iran’s Involvement in Gaza Gets Noticed
January 7, 2009 by Steven OHern · Leave a Comment
As Israel’s incursion into Gaza continues, Iran’s connection to events in Gaza is being noticed by various media outlets.
The best I’ve seen is Reuel Marc Gerecht writing in today’s Wall Street Journal. Mr. Gerecht, a former CIA officer concisely summarizes Iran’s intervention in Gaza and describes it as part of a larger strategy for the region.
The mullahs have a chance of supplanting Saudi Arabia, the font of the most vicious anti-Shiite Sunni creed, as the most reliable backer of Palestinian fundamentalists. Even more than the Lebanese Hezbollah, which remains tied to and constrained by the complex matrix of Lebanese politics, Hamas seems willing to absorb enormous losses to continue its jihad against Israel. Where Saudi Arabia has been uneasy about the internecine strife among Palestinians — it has bankrolled both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas — Iran has put its money on the former.
. . .
Through Hamas, Tehran can possibly reach the ultimate prize, the Egyptian faithful. For reasons both ancient and modern, Egypt has perhaps the most Shiite-sympathetic religious identity in the Sunni Arab world. As long as Hamas remains the center of the Palestinian imagination — and unless Hamas loses its military grip on Gaza, it will continue to command the attention of both the Arab and Western media — Egypt’s politics remain fluid and potentially volatile. Tehran is certainly under no illusions about the strength of Egypt’s military dictatorship, but the uncertainties in Egypt are greater now than they have been since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, Foreign Affairs Analyst for FOX News, begins a post on a FOX News blog with a paragraph that leaves little doubt of Jafarzadeh’s opinion as to who is responsible for the violence in Gaza.
The loss of innocent lives in Gaza is deplorable. Behind the horrific scenes, a culprit of the current crisis crouches unscathed—-the ruling regime in Iran. This beast, which seeks to establish an “Islamic” empire by exporting its brand of Islamic fundamentalism throughout the region, has in many ways been nurtured and emboldened by the appeasement policies of the past three decades. And for those wrong-headed policies toward the ayatollahs’ regime, the West shares in the responsibility for the bloodshed and carnage inflicted on the Middle East.
Analysis: The violence in Gaza furthers the goals of Iran and the IRGC. Israel’s reaction to the rocket attacks, while understandable, subjects Israel to condemnation from much of the world, especially when innocent lives are demonstrably lost such as in the recent attack on the United Nations sponsored school. As Gerecht notes in his op-ed, Shia Iran works across sectarian lines, freely sponsoring Sunni Hamas. Iran’s leaders continue to focus on reducing the influence and power of its two main enemies, the United States and Israel.
