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Tehran's Ruling Clerics Scramble for Survival |
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Wednesday, 10 October 2007 |
 By Alireza Jafarzadeh
Source : FoxNews
As expected, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad brought a briefcase full of denials to New York last month. When asked about providing training and weapons to militias in Iraq, he said, "Why would we want to do that?" Commenting on Iran's long-term, clandestine nuclear program, he claimed, "all our nuclear activities have been completely peaceful and transparent." Most viewers shook their heads in disbelief that he could utter such blatant lies from a Columbia University podium.
As the evidence continues to mount about Iran's violent intervention in
Iraq, export of terrorism and systematic lies to the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ahmadinejad and the Islamic fundamentalist
regime are pushed further into a dark corner of global isolation.
In Iraq, proof of Iran's imbedded terrorist network continues to grow.
On September 20, U.S. troops seized a Qods Force commander Mahmoud
Farhadi in northern Iraq and charged that he had been operating as an
agent in Iraq for 10 years.
Captured during a raid at the Palace Hotel in Sulaimaniyah, Farhadi was
posing as an Iranian businessman traveling as part of a trade
delegation to Iraq. In truth, he is a Brigadier General in the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corp and active in Iraq as a commander of elite
Qods Force operations for years.
In April 2003, the main Iranian opposition, the People's Mojahedin
Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) revealed that Gen. Farhadi had been
stationed in the Iraqi city of Karbala at the time, just as the Iranian
regime was setting up its terrorist network in Iraq to take advantage
of the chaos following the U.S.-led invasion. Farhadi had been
commissioned to coordinate Tehran's proxy militant group known as the
Badr Corps and oversee the Qods Force's penetration of Iraq when the
war broke in March 2003. He entered Iraq and led his forces all the way
to Baghdad at the time.
Farhadi was a major catch for coalition forces. The Iranian regime had
hand picked him to lead its first clandestine operations in Iraq as he
was one of its most experienced commanders, having served throughout
the Iran-Iraq War and subsequently as one of the military's top
intelligence directors. Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the top commander of
day-to-day operations in Iraq, called Farhadi a "significant" player
who had been involved in supporting Iraqi militias with money, weapons
and training.
Farhadi's arrest is only the latest in the coalition forces' efforts to capture Iranian military personnel in Iraq.
On October 7, 2007, the U.S. made another chilling announcement about
the Qods Force's presence in Iraq. Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S.
commander in Iraq, said that Tehran's ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan
Kazemi-Qomi, was a member of the Qods Force. This is the Iranian
official who sat down with U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker to discuss how
Iran can help the U.S. bring security to Iraq.
Petraeus did not divulge the source of his information about Qomi, but
in my column,Iran's Terror War against the U.S. in Iraq, I revealed
Qomi's identity as "a senior Qods Force commander," based on
intelligence from my MEK sources in Iran.
So much for Ahmadinejad's denials that Tehran has infiltrated Iraq.
Sending a member of the Qods Force — the unit responsible for Iraq's
deadly roadside bombs and most of its terrorist forces — to the
diplomacy table is quintessential Tehran behavior. With every denial of
an Iranian presence in Iraq, Ahmadinejad smiled behind the knowledge
that his IRGC cronies are directly supporting most of the terrorist
violence.
Threats of more United Nations sanctions against Iran are also pressing
the fundamentalist mullahs into a corner. After years of
black-and-white evidence of outright lies and deception in the IAEA
reports, Iran continues to claim that it is only interested in nuclear
energy, not a nuclear bomb. But Western nations including the United
States, France, Britain and Germany, are pressing for tougher action to
halt Iran's uranium enrichment cascades.
Pointing to Iran's refusal to respond to the IAEA's questions and its
attempts to hide some of its biggest nuclear facilities, these
countries wave the facts at Iran's leaders and demand that they obey
international law. Fed up with Iran's bloody intervention in Iraq and
refusal to halt nuclear enrichment, France's new president has warned
that Iran was baiting the world for military strikes.
The Iranian leadership should be reminded that it can no longer fool
all of the people all of the time. We know that it is building IEDs and
training Iraqi militias how to use them. We know it considers U.S.-Iran
talks about Iraq a joke because it sends a terrorist to the table. And
we know it has been pursuing a nuclear weapon for years in a desperate
attempt to gain leverage in the region and pursue its hegemonic goals.
We also know that escalating civil unrest throughout Iran threatens the
regime's survival, and that the regime's response is to try to
eradicate the organized opposition, the MEK, and to crush the populace
into submission through oppressive laws, arrests and an unprecedented
number of public executions.
On Monday, October 8, 2007, Iranian students protesting against
Ahmadinejad's visit to Tehran University clashed with security forces
on campus and chanted "death to the dictator" ahead of scheduled speech
of the regime's president. "Why only Columbia. We have questions too?"
read banners held by the enraged students.
With threats advancing upon them from every side, Tehran's ruling
clerics are scrambling for survival. The United States should hit the
mullahs where it hurts them the most: remove the politically-driven and
ill-advised terror tag from the main Iranian opposition, the MEK as
that label has acted a barrier to democratic change in Iran. Failure to
do so, would help the Ayatollahs to get the bomb and turn Iraq into a
sister Islamic Republic.
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Alireza Jafarzadeh is a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs Analyst and
the author of "The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming
Nuclear Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
Jafarzadeh has revealed Iran's terrorist network in Iraq and its terror
training camps since 2003. He first disclosed the existence of the
Natanz uranium enrichment facility and the Arak heavy water facility in
August 2002.
Prior to becoming a contributor for FOX, and until August 2003,
Jafarzadeh acted for a dozen years as the chief congressional liaison
and media spokesman for the U.S. representative office of Iran's
parliament in exile, the National Council of Resistance of Iran.
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