Carrying out an assassination in such a surgical fashion against a moving target without any civilian casualties requires real-time intelligence on the ground.

After the killing, Iran’s intelligence minister, Mahmoud Alavi, claimed that two months earlier, he had warned security forces that there was an assassination plot targeting Mr. Fakhrizadeh at the exact location where he was shot.

Mr. Alavi said the person who planned the killing was “a member of the armed forces. We couldn’t carry out intelligence operations on the armed forces”.

But he indirectly implied the perpetrator was a member of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s most elite military unit. If so, the agent would have to have been high up enough in the IRGC to have been able to brush off the warning and carry out the plan at the set date, time and location.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is also known to have been a member of the IRGC.

Sources inside Tehran’s Evin prison security ward, where those who are accused of spying for foreign countries are held, have told the BBC there have been scores of high-ranking IRGC commanders held there.

The Iranian government does not publicize their names and ranks to avoid tarnishing the reputation of the Revolutionary Guards.

A former intelligence officer for the IRGC Quds Force (its overseas operations arm) has told the BBC foreign agencies have gathered evidence against a number of Iranian ambassadors and IRGC commanders.

He said it includes information about relationships with women, which he said could be used to blackmail those officials to force them to co-operate with foreign spies.

In late January 2018, in the dead of night, a dozen men broke into a storage facility in an industrial district, 20 miles (30km) from the capital, Tehran.

There were 32 safes, but they knew which ones contained the most valuable materials. In less than seven hours, they melted the locks of 27 of them, took half a tonne of clandestine nuclear archives and left without a trace. It was one of the most audacious heists in Iran’s history, but officials kept quiet.

Three months later, the stolen documents appeared 1,200 miles (2,000 km) away, in Tel Aviv in Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the then Israeli prime minister, showcased the stolen material – the result, he said, of a Mossad operation. Iranian officials at the time called the documents fabrications and they said such an incident never took place.

On his last day in office, in August 2021, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani confirmed Israel stole Iran’s nuclear documents and showed the evidence to US President Donald Trump.

Presenting the archives at a specially convened news conference in April 2018, Mr. Netanyahu highlighted Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s role in what he said was an undeclared nuclear weapons programme.

“Dr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh… remember that name,” he reiterated. Mr. Fakhrizadeh was assassinated two years later.

‘Shoot, don’t talk’

In the past two decades, a number of Iran’s most prominent nuclear scientists have been killed. There have been multiple sabotages in Iran’s nuclear and military facilities, but so far the Iranian security forces have mainly failed to prevent or capture the assailants and plotters.

In the final year of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency in 2013, there were rumours that IRGC commanders, intelligence officers and even panegyrists (officials who deliver religious eulogies) had been arrested for spying for the Mossad. But those allegations were never officially confirmed.

One of the accused was the officer in charge of counter-intelligence against Israel in Iran’s ministry of intelligence. An Iranian Revolutionary court quietly convicted him, sentenced him to death, and executed him without any publicity.

Iran and Israel’s shadow war takes a dangerous turn
Only last year, Mr Ahmadinejad confirmed the Mossad had infiltrated his intelligence ministry. He said: “Is it normal that the most senior officer responsible for the control of Israeli spies, responsible for confronting Israeli plots in Iran, himself turned out to be an Israeli agent?”

Israel rarely comments about the Mossad’s activities. Retired Israel Defense Forces (IDF) general and former defence ministry official Amos Gilad told the BBC this was for a good reason.

“I’m against any publicity. If you want to shoot, shoot, don’t talk… the Mossad’s reputation is to do fantastic operations, allegedly, clandestine, without publicity.”

Today, former Iranian officials are concerned that the Mossad has reached officials high up in Iranian security and intelligence institutions.

Ali Yunesi, a former Iranian intelligence minister and top adviser to President Rouhani, issued this warning in an interview: “The Mossad’s influence in many parts of the country is so vast that every member of the Iranian leadership should be worried for their lives, for their safety.”

You can watch Israel and Iran, The Hidden War at the following times (GMT in UK on BBC News Channel Sun 6 Feb 15:30 and Mon 7 Feb 02:30 and outside UK on BBC World News Sun 6 Feb 04:30; 10:30 and Tues 8 Feb 08:30

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-60250816

The post Israel’s Mossad suspected of high-level Iran penetration first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

–They have mostly avoided open clashes, but their ongoing campaigns have been punctuated by high-profile attacks and assassinations.

After the US unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, tensions between Washington and Tehran have steadily risen.

For leaders in Israel — one of the US’s closest partners and Iran’s biggest foes — those tensions have confirmed their misgivings about the deal and about Iran, and they’ve gone on the warpath.

Iran has worked on nuclear technology for decades. The US has long suspected Iran of using its civilian nuclear program as cover for developing weapons. That suspicion is also held by the Israelis, who have been ensnared in a potentially existential struggle with Tehran since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

A nuclear weapon, or the ability to produce one quickly, would offer Tehran some much-needed security against its real and perceived adversaries. But Iran has vowed to destroy Israel, and Israel fears a nuclear weapon would allow Tehran to back up its provocative talk.
While much of that talk may be for propaganda purposes, Iran has shown the lengths it will go and pain it will endure in order to attack US, Western, and Israeli targets directly or through proxies, giving some weight to its nuclear threats.

To counter that threat, Israeli military and intelligence services have conducted a shadowy covert-action campaign of espionage, sabotage, and assassinations against Iran’s nuclear facilities and the people running them.

Israel has also shown that it will go to great lengths to ensure its security, and Tel Aviv is willing to pursue other, more dramatic courses of action in response to threats from Iran.

“We have a duty to be brave and responsible for the fate of our children and grandchildren. We have used force against our enemies in the past, and we are convinced that in extreme situations, there is a need to act using military means,” Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Alon Schuster said in a recent interview.

Indeed, Israel has long followed a no-holds-barred strategy in which the threat justifies the means. Its shadowy campaign against the Iranian nuclear programs uses complementary diplomatic, military, and intelligence tactics.

While Israel’s military has been heavily involved in that campaign, Mossad, Israel’s main intelligence service, has landed many of the blows against Iran itself.

According to a recent report by The Jewish Chronicle, which didn’t name or describe its sources, Mossad successfully infiltrated the Iranian supply chain and used the opportunity to sell Tehran faulty materials that caused fires at the Natanz nuclear-enrichment facility in July 2020.

The report also said Israeli intelligence officers recruited Iranian nuclear scientists who conducted sabotage at Natanz in April 2021 before being smuggled out of the country. Mossad is said to have used an unmanned aerial vehicle to attack the Iran Centrifuge Technology Company, a factory making centrifuges crucial for producing weapons-grade uranium.

Facilities are easier to replace than expert knowledge, and Mossad has also gone after the hard-to-acquire know-how necessary for a nuclear-weapons capability by killing Iranian scientists working on the nuclear program.

Attacks against Iranian scientists have become more brazen. The November 2020 assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, reportedly with a remote-controlled machine gun using advanced artificial-intelligence technology, on a highway in Iran is something straight out of a Hollywood movie.

Israel’s manhunting effort likely draws on experience going back to Israel’s creation in 1948. In the years that followed, Israelis hunted down numerous ex-Nazis, including Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann. Following the 1972 killing of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics by Palestinian terrorists, Mossad conducted a similar campaign.

But Tel Aviv understands that this is a stalling tactic that can only frustrate Tehran’s efforts and not permanently undo the work its done in pursuit of nuclear technology.

In addition to those clandestine actions, the Israeli Defense Forces has been preparing and presenting Israeli policymakers with military options to take out targets associated with Iran’s nuclear program. This is standard planning for any military, and the IDF has received nearly $3 billion in additional funds to do it.

Israel would also have to take into account second- and third-order effects of such strikes, such as how Iranian proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah, would react. Those groups, based in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, respectively, would be more likely to try to attack Israel.

Israeli officials are lobbying other countries to take a stronger stance against Iran while refraining from directly discussing what actions they’ve taken.

“We hope the whole world will be mobilized for the mission. For that, we’ve allocated a significant sum to increase our readiness. What hit Natanz? I can’t say,” Schuster, the deputy defense minister, said last month.

As Iran remains committed to its nuclear program, Israel is sure to continue its shadowy campaign against Tehran.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/attack-inside-iran-nuclear-facility-latest-in-battle-with-israel-2022-1

The post Attacks inside one of Iran’s most secure nuclear facilities are the latest blows in a shadowy battle with Israel first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

A South Korean delegation left for Iran on Thursday to negotiate the early release of an oil tanker and its crew seized in strategic Gulf waters this week.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps troops on Monday stormed the South Korean-flagged MT Hankuk Chemi as it navigated the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, and forced the vessel to a nearby Iranian port.

Iranian officials said the vessel was seized for violating maritime environmental laws as it was carrying 7,200 tons of “oil chemical products.”

The Guards said they arrested crew were from South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Myanmar.

“I plan to meet my counterpart at the Iranian Foreign Ministry and will meet others through various routes if it will help efforts to resolve the issue of the ship’s seizure,” Koh Kyung-sok, the chief delegate, and the director-general of the South Korean Foreign Ministry’s Middle Eastern affairs department, was quoted as saying before boarding the plane to Tehran.

The strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman

Tensions spiral in the Gulf

Iran’s seizure of the tanker came after Tehran had urged Seoul to release the $7 billion (€5.7 billion) of Iranian assets frozen in South Korea under US sanctions.

The money was frozen in South Korean banks after President Donald Trump withdrew the US from a multilateral agreement which limited Tehran’s nuclear enrichment activities in exchange for a relaxation of international economic and financial sanctions.

President Trump then slapped unilateral trade and financial sanctions on Iran.

The US had initially provided South Korea with a waiver to avoid implementing the new sanctions, but those lapsed, essentially forcing Seoul to freeze the Iranian assets.

Iran’s move to seize the vessel also coincides with Tehran’s announcement that it will increase the level of uranium enrichment at its Fordo nuclear facility to 20%, well above that agreed to with several countries, including the US, until Trump’s withdrawal from the deal in 2018. Uranium enriched to 90% is required to fuel nuclear weapons. Iran claims its nuclear program is strictly for peaceful purposes.

Meanwhile, January 2 marked the one-year anniversary of the assassination of General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, in a US drone attack.

Tension between the Islamic Republic and the United States has been running high in recent weeks, as Tehran marked the assassination, and Washington deployed military assets to the region, including the return of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and repeated sorties of pairs of strategic B-52 bombers over the Persian Gulf.

Concerns over the potential for a military confrontation between the US and Iran have been voiced from several quarters over the past few weeks. President Trump threatened Iran over a rocket attack by Tehran-backed Iraqi militants near the US Embassy in Baghdad on Christmas Eve.

Iran has responded to the US military moves, with its Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accusing Trump of manufacturing a pretext to attack Iran in the waning hours of his administration.

The crisis also follows the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh on November 27, an attack still shrouded in mystery.

Washington has deployed more military assets to the Persian Gulf, including the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz

A lot of uncertainty

All this adds up to a lot of moving parts and a lot of uncertainty, says Cheong Wook-sik of the South Korean NGO PeaceNetwork. Like most observers, Cheong places little credence on the validity of Iran’s “pollution” justification for seizing the oil tanker.

He suggests the move is more likely designed to generate leverage over the US in terms of a potential return to the Iranian nuclear agreement (formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA), initially negotiated when incoming US President Joe Biden was vice-president, and a supporter of the deal concluded under President Barack Obama.

“For South Korea to release the $7 billion in Iranian funds held in South Korean banks it would require some type of waiver from implementing the US sanctions, or for the US to return to the JCPOA,” Cheong told DW, adding: “The Iranian government also hopes the South Korean government will ask the new incoming Biden administration to lift the economic sanctions against Iran.”

Although there is significant concern frequently voiced in the public sphere over the potential for Trump to initiate a crisis in his last days in office, the incoming Biden administration provides hope for a significant drawdown of tension, said Cheong.

Changes in US policy will be required, he pointed out.

“In order to revive the Iranian nuclear deal, the United States, especially the new administration, should lift economic sanctions and return to the Iranian nuclear deal. At the same time, Iran should stop the enrichment of uranium fuel to 20% at the Fordo facilities,” he said. “These two things should be done simultaneously. If so, the Iranian frozen assets issue can be resolved, and the seized South Korean ship returned.”

A mediating role?

South Korea may represent a perfect intermediary between the US and Iran. South Korea had imported a significant portion of its oil from Iran prior to United Nations Security Council sanctions imposed before negotiating the JCPOA deal. Also, historically, Seoul has had good diplomatic relations with Tehran for decades. Cheong views the ship seizure very much through the lens of geopolitical strategy.

“The Iranian government wants to send a message to the United States, that if the United States does not lift economic sanctions, the Iranian government can exact revenge on US allies such as South Korea. At the same time, South Korea can play some kind of mediating role between Iran and the United States on these issues.”

Still, the risk of a military flare-up is there. The seizure, the enrichment, and the anniversary, says Cheong, “can trigger reactions from Israel and the United States.”

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has argued for a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, suggesting the increase in enrichment provides evidence Iran is seeking nukes and not nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes.

Although South Korea said it is committed to resolving the ship seizure issue diplomatically, that resolution will likely require the involvement of Washington and the next US administration.

“I hope that the Biden team sends some message — officially or unofficially — after its inauguration on January 20 … to seek dialogue with the Iranian government for resolving the current issues peacefully, such a message would weaken the hardliners in Iran, Israel, and the United States and strengthen the doves,” said the PeaceNetwork director.

Source: https://www.dw.com/en/south-korea-iran-oil-tanker-sanctions/a-56156528

The post South Korea presses Iran over seized oil tanker as Gulf tensions rise first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif

Israeli leaders have vowed not to let Iran get a nuclear weapon after it said it was enriching uranium to 20 percent purity at Natanz and the secretive Fordow underground facility.

Tensions were mounting as a US aircraft carrier reversed its decision to leave the Gulf after Iran told the international nuclear watchdog of its scaled-up operation on Monday. It is installing 1,000 new centrifuges to speed up the process.

Enriching uranium to 20 percent – enough to make reactor fuel – is prohibited under the nuclear deal negotiated in 2015, from which Donald Trump withdrew the US in 2018. Weapons-grade uranium is enriched to 90 percent.

However, leaders of the Islamic Republic are in combative mood following the assassination of senior Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh at the end of last year, the fifth atomic expert to be killed. Iranian leaders blame Israel.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has said the US and Israel are plotting to instigate a “casus belli” – cause of war – in Trump’s final days as commander-in-chief. Trump is thought more likely to approve an attack on Iran than US President-Elect Joe Biden, who takes office in two weeks’ time.

In recent days, Trump reversed a “de-escalation” decision from his defence secretary and ordered the homeward-bound USS Nimitz back to the Persian Gulf, with Trump’s officials citing unspecified threats from Iran.

Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran’s move to enrich uranium to 20 percent purity “cannot be explained in any way, other than a desire to continue realising its goal of developing a military nuclear programme. Israel will not allow that.”

The Fordow announcement comes a year after Iranian General Qassem Soleimani was killed by an American drone in Baghdad on 3 January 2020. Thousands of Iranians marked his death on the streets of Tehran on Sunday.

Under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran was limited to 3.67 percent enrichment, but after Trump withdrew the US, reimposed sanctions, and added additional measures, Iran has said it is no longer bound by its obligations.

US President-Elect Joe Biden is believed to be considering a renewal of the nuclear deal, despite US allies such as Israel and Saudi Arabia being so vehemently opposed to it. Israelis say the sanction relief helps Iran fund groups like Hezbollah.

It comes as Iranian forces seized a South Korea-flagged ship, claiming that it was polluting Iranian waters. Analysts say the real reason is South Korea’s refusal to unlock frozen oil-revenue accounts.

Source: https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/israel-will-not-allow-iran-to-get-nuclear-bomb-amid-uranium-enrichment/

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