The Long Retributive Arm of Iranian Reprisal

"The [Iranian] campaign incorporates the full spectrum of transnational repression tactics, including assassinations, renditions, detentions, unlawful deportations, Interpol abuse, digital intimidation, spyware, coercion by proxy, and mobility controls."

"These tools have been deployed against Iranians in at least nine countries in Europe, the Middle East, and North America."

"The Iranian campaign is distinguished by the total commitment it receives from the state, the level of violence that it employs, and the sophisticated application of diverse methods against a similarly diverse set of targets."

"The result is intense intimidation of the Iranian diaspora, from which even those who avoid physical consequences ultimately suffer."

"As an Iranian activist told Freedom House, 'They drain you emotionally financially, in every way'." 

"Another recent tactic is renditions, in which Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC], leads operations to kidnap exiles from other countries and forcibly repatriate them."

Report, Freedom House

 

"I am grateful to [the] FBI for foiling the Islamic Republic of Iran's Intelligence Ministry's plot to kidnap me."

"Initially, I naturally felt shocked. Then I got worried -- then I thought about it; we have been scared of the Islamic regime for a lifetime. But now the Islamic regime is scared of me."

"I was in three safe houses, and they were following me. I think I’m living in a movie. I’ve cooperated with the FBI for the last eight months."

"I have 5 million followers on my Instagram... I’m giving a platform to people inside, challenging the compulsory hijab, and challenging the religious dictatorship. All the years and years they called America the great Satan, the biggest enemy. But they’re scared of their own people. That’s why they sent officers from the intelligence service to Brooklyn to kidnap me."

"My heart was broken following the news of his execution [Ruhollah Zam, a dissident journalist living in France], and I was like, ‘Wow, they’re trying to exactly do the same to me.’ It’s scary but it gives me hope. I give voice to the voiceless people inside Iran."

Masih Alinejad, U.S.-Iranian journalist, activist and author

Masih Alinejad (Gardiner Anderson/for New York Daily News)

"[The incident sounds like] some far-fetched movie plot."

"We allege a group backed by the Iranian government conspired to kidnap a U.S.based journalist here on our soil and forcibly return her to Iran."

"Not on our watch."

William Sweeney, head, New York FBI office

Four Iranian intelligence officials between 2020 and 2021 used the services of private investigators in surveillance, including the photographing and video recording of journalist Masih Alinejad along with her household members, accumulating several days' worth of surveillance and a live high-definition video feed installed at Alinejad's home, according to an indictment filed in New York, after a plan to abduct expatriate Iranians and return them to Iran was interrupted by an FBI investigation.

That investigation served to highlight a covert program organized by the Islamic Republic of Iran to deal with Iranians living outside the country who are critical of the regime, subjecting them to harassment meant to intimidate dissidents living in countries abroad. Freedom House, an organization advocating for human and political rights, published a report detailing the Iranian methodology and its reach.

In the wake of U.S. authorities revealing a kidnapping plot, three Canadians have been revealed as targets of the Iranian regime. The investigation resulted in the charging by U.S. prosecutors of four Iranian intelligence officials for plotting to lure the Canadians to Iran, as well as a New York journalist and an individual living in the United Kingdom. The four intelligence officers have been accused by the FBI of surveillance on the targets for the purpose of kidnapping them to smuggle them out of the country.

"Thanks to the FBI's exposure of their alleged scheme, these defendants have failed to silence criticism by forcible abduction", stated U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss, Southern District of New York. One of the Iranians has been arrested and is in custody, the other Iranian intelligence officers are back in Iran, being sought as fugitives from justice. 

Part of the plot was a scenario involving evacuating the kidnapped Iranians from New York city to Venezuela via a military-style speedboat. It is highly likely that the three Iranian-Canadians knew full well the danger they were in, targeted by the Iranian government for reprisal for their outspoken criticism of the Islamic Republic. One, in fact is himself a former Iranian head of intelligence who stands accused by the regime of having embezzled state funds. The man accuses the regime of sending a team of hit-men to silence him.

Some previous attacks saw a refugee living in the Netherlands assassinated outside his home in 2015, after living outside Iran for decades. A bomb plot against a gathering of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in France was disrupted by Belgian authorities in 2018. That same year Danish intelligence officials disrupted an assassination attempt organized by the Republic of Iran against the head of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz.

"As alleged, four of the defendants monitored and planned to kidnap a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin who has been critical of the regime’s autocracy, and to forcibly take their intended victim to Iran, where the victim’s fate would have been uncertain at best.  Among this country’s most cherished freedoms is the right to speak one’s mind without fear of government reprisal.  A U.S. citizen living in the United States must be able to advocate for human rights without being targeted by foreign intelligence operatives.  Thanks to the FBI’s exposure of their alleged scheme, these defendants have failed to silence criticism by forcible abduction."

U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss

Four Iranians, one an intelligence officer, have been charged by the US justice department of conspiring to kidnap a New York journalist. Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images

Nuclear Threats and Deterrence

A photo released by the semi-official Fars News Agency shows the scene where Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed in Absard, a small city just east of the capital, Tehran, Iran, Friday, Nov. 27, 2020 (Fars News Agency via AP); insert: Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in an undated photo

"[There were] serious indications of [an] Israeli role [in the assassination]."

"Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today. This cowardice — with serious indications of Israeli role — shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators."

"[The international community must] end their shameful double standards and condemn this act of state terror."

"[Iran will] respond to the assassination of Martyr Fakhrizadeh in a proper time. The Iranian nation is smarter than falling into the trap of the Zionists. They are thinking to create chaos."

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif

 

"[Fakhrizadeh was] their senior-most nuclear scientist and was believed to be responsible for Iran’s covert nuclear program."

"He was also a senior officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and that will magnify Iran’s desire to respond by force."

Former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, Patrick Mulroy

 

"In the last days of their gambling ally’s political life, the Zionists seek to intensify and increase pressure on Iran to wage a full-blown war." 

"We will descend like lightning on the killers of this oppressed martyr and we will make them regret their actions!"

Hossein Dehghan, adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands in front of a picture of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who he named as the head of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, April 30, 2018 (YouTube screenshot)

Iran's top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was not only "the father of Iran’s nuclear weapons program", according to Israel's Channel 12, but the man determined to ensure that "he delivered the bomb" for the Republic's ayatollahs. He had other talents to his credit, as a ballistic missiles expert, who was intimately involved in Iran’s missile development, which despite the signing of the nuclear accord with the West, continued apace, resulting in more sophisticated, longer-range ballistic missiles which would, needless to say, be required once nuclear warhead was achieved.

 

It is now assured that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh will no longer personally be capable of delivering on his long-held aspiration. According to Iranian state television, an old truck with explosives hidden under a load of wood was staged to explode close to where a sedan carrying Fakhrizadeh and his bodyguards passed on the highway. As the sedan came to a halt, five gunmen emerged to begin raking the car with rapid gunfire, according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency. Israeli TV Friday night filled in the gaps, that the gunmen after fatally wounding Fakhrizadeh and shooting the three bodyguards dead, escaped.

To state that a pattern has emerged is to state the obvious, given the sequential mysterious deaths of other Iranian nuclear scientists. Clearly, someone, some entity, some group, has reason to believe the world would be better off without the Islamic Republic of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. In early November, the New York Times reported al-Qaeda’s second-in-command had been fatally shot and killed in Tehran by two Israeli operatives on a motorcycle at Washington’s behest.

The senior leader, whose nom de guerre was Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was killed in August as unfortunately was his daughter, Miriam, widow of Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza, according to the Times, citing intelligence sources. Iran "carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device" in a "structured program" through the end of 2003, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency -- the Amad program -- which included work on the carefully timed high explosives needed to detonate a nuclear bomb.

The IAEA also revealed that Iran "conducted computer modeling of a nuclear explosive device" prior to 2005, between 2005 and 2009. The agency concluded on the other hand, that those calculations were "incomplete and fragmented". They had for years attempted to meet with Fakhrizadeh to question him on his activities, only to be rebuffed repeatedly by Tehran. In 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu pointed out that Fakhrizadeh continued to lead Iran’s nuclear weapons efforts, despite the 2015 nuclear deal meant to prevent Tehran from constructing such weapons.

For an important scientist in the nuclear field with the example of previous Iranian scientists taken out of contention in Iran's constantly developing nuclear program Fakhrizadeh was held to be "one of the most closely protected people in Iran", surrounded by bodyguards accompanying him everywhere. Another powerful figure also considered to be inviolable was the head of Iran's Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Qassem Soleiman, yet an American airstrike at Baghdad International Airport in January put an end to his exertions on behalf of Iranian state terrorism. 

That led to the sordid event pf two Iranian missiles stricking a Ukrainian passenger jet leaving from Tehran en route to Ukraine, and then on to Canada. All 175 passengers and crew on board, 63 among them Canadians, and including Iranians bound for Canada on study visas, along with other nationals, being killed outright. This, after Iran fired missiles at a U.S. base in Iraq. The matter of the Ukrainian passenger flight still has not been settled, and likely never will be, Tehran insisting it was an accident, a series of misdirected missiles faulted to an unauthorized, overzealous IRGC officer.

This is yet one more event in an ongoing series of dramatic consequences for Tehran relating to its nuclear ambitions linked to its aspirations of attaining supreme control of the Middle East and beyond, its formation, training and equipping of proxy Islamist militias, its ongoing threats to annihilate the State of Israel, and its Shia axis of evil, aligning Lebanon through Hezbollah, Syria through the Alawite leadership, Yemen through the Houthi rebels against the majority Sunni Muslim states of the Middle East.

Previous manifestations of Israel's refusal to become a victim of the vicious plans set in motion to destroy it by the Iranian ayatollahs include the Stuxnet virus that temporarily set back Iran's uranium centrifuge enrichment project, the killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari ten years ago, and other, associated targeted assassinations, all of which Tehran identified with Israel. Failing to grasp that as long as they continued to broadcast their intention to wipe Israel from the map of the Middle East, their target would take all necessary actions to set back that ardent plan of Islamofascism.

For the presence, Israel's national security and intelligence arms remain focused on deterrence. In the future, they may be called upon to expand measures to ensure Israel's security that would surely include military conflict. By that time, if matters continue to proceed as they are, other Middle East states that feel similarly threatened by Iran's nuclear ambitions and at the present time supportive of Israel's measures at impeding Iran's nuclear progress may themselves harbour a compelling desire to once and for all put a stop to the threatening posturing of the Islamic Republic.

It is entirely possible that while U.S.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Saudi Arabia last week and Prime Minister Netanyahu flew to Saudi in the company of Yossi Cohen, director of Israel's spy agency Mossad, to meet secretly with Pompeo and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a plan was divulged that would remove another threat to the region as collaborationists for whom a successful mission would spell temporary relief. And perhaps serve to nudge MbS a little closer to persuading his father that full diplomatic ties and normalcy with Israel is a project whose time has come.

"Remember that name, Fakhrizadah", Mr. Netanyahu said in 2018 when he gave a presentation to the UN accusing Iran of continuing to seek nuclear weapons on the basis of new information revealed by Israel's secret service. It was known that this man headed a coordinated nuclear weapons program in Iran, the only Iranian scientist named in the International Atomic Energy Agency's 2015 "final assessment" of open questions on Iran's nuclear program where the IAEA's report stated Fakhrizadeh supervised  activities "in support of a possible military dimension to (Iran's) nuclear program."

"The story is not Trump, nor even Israel. The story is Iran -- the growing dread that a new U.S. administration will go back to the nuclear deal which threatens the very existence of the Gulf countries."

"We will know how to handle the issue of the Iranian threat, even if through our own means."

Tzachi Hanebi, member, Israeli security cabinet

Students protesting outside the foreign ministry in Tehran on Saturday.

Murder Incorporated

"After Putin came to power, we saw all of these different killings of people who were critics of Mr. Putin and critics of the Kremlin."
"The Kremlin was caught red-handed, as it were."
Amy Knight, Russia specialist, author: Orders to Kill: The Putin Regime and Political Murder

"The view inside our agency [Russian secret service FSB] was that poison is just a weapon, like a pistol."
"It's not seen that way in the West, but it was just viewed as an ordinary tool [and the FSB would never approve a political murder without consulting Putin]."
Alexander Litvinenko, dissident Russian intelligence officer, 2004 interview

"This image of a good retirement they [retired Russian secret service agents, wealthy oligarchs] see as a model. It is a desirable lifestyle for their children to go to good schools. Russian people like to live in London."
"It becomes like a signature. A weapon only used by the state leaves no doubt that it is revenge by the state, that it can only be the government."
"This sends them [dissidents, political opponents] a message: we will kill you. Don't be a traitor."
Tonia Samsonova, Echo of Moscow Radio correspondent, London

Mysterious and sudden, inexplicable deaths by peculiar means taking place inside and outside Russia targeting opponents of Vladimir Putin, be they journalists or politicians, businessmen or members of the Russian secret service establishment, are often noted and then set aside, no further deep investigation since it seems obvious what the source of the assassination is and why it has been ordered. As long as it is discreet enough and no diplomatic applecarts are upturned, the events are considered unfortunate and written off.

With the recent, audacious attack on father and daughter Skripals, 66 and 33 respectively, rogue secret service agent and family member, and a follow-up murder within the same week of another Putin detractor, (businessman Nikolai Glushkov, 'compression to the neck' death) there is no hushing up the situation since the nerve chemical was used indiscriminately and took victims other than the Skripals; innocent bystanders and a police officer, with the total extent of the fallout not yet quite fully understood, but requiring a massive response to mitigate.



The previous, ghastly, prolonged murder of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 ended with strained relations between Whitehall and the Kremlin. This time the estrangement is deeper and more volatile, with Russia, as usual, denying any and all accusations that it is somehow involved in killing off dissidents on foreign soil and suggesting that the U.K. has indulged in a false flag event, producing a deadly chemical itself and adducing its effects to innocent Russia. This is a skill that Russia has perfected, as flaccidly improbable and cynical as it is, to defend itself.

As far as the government of Britain is concerned, the attempted assassination of the Skripals by Russian agents represents the "only plausible explanation" imaginable, "heightened against the background of a pattern of earlier irresponsible Russian behaviour", which has led critics to link over three dozen deaths and near-assassinations taking place in several countries, of politically-motivated revenge-operations in recent years. Britain has the support of other NATO and G7 countries.

The death of influential Putin critic Boris Nemtsov, shot to death while standing on a bridge in sight of the Kremlin in 2015, and the killing of Denis Voronenkov, formerly a member of the Russian parliament, killed while he stood in front of a Kiev hotel represent two of the most shocking among the many. Russian agents have made use of radioactive tea (Litvinenko), umbrella tips with deadly poison installed, letters tainted with deadly chemicals (ricin), stabbings, sharp-shooters, hanging and whatever else is  handy.

"Traitors don't live long", Putin stated tellingly, when he welcomed back to Moscow the Russian sleeper agents that U.S. intelligence had unmasked in 2010. It was, in fact, in trading those agents that Mr. Skripal, then in a Russian prison as a convicted traitor for working with MI6, was exchanged and returned to London to live. Left behind were his wife and son, both of whom died under mysterious circumstances. In the death of Litvinenko, the medium used to kill him could only have been produced by a state; it was deadly polonium derived from Russia's nuclear program.

In the attempted assassination of the Skripals the nerve chemical that was used was laboratory-identified as being one that the Russian military had developed; the scientist that had produced it had himself identified it as Novichok, a deadly, military grade chemical assumed now to have been slipped into Yulia Skripals luggage as she left Moscow for London to see her father, domiciled there.  And they are assumed to have left a deadly trail of the chemical agent wherever they went, until its effects overtook them.

"[Russia's reaction to the incident] was not the response of a country that really believes itself to be innocent. This is not the response of a country that really wants to engage in getting to the bottom of the matter."

"We gave the Russians every opportunity to come up with an alternative hypothesis, such as the one that you have just described, and they haven't. Their response has been a sort of mixture of smug sarcasm and denial, obfuscation and delay."

"[It is] overwhelmingly likely [that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally gave the order to use the nerve agent to attack Skripal. Britain is not alone in facing Russia's 'reckless behavior'."

"[The Salisbury poisoning was the] latest brazen defiance of international rules [given the Crimea annexation, cyberattacks in Ukraine, and Russia's interference in European elections]."

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson