Tehran’s Ruling Clerics Scramble for Survival
Fox News, October 8, 2007
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.
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.
