Iranian, Hezbollah Terror Cells Re-Activated

by Clare M. Lopez

….The Washington Institute’s Matthew Levitt believes that Iran has tasked Hezbollah with reviving the operational capabilities of its sagging international terrorist unit, the Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO). In part due to Hezbollah’s decision to keep a lower profile following its deep involvement in the 9/11 attacks, and in particular since the February 2008 assassination of Hezbollah’s terror chieftain, Imad Mughniyeh, IJO performance had declined.

The uptick in Hezbollah plots since 2012, however, points to a decision at the top level of the Iranian regime to rejuvenate IJO capabilities and terror activity, not only to avenge Mughniyeh’s killing, but to respond to Tehran’s tasking in the “shadow war” against Israel.

As Levitt described in a late April 2013 piece for the West Point Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) “Sentinel” publication, the Cyprus trial that month of Hossam Yaacoub, a Lebanese-Swedish dual national Hezbollah operative, provided a revealing look at the terror group’s current tradecraft training and procedures.

Under interrogation, Yaacoub admitted that he was recruited by Hezbollah in 2007 and underwent extensive training in building a cover story, conducting pre-attack casing of potential targets (frequented by Israeli tourists), and mastering communications codes and signals before being dispatched to Cyprus for the first time in 2009.

Although Yaacoub eventually was arrested in July 2012 by the Cypriot police before any attack there could be carried out, Levitt concludes that the lengthy, professional tradecraft training he had received, along with the “successful” Hezbollah attack against the Israeli tourist bus in Bulgaria, together indicate a return to traditional tradecraft standards by Hezbollah.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force operatives serve under cover in Iranian embassies worldwide; they are tasked with liaison to Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations, narcotrafficking cartels and organized crime groups.

Together with the Iranian intelligence service, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), the Qods Force and Hezbollah operate as integral elements of the global Shi’ite terror network. That narcotrafficking, organized crime, terror network is very much present and functioning in the Western Hemisphere, where the Iranian presence is anchored by its outpost in Venezuela, which it uses as a staging ground for supervising an extensive network of Hezbollah operational cells whose activities stretch northward through Mexico and into the U.S. and Canada.

The accelerating pace of attack and counterattack by the Shi’ite terror network has alerted U.S. security officialsand their Israeli partners that the threat to both countries’ interests at home and abroad is becoming increasingly critical.

As the Syrian conflict spirals ever more out of control, with the U.S. already deeply involved in supporting the al-Qa’eda and Muslim Brotherhood rebels (and looking to become more so), the potential for retaliatory strikes from Hezbollah, acting alone or in conjunction with its Qods Force handlers, will only increase.

Given the renewed emphasis on operational tradecraft plus its well-established bases throughout the Western Hemisphere, Hezbollah is a menace to be monitored.

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The Muslim Student Association and the Boston Terrorist Connection

By Daniel Greenfield

While the hunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was still underway, the President of the Muslim Student Association at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth stepped forward to claim that he had tried to get Dzhokhar to join the MSA several times only to be turned down.

“We played soccer together weekly and I knew him fairly well,” he said. “If there’s one thing I can assure you it’s that this kid was NOT a Muslim. He did drugs, he drank alcohol, he didn’t want to help us when we were carrying out humanitarian relief efforts… he knew nothing of Islam.”

And yet, despite Dzhokhar supposedly not being a Muslim, the MSA president kept trying to get him to join. Even though Dzhokhar Tsarnaev described his worldview as Islam and claimed that he was acting to protect Islam, the MSA president could claim with a straight face that he was not a Muslim.

No one had contacted the Dartmouth MSA for comment, yet the MSA rushed out to get in front of the story by making two claims. The first claim was they had casually known Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from soccer games and the second claim was that he was not an MSA member and had nothing to do with the MSA.

By the time the media got around to interviewing the MSA Secretary, it was more of the same story. He had played soccer with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had tried to get him to join the MSA and didn’t think of him as religious.

The Dartmouth MSA’s comments looked very much like damage control. Soccer was mentioned without context because the soccer games were MSA events.  Dzhokhar’s participation in them meant that he had participated in MSA activities. The question was whether his MSA participation ended on the soccer field.

The humanitarian relief efforts were the MSA’s aid programs in the Syrian civil war between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Syrian government. As a Muslim Brotherhood front group, the MSA’s officers unsurprisingly stood on the side of the Brotherhood militias.

While supporting one terrorist campaign in Syria, the Dartmouth MSA was fiercely denying any role in another terrorist campaign in Boston.

“I would’ve loved for him to come to the MSA a few times so he can maybe understand his religion better,” Bassel Nasri, the Dartmouth MSA secretary, said on 60 Minutes. “Maybe that would, that would’ve helped in what happened, I would say.”

Considering the MSA’s track record, it would more likely have caused it. Many MSA members have gone on to careers in terrorism. The list of MSA presidents who went on to become Al Qaeda members alone is shocking….

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Terrorist Watch List of Tiny Minority of Extremists Approaching 1 Million

By Daniel Greenfield

In fact the tiny minority of extremists is so great that law enforcement officials are having trouble finding names in the tiny 875,000 names on the list.

The number of names on a highly classified U.S. central database used to track suspected terrorists has jumped to 875,000 from 540,000 only five years ago, a U.S. official familiar with the matter said…..

…And worse still, this isn’t anything like a comprehensive list. These are just the names that came up and were entered into it. The actual list would be vastly larger than a mere 875,000 names.

But even 875,000 names is the equivalent of an army. The United States Army only has 561,437 active duty personnel.

It’s time for the Democrats and their leftist allies to stop pretending that this is a criminal issue, when it’s actually a war.

875,000 names is not a gang. It is not a guerrilla force. It’s not a few men in a cave somewhere. It’s an army and should be treated like one.

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Belgium??? Belgium Sentences Man to 4 Months in Jail for Burning Koran

By Daniel Greenfield

Belgium was liberated from Nazi occupation from September 1944 to February 1945. Ostend was liberated in September 1944. Unfortunately it appears to be under Fascist occupation once again.

In Belgium a man was convicted for ‘racist hate speech’ because he publicly tore up a Koran, before the eyes of a group of Muslims. The case illustrates the need to protect free speech against those seeking to criminalise ‘Islamophobia’.

On 8 June 2012 a man, identified as Arne S., participated in a demonstration organised by a radical right-wing political party, Vlaams Belang (‘Flemish Interest’), opposing the construction of a mosque in the Belgian coastal city of Ostend. In the aftermath of the demonstration S. tore up a Koran in the presence of a small group of Muslims, with whom he had exchanged words. The public prosecutor indicted S. for incitement to hatred, discrimination and violence on the basis of race and ethnic origin….

…In Belgium, a “highly questionable attitude” leads to a four month prison sentence. The question is how long until it leads to one here.

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Tsarnaev had three accomplices, or How Willful Blindness kills