Dissecting the Iran-Hamas Terror Connection

Destroy Israel.

With that goal in mind in the early 1980s, the mullahs who rule Iran launched a plan to systematically bring down the Jewish state through terrorism. It continues today with the rocket attacks by Hamas from Gaza that have touched off the bloody Israeli-Palestinian war, creating a massive humanitarian crisis.

It is no coincidence that Hamas is repeating what Hezbollah did in 2006 by lobbing rockets into Israel. Does anyone doubt the call for jihad and martyrdom made by the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the genuineness of the 70,000 Iranians who recently volunteered to become suicide martyrs to attack Israel?

Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, it has been the mullahs’ official policy to expand their radical ideology by creating and strengthening various terrorist groups willing to obey their orders. It started with Hezbollah, which has become a major military and political force in Lebanon. The mullahs, through their Revolutionary Guards, provided training, financial support, and arms to the terrorists to destroy Israel.

The Guards have done the same with Hamas, whose rockets and fighters are closer to Israel. And in this current confrontation, the blood of innocent Palestinian women and children is needed for the mullahs’ propaganda machine to further their cause, create instability in the Middle East, alienate Israel by generating worldwide sympathy for the Palestinians, destroy any chance of peace between Israel and Palestine, and divert attention away from Iran and its nuclear project.

The commander of the Guards, Mohammad Jafari, made this interesting comment on the Israel-Hamas conflict: “Hamas has the necessary arms to defend Gaza and force another defeat upon Israel.” The Guards are quite aware of armaments in the possession of Hamas, because they are the source.

On January 3, Saeed Jalili, secretary general of the Supreme National Security Council and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, met in Damascus with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah (on the FBI’s most wanted list). At that meeting, Jalili reiterated Iran’s support for Hamas’ confrontation with Israel. Another senior Iranian politician, Ali Larijani, the speaker of the parliament, also held meetings with Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders in Syria. After these meetings, rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel, threatening to open a new front. Iran can’t afford a Hamas defeat as it has invested much in that terrorist group in seeking to wage proxy war and isolate Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

To understand the depth of Iran’s commitment to spreading terrorism, look at who is running its defense ministry:

• Mostafa Najjar, the current defense minister and the former Revolutionary Guards commander who facilitated the 1983 Marine Corps barracks bombing in Beirut, is in charge of Iran’s arms production.

• Ahmad Vahidi, the current deputy defense minister and former Quds Force commander and the chief intelligence officer of the Guards, is in charge of the terrorist activities outside of Iran; he is on Interpol’s most wanted list for the 1994 Jewish center bombing in Buenos Aires and now is overseeing the proliferation of arms and missiles to Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas.

While working in the Revolutionary Guards, I continually reported to the CIA on their activities and connections with terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. In one of my meetings with Carol, my contact at the agency, I detailed how leaders of Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah routinely traveled to Iran and left with millions in cash and how arms were provided through Syria.

I informed the CIA that the Guards were going to become a major force controlling every corner of Iran and at the same time expanding their presence outside of Iran. Their main goal was to export their Islamic belief that the flag of Islam should ultimately be raised in every corner of the world. The Guards’ elite forces had infiltrated countries in the Persian Gulf, Lebanon, Africa, Europe, and even Latin America, setting up safe houses, recruiting volunteers, and training martyrs.

In a coded letter in the 1980s, I wrote the following:

Dear Carol,

1. The Guards are sending hundreds more fighters to Bekaa Valley in Lebanon through Syria.

2. The operations are being coordinated by:

— The Revolutionary Guards Commander Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, who is in charge of the forces in Lebanon, and

— Ahmad Vahidi, the chief intelligence officer of the Guards in Iran, who is also charged with expanding the Guards’ extraterritorial activities in Lebanon.

3. Rasool, who works out of the intelligence unit at our base, is constantly traveling to Syria. He tells me that the activity is picking up and Guards are transporting arms and ammunition to Syria.

4. The Guards’ Special Forces is in contact with several other terrorist organizations, among them:

— The Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain,

— Militant Egyptian Islamist “Gamaat Islamiya,”

— The Japanese Red Army,

— ETA Basque nationalist terrorist group, and

— The Armenian Secret Army.

5. Through Akbar, I learned that the Foreign Ministry has assigned members of the Revolutionary Guards’ Special Forces to Iranian consulates and embassies. These are not political assignments; it is a diplomatic cover for their operations. Their task is to take control of all intelligence activities overseas, including assassinations, abductions, and the transfer of arms and explosives.

6. Kazem told me that Rafiqdoost, the minister of the Revolutionary Guards, was personally involved in setting up a relationship with Red Army Faction in Germany.

7. Rafiqdoost is personally involved in buying arms through the black market. Some of these arms are then shipped to Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad through Syria — with their cooperation.

The head of the snake of terrorism rests in Iran and the world will not know peace until that head is cut off. How much more bloodshed will the world witness? How much more instability? Don’t the children of the Middle East deserve a better future?

An Iran without mullahs would mean an orphan Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas. It would mean the end of hostilities in the Middle East; it would mean a chance for a lasting peace between Palestine and Israel. Syria would be much more willing to negotiate. Hezbollah would have no choice but to put down arms. Hamas would no longer be. Iraq would become stable, enabling us to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan and do what we should have done in the first place: find Osama bin Laden and destroy al-Qaeda.

Iran, which already has enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, is said to have relocated some 50 to 60 tons of UF6 — enough to make six nuclear bombs, according to the nuclear inspectors of the IAEA.

What will it take for the world to wake up? I hope not a nuclear war.