Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of his weekly cabinet meeting Sunday that the State Department’s own annual terrorism report should serve as a wake-up call against a bad deal with Iran.
“In 2014, Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide remained undiminished through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), its Ministry of Intelligence and Security, and Tehran’s ally Hizballah, which remained a significant threat to the stability of Lebanon and the broader region,” the “Country Reports on Terrorism 2014” states.
Iran used the IRGC-QF “to implement foreign policy goals, provide cover for intelligence operations, and create instability in the Middle East. The IRGC-QF is the regime’s primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad.”
“…Iran remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qa’ida (AQ) members it continued to detain, and refused to publicly identify those senior members in its custody. Iran previously allowed AQ facilitators to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran since at least 2009, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters to South Asia and Syria.”
The mysterious Khorasan group in Syria that briefly was on the lips of the White House last fall was set up by al-Qaeda’s leader in Iran, Muhsin al-Fadhli.
“The U.S. State Department report on Iranian involvement in terrorism needs to be a wake-up call for anyone who does not understand the magnitude of Iranian subversion and aggression both within and beyond the Middle East,” Netanyahu said.
“The Iranian network now embraces over 30 countries and a new terrorist cell is added every few weeks, whether directly or via its proxy Hezbollah. For example, we recently saw in Cyprus a terrorist apartment in which a great quantity of explosives was discovered, and this is only one example out of dozens,” the prime minister continued.
“And this regime is now due to receive, under the nuclear agreement, both a certain path to nuclear bombs, in the wake of violations and oversight that has been full of holes, and billions of dollars, which will enable them to increase both the terrorist efforts I have described, their regional aggression and the accelerated arming of their proxies – Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and others,” he said. “Therefore, this is not a good agreement. This agreement endangers the State of Israel, the Middle East and – in my opinion – the peace of the entire world.”
The deadline for a final agreement is just eight days away.
Iran, Syria and Sudan are still on the state sponsors of terrorism list after the recent removal of Cuba.
Terrorist attacks around the world increased 35 percent in 2014 and terrorism fatalities were up 81 percent from 2013.
The number of people kidnapped or taken hostage by terrorists rose threefold.
The State Department has maintained that issues such as Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism and other destabilizing activities around the world, in addition to holding four Americans, should be considered separate from a nuclear deal.
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