Iranian assets positioned in the United States have been activated and are actively working to acquire intelligence and equipment that might be useful in terror attacks, according to a former member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
The information comes after a bus carrying Israeli youths exploded Wednesday in a Black Sea resort in Bulgaria, killing six and injuring 30 others. Fire engulfed the bus after the attack, which occurred as the bus was on its way back to the youths’ hotel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Iran and vowed to retaliate.
Ominously, the attack took place on the anniversary of the Jewish Community Center bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina that killed 85 and injured more than 100 in 1994. Several Iranian officials were implicated in that attack, including the current Iranian defense minister, Ahmad Vahidi, who has been red-flagged by Interpol.
Assets of the regime have attacked Israeli officials and interests unsuccessfully before, such as in India, Bangkok, Azerbaijan and other places. However, as reported in March, the Islamic regime had warned America and Israel that the next terror attacks would be much more complex and devastating.
A source who served in the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence unit and has now defected to a European country warned in April that the Islamic regime’s terror cells were on high alert, which includes for attacks in the U.S.
According to that source, and another located in the U.S., the regime’s assets have long infiltrated America and are coordinating operations out of mosques and Islamic centers, such as Imam Ali Mosques and the Iman Islamic Center.
Hundreds of the families of the regime officials who are present in America and Canada, in collaboration with the Iranian Embassy in Canada and Interests Section of The Islamic Republic of Iran out of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, D.C., are also actively recruiting assets and gathering intelligence.
The relatives routinely travel back and forth to Iran, making it easy to pass on information and transfer cash from Iran to the U.S.
Iran’s intelligence apparatus is specifically wooing Americans who convert to Islam. These individuals are approached with offers of a trip to the city of Qom, the hotbed of seminaries in Iran and the center of Shia theology, where they are brainwashed and then approached for collaboration against the infidels.
Hassan Abassi, a former intelligence commander of the Guards and the current strategist of the regime, has stated that Iranian assets in America who would conduct terrorism are not necessarily Iranian and that many are American, Mexican and of Latin American origin.
The source indicated that the recruiters and the regime’s intelligence officers often gather at mosques and Islamic centers. They identify individuals within the Islamic student associations and others who might sympathize with the Islamic regime and try to recruit them.
The regime’s Islamic foundations, such as Al-Ghadir and AhlulBayt, have set up branches throughout the world, including in America, funding mosques and Islamic centers that gather intelligence, recruit and transfer of cash to the regime’s cells.
Many other assets are already working at high-tech companies in the U.S., according to the source. These assets seek to gain access on communications by Iranians who are active in America in opposing the regime and also to gain technological secrets, which then are passed on to the regime.
Others have been placed in universities across the U.S. to gain critical knowledge to help with Iran’s nuclear arms program, while others promote better ties with Iran through various organizations and think tanks, which also provide the Islamic regime with analyses on the state of American public opinion.
Some assets are used to purchase spare parts that, due to the sanctions, the regime is unable to obtain. Many have been arrested trying to export airplane parts, parts for fighter jets and helicopters and other military and commercial parts.
With the Islamic regime refusing to halt its nuclear program and its looming confrontation with the West, the regime strategy calls for further terrorist attacks by its assets to send a signal to the West that an attack on its nuclear facilities will bear dire consequences, said the source in Europe.
“They are closing in on getting the bomb,” he said. “At that time it will be too late to stop this regime.”
Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the author of the award winning book, A Time to Betray. He is a senior Fellow with EMPact America, a member of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA).