Posts
Leaked
Doc Reveals White House Planning "Regime Change" In Iran
10
May, 2018
It
appears Rudy Giuliani wasn't joking.
Just
a few days after the former NYC mayor and latest member of President
Trump's unexpectedly
let it slip that
"we got a president who is tough, who does not listen to the
people who are naysayers, and
a president who is committed to regime change [in
Iran]", the Washington
Free Beacon has
obtained a three-page white paper being circulated among National
Security Council officials with drafted plans to spark
regime change in Iran,
following the US exit from the Obama-era nuclear deal and the
re-imposition of tough sanctions aimed at toppling the Iranian
regime.
The
plan, authored by the Security Studies Group, or SSG, a national
security think-tank that has close ties to senior White House
national security officials, including - who else - National Security
Adviser John Bolton, seeks
to reshape longstanding American foreign policy toward Iran by
emphasizing an explicit policy of regime change, something
the Obama administration opposed when popular protests gripped Iran
in 2009, writes the Free Beacon, which obtained a leaked copy of the
circulating plans.
The regime change plan seeks to fundamentally shift U.S. policy towards Iran and has found a receptive audience in the Trump administration, which has been moving in this direction since Bolton—a longtime and vocal supporter of regime change—entered the White House.
It deemphasizes U.S military intervention, instead focusing on a series of moves to embolden an Iranian population that has increasingly grown angry at the ruling regime for its heavy investments in military adventurism across the region. -Free Beacon
For
now - at least - overthrowing the Iran government, with its extensive
and close ties to the Kremlin, is not official US policy; SSG
president Jim Hanson told the Free
Beacon that
the Trump administration does not want to engage in direct military
intervention in Iran - and
is instead focusing on other methods of ridding Iran of its "hardline
ruling regime."
"The
Trump administration has no desire to roll tanks in an effort to
directly topple the Iranian regime,"
Hanson said. "But
they would be much happier dealing with a post-Mullah government.
That is the most likely path to a nuclear weapons-free and less
dangerous Iran."
That
will likely change, however.
One source close to the White House who has previewed the plan told the Free Beacon that the nuclear deal, also known as the JCPOA, solidified the Iranian regime's grip on power and intentionally prevented the United States from fomenting regime change
"The
JCPOA purposefully destroyed the carefully created global consensus
against the Islamic Republic,"
said the source, who would only speak to the Free
Beacon on
background about the sensitive issue. "Prior
to that, everyone understood the dangers of playing footsie with the
world's largest state sponsor of terrorism. It's now Trump, Bolton,
and [Mike] Pompeo's job to put this consensus back in place."
The
source tells the Beacon that
Bolton is "acutely aware of the danger the Iranian regime poses
to the region."
"John
is someone who understands the danger of Iran viscerally,
and knows that you're never going to fundamentally change its
behavior—and the threats against Israel and the Saudis
especially—until that revolutionary regime is gone," the
source said, adding that "nothing's
off the table right now if Israel is attacked."
That
said, Bolton
is confident that an Iranian regime change will occur in the next six
months:
A second source tells The Beacon that the Trump administration recognizes that the "chief impediment to the region is Iran's tyrannical regime."
John Bolton - We Will Be Celebrating in Tehran Before 2019
>You can't say you weren't warned
>You can't say you weren't warned
A second source tells The Beacon that the Trump administration recognizes that the "chief impediment to the region is Iran's tyrannical regime."
"The
problem is not the Iran nuclear deal it's the Iranian regime,"
said the source. "Team Bolton has spent years creating Plans B,
C, and D for dealing with that problem. President Trump hired him
knowing all of that. The
administration will now start aggressively moving to deal with the
root cause of chaos and violence in the region in a clear-eyed way."
Regional sources who have spoken to SSG "tell us that Iranian social media is more outraged about internal oppression, such as the recent restrictions on Telegram, than about supporting or opposing the nuclear program. Iranian regime oppression of its ethnic and religious minorities has created the conditions for an effective campaign designed to splinter the Iranian state into component parts," the group states. -Free Beacon
"More
than one third of Iran's population is minority groups, many of whom
already seek independence," the paper explains. "U.S.
support for these independence movements, both overt and covert,
could force the regime to focus attention on them and limit its
ability to conduct other malign activities."
Without a regime change, the United States will continue face threats from Iranian forces stationed throughout the region, including in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon.
"The
probability the current Iranian theocracy will stop its nuclear
program willingly or even under significant pressure is low,"
the plan states. "Absent a change in government within Iran,
America will face a choice between accepting a nuclear-armed Iran or
acting to destroy as much of this capability as possible."
That
said, President Trump made clear earlier in the week that US
officials must make efforts to differentiate between the people of
Iran and its ruling regime.
"Any
public discussion of these options, and any messaging about the
Iranian regime in general, should make a bright line distinction
between the theocratic regime along with its organs of oppression and
the general populace,"
according to the plan. "We must constantly reinforce our support
for removing the iron sandal from the necks of the people to allow
them the freedom they deserve."
US Moves To Cut Off Iran From Global Economy
Six
years after SWIFT cut ties with Iranian banks during the last round
of Western sanctions on the Persian nation, on Thursday afternoon the
U.S. took another step toward cutting Iran off from the global
economy when the US Treasury announced it was levying sanctions on a
financing network and accusing the country’s central bank of
helping funnel U.S. dollars to the blacklisted elite military unit of
the Iranian Revolutionary Guard known as the Quds Force, the WSJ
reported.
Acting
together with the United Arab Emirates, the US Treasury said that it
had sanctioned six individuals and three "front companies
engaged in a large-scale currency exchange network that has procured
and transferred hundreds of millions" of dollars to Iran's elite
military force; overnight Israel’s government blamed the the same
Quds Force for rocket attacks from Syria Wednesday night, an action
that triggered massive retaliatory strikes by Israel’s military
against Iranian targets in Syria, escalating the risk of a wider
regional war.
In
Washington, Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin accused "the
Iranian regime and its Central Bank" of misusing banking access
in the UAE to acquire US dollars to fund the IRGC-QF's "malign
activities, and to arm its "regional proxy groups." The new
sanctions also ban US individuals and entities from doing business
with the currency network.
Mnuchin
alleged that the sanctioned entities had concealed the acquisition of
funds and transfers: "We are intent on cutting off IRGC revenue
streams wherever their source and whatever their destination."
“Countries
around the world must be vigilant against Iran’s efforts to exploit
their financial institutions to exchange currency and fund nefarious
actions of the IRGC-QF and the world’s largest state sponsor of
terror,” Mnuchin also said.
Specifically,
the Treasury accused an Iranian company, Jenah Aras Kish, of being a
front for the Quds Force, and said the firm received oil revenues
from Central Bank of Iran accounts and gave that money to couriers
who exchanged it for millions of U.S. dollar notes in the U.A.E.
through two Iranian firms, Khedmati & Co. and Rashed Exchange.
That cash was then taken back to the Quds Force and distributed to Iran’s regional proxies, the U.S. said. To hide the activities from U.A.E. authorities, the Treasury Department said the network used forged documents.
Washington
has repeatedly accused the Iran Revolutionary Guard of backing
terrorist groups and militias affiliated with Iran, including in
Lebanon and Syria where missile warfare involving Israel and
allegedly Al Quds unfolded on Thursday.
In
February 2015, Reuters reported that at least $1 billion in cash had
been smuggled into Iran despite US and other sanctions. In that case,
the cash passed through money changers and front companies in Dubai,
in the UAE, and Iraq. As we further reported in December
2015,
the smuggling ring used gold as the key commodity used to bypass
borders and monetary barriers, as well as middlemen in Turkey and the
UAE where the chain of accountability led to the very top echelons of
government in both nations.
The
Treasury also accused Iran's central bank of being "complicit"
in supplying the IRGC.
“The Central Bank of Iran is complicit with the Quds Force for use by its proxies—that should send a very powerful message,” Sigal Mandelker, Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in an interview. “We’re going to use all of our authorities to disrupt these networks.”
Thursday's
actions foreshadow the return of U.S. economic penalties as
Washington reimposes sanctions that had been lifted as part of the
2015 nuclear agreement. Iran’s central bank wasn’t formally
sanctioned in Thursday’s actions, but will be in the coming months,
at which point the entire nations will once again be blacklisted by
SWIFT, making USD-based international transactions impossible.
And
while Thursday’s action targets only one network, it is a model of
how the administration plans to implement a complete ban on dealings
with the Central Bank of Iran and dollar transactions coming due in
the months ahead.
Incidentally,
this time around, SWIFT may not need to even get involved. “There
are secondary sanctions consequences for doing business with these
entities,” said the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and
financial intelligence, Sigal Mandelker, referring to the
currency-exchange network. Secondary sanctions are actions against
companies that interact with blacklisted entities.
Because
of Trump’s decision to reimpose broad U.S. sanctions, the
use of U.S. dollar banknotes by Iran is banned after August, “and
you can expect that we’re going to take that authority very
seriously,” she
said. “Foreign financial institutions, governments all over the
world need to be on high alert to make sure that they understand the
pattern and practice that these networks use to try to gain access to
the USD.”
* *
*
Meanwhile,
western governments and companies - many of whom disagreed with
Trump's withdrawing from the nuclear deal, have been trying to figure
out how aggressively Washington plans to enforce its new sanctions
regime against Iran, "wary of Treasury sanctioning European bank
and firms, for example, if they continue to do business with Iran
beyond deadlines for compliance approaching over the next six
months."
For
now, European officials have said they plan to stay in the nuclear
deal with Iran, which may not only give license to their companies to
maintain ties to Iran, but also may be setting up a diplomatic rift
between the U.S. and its closest allies.
However,
if and when the US imposes a few multi-billion fines on European
banks, any willingness the EU has to bypass Trump's sanctions will
promptly evaporate. Furthermore, Europe "doesn’t have the
power to take important decisions," said Alaeddin Boroujerdi,
head of the Iranian parliament’s nation security and foreign policy
committee. The "Europeans,
by sanctioning Iran, seek to dance in front of the Americans."
As
a result, it's
only a matter of time before Iran finds itself locked out financially
from the world.
Or
rather the
Western world,
because as the US and Europe fade away as key partners for Iran,
China is about to step in again.
As Bloomberg
reported today,
"to develop its $430 billion economy, Iran is being forced to
rely on political allies in the east. Trade
with China has more than doubled since 2006, to $28 billion. The
biggest chunk of Iran’s oil exports go to China, about $11 billion
a year at current prices."
China
is “already
the winner,’’
Dina Esfandiary, a fellow at the Centre for Science and Security
Studies at King’s College in London, told Bloomberg. "Iran has
slowly abandoned the idea of being open to the West. The
Chinese have been in Iran for the past 30 years. They have the
contacts, the guys on the ground, the links to the local banks.’"
And
they’re more willing to defy U.S. pressure as Trump slaps sanctions
back on.
In
short, the more Trump pushes Iran - and the broader middle-eastern
region - to comply with the will of Israel and Saudi Arabia, the
closer Iran will get with China whose influence in the middle-east,
where it is ideologically aligned with Russia, will only grow...
TheUS-Israeli Plan To Assassinate Iran's Elite Revolutionary GuardCommander
The
United States gave Israel the green light to
assassinate Iran's top military
officer, Iranian Revolutionary Guards al-Quds Force
commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, according to a widely
circulated report in Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida published
earlier this year. News of the agreement, first published in Arabic
in January, is now
resurfacing in
both Russian and Middle East regional media the day after Syria
and Israel engaged in a massive overnight exchange of fire in what
constitutes the
most sustained Israeli attack on Syria in decades.
In
the Arab world Al-Jarida is
generally considered to be a platform through which Israel circulates
news and its perspective to neighboring countries in the region. The
newspaper first published report based on an Israeli government
source who was cited as saying, "there
is an American-Israeli agreement" that Soleimani is a "threat
to the two countries' interests in the region"—which
reportedly led to a Washington green-light for the Israelis to
assassinate him.
"
Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani (left),
photographed in Iraq in 2015. Image source: Reuters via Al Monitor
General
Soleimani, as leader of Iran's most elite force, also
coordinates military activity between the Islamic Republic and Syria,
Iraq, Hezbollah, and Hamas - a position he's filled since 1998 -
and as
Quds Force commander reports directly to the Supreme Leader
of Iran, Ali Khamenei, and oversees Iran's covert
operations in foreign countries.
Israeli
officials initially "leaked" the story after days of
internal Iranian anti-government protests gridlocked the country in
late December and early January, bringing international media
attention and discussions
in Tel Aviv and Washington of a potential coup attempt in the works.
Whether or not there actually ever was such a green-light given by
the American side, Al-Jarida report ultimately
served the purpose of a semi-official threat issued through the media
by the Israelis.
The
threat of assassinating Iran's most elite military commander has
taken on new importance and urgency after Israel laid official blame
on Gen. Soleimani on Thursday, alleging that he personally ordered a
rocket attack against Israeli bases on the Golan Heights from
within Syria, which triggered a massive escalation overnight. "It
was ordered and commanded by Qassem Soleimani and it has not achieved
its purpose," Israeli
military spokesman Lieutenant-General Jonathan Conricus claimed, as
cited by Reuters.
Perhaps
the most interesting aspect to the report, and worth revisiting, is
the revelation that Israel was supposedly "on the verge" of
killing Soleimani three years ago in an operation near Damascus;
however, the
Obama administration was said to have warned the Iranians of the
impending Israeli plot which according to Israeli sources was
thwarted because of US intervention, resulting in "a sharp
disagreement between the Israeli and American security and
intelligence apparatuses regarding the issue."
But
the Trump administration now appears to be quite at home with a
"gloves off" approach as this week more evidence emerged
suggesting the White House is now eyeing regime change in Tehran. As
we previously reported, the Washington
Free Beacon has
obtained a three-page white paper now being circulated among National
Security Council officials with drafted plans to spark
regime change in Iran,
following the US exit from the Obama-era nuclear deal and the
re-imposition of tough sanctions aimed at toppling the Iranian
government.
The
plan, authored by , including - who else - National Security Adviser
John Bolton, seeks
to reshape longstanding American foreign policy toward Iran by
emphasizing an explicit policy of regime change.
"The
ordinary people of Iran are suffering under economic stagnation,
while the regime ships its wealth abroad to fight its expansionist
wars and to pad the bank accounts of the Mullahs and the IRGC
command," writes the Security Studies Group, or SSG, a national
security think-tank that has close ties to senior White House
national security officials. "This
has provoked noteworthy protests across the country in recent months"
it further claims as
an argument to push a "regime change" policy.
No
doubt, a
targeted strike or clandestine assassination attempt on Soleimani is
likely now very high on the Israeli agenda and perhaps even the US
agenda,
especially after this week's military escalation and Israeli claim
that the Iranians are firing rockets into Israel (something for which
there's currently not a shred of evidence).
* *
*
A
recent history of high level Israeli assassinations abroad also
suggests such a plan is on the books,
as Israeli intelligence has been known to conduct high-risk secretive
assassinations in foreign countries over the past years and decades.
One notable
headline grabbing operation,
reportedly by Mossad agents, occurred in 2010 and resulted in the
assassination of a top Hamas commander who had checked into
a high end Dubai hotel after flying in from Syria.
An
eleven man Israeli hit squad had entered the hotel while dressed in
tennis gear and carrying tennis rackets, and were
later reported to
be traveling on fake Irish and French passports. After conducting
surveillance the Mossad agents got Hamas' Mahmoud al-Mabhouh to open
his hotel room door and quickly suffocated him without arousing
suspicion from other hotel guests. By the time the body was
discovered, the assassins had flown out of Dubai to various locations
around the world and were never seen again.
And
in 2015 a
secret document revealed by The Intercept as
part of the Edward Snowden leaked NSA archives confirmed
that Israeli agents
had assassinated a top Syrian general and
personal aide to President Assad in 2008 while
the general dined at his family home near Tartus, along the
Syrian coast. The daring operation involved Israeli naval
commandos and snipers targeting Gen. Muhammad Suleiman's house from
the waters of the Mediterranean and shooting him in the head and
neck. Israel considered him responsible for coordinating weapons
and supplies between Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah, as well
as overseeing an alleged nascent nuclear development program
at Syria’s Al Kibar facility which had previously
been bombed by Israeli jets.
Six
months prior to Syrian General Suleiman's murder,
a top Hezbollah officer was killed by a joint CIA-Mossad
operation in the heart of Damascus. According to former
intelligence officials who confirmed the assassination plot to
the Washington
Post,
a car bomb planted near a Damascus downtown restaurant instantly
killed Imad Mughniyah - Hezbollah's international operations
chief who was believed to have masterminded several terror attacks
targeting Americans.
Furthermore, Palestinian
activists have pointed to a long history of Israeli assassinations of
Palestinian, Iranian, and Syrian scientists, engineers, and notable
figures living abroad. Most recently a Palestinian engineer was
assassinated near his home in Malaysia, which was widely
suspected to be the work of a Mossad hit team.
So
concerning reports that Iran's Qassem Soleimani might be in
Mossad's crosshairs, while
such a high risk operation against a top Iranian official
would be unlikely to succeed, it is certainly not without precedent.
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