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The Terror Masters Revisited
Let's Go to the Videotape
By Michael A. Ledeen
Posted: Monday, August 16, 2004

Saturday's Washington Post had an article that quotes the usual unnamed intelligence sources saying that they are surprised to discover that al Qaeda has "reconstitute[d]" itself. This surprise derives from, inter alia, the computer data found recently in Pakistan, intelligence sources (both ours and friends'), and simply looking at the range of activities in which the terrorists engage.

This surprise is, as usual, unsettling, since it has been quite clear for some time now that al Qaeda and the other major terrorist groups--Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Jamaa, etc.--are all working together, and have been ever since we went into Afghanistan. The cooperation increased in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, and was only possible because the regimes who gave the bulk of the operational support to the terrorists--Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia--worked closely to coordinate the anti-American jihad. That coordination has, for the most part, continued (note the visit of Bashar Assad to Tehran at the time of the turnover of "sovereignty" in Iraq. At those meetings, Syria and Iran agreed on a five-point plan to attack us in Iraq, Europe, and at home, and to do everything possible--including massive efforts to get the price of oil as high as they can--to defeat President Bush in November's elections).

This helps understand the coordination between, say, attacks by the forces of Moqtada al Sadr and Baathist "loyalists." The infrastructure was created before we ever arrived in Iraq.

I wrote about this phenomenon at the time, and it enabled me to accurately forecast what happened in Iraq: the active cooperation among terrorists of widely diverse ideological, religious, and national backgrounds and convictions, in a desperate effort to drive us out of Iraq.

The war in the Middle East--for it is a regional war, not merely a battle for Iraq--cannot be analyzed at the level of the individual terrorist groups, because the terrorists are part of a larger context. The organizing center is, as Spanish Magistrate Balthazar Garzon publicly put it, a "directorate" located in Iran, that works closely with Iranian intelligence organizations, including the Revolutinary Guards. Those organizations, in turn, work with their counterparts in other friendly countries.

Blind Analysts

In order to conceal their activities from us, the Iranians have deployed several deceptive myths. The two most effective are "al Qaeda" and "Zarqawi." I believe I was the first American writer to call attention to Zarqawi (long before he was named by secretary of State Colin Powell in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council). I was able to do that because I had read German and Italian court documents that proved Zarqawi, operating from Tehran, had organized a European terrorist network. I'm sure that fact was known to Garzon, as it was to the Italian military intelligence organization, SISMI, which came to similar conclusions (published a few months ago in the Corriere della Sera).

This was the period when, according to our intelligence analysts, Zarqawi became a major player in al Qaeda.

It follows that the Iranians were involved in the marriage between al Qaeda and Zarqawi. To believe otherwise, you'd have to believe that Zarqawi and top al Qaeda officials were operating freely and independently of the Iranian regime. I don't think any serious person would buy that one.

But the notion that radical Sunni terrorists like Zarqawi and bin Laden and Zawahiri were working hand in glove with the radical Shiite regime in Tehran was an impossible hypothesis for most of our analysts, who believed that strategic cooperation between Sunnis and Shiites was not possible (even though, for example, the Sunnis of Arafat's Fatah-trained Khomeni's Shiites--the embryonic Revolutionary Guards--in the Bekaa Valley as early as 1972. I have personally interviewed the person who organized that training program). Those analysts were working with false assumptions within the wrong context.

By now, an Iranian role is obvious, as is the Syrian component. More evidence pours in every hour. Just look at the best Iraqi bloggers, or, if that's too hard, just listen to the Iraqi defense minister or the Iraqi interior minister. But I don't think we have accepted the full context, and we won't get it right so long as we continue to obsess over al Qaeda and/or Zarqawi.

Zarqawi is an instrument of a far more powerful terrorist engine: the Iranian regime, allied with other terror masters. Zarqawi himself is only involved in a fraction of the actions for which he gets credit; the most important figure is actually our old enemy, Imad Mughniya, the operational commander of Hezbollah. And if you're in a betting mood, I'll give you even money that Hezbollah is the operational glue that binds together the various terrorist factions on the ground in Iraq.

Tyrannical Terror Trio

I think it's fair to say that my analysis has stood up pretty well, starting more than a year before Operation Iraqi Freedom. If I am right, then we cannot possibly "win" in Iraq, because Iraq is just one battlefield in a (at a mininum) regional war. The Iranians, Syrians, and (a significant group of) Saudis dare not acquiesce in the creation of a free and successful Iraq, because that would mortally threaten their own survival. The regimes in Tehran, Damascus, and Riyadh are extremely unpopular; their peoples are aching for the chance to remove the regimes and experiment with freedom. The regimes know that, and are ruthlessly oppressing their peoples.

Remember that Machiavelli said that tyranny is most unstable form of government. And precisely because the regimes are unstable, our most potent weapon against them is political, not military. I do not believe we can win the war by force of arms alone. It is certainly very important to defeat al Sadr in Najaf and Kut, and to liberate Fallujah, but even those victories will not suffice. Our regional enemies will find new instruments--indeed, I have no doubt they have them already in place. Victory, as the president has said, requires regime change and the spread of freedom. And this is not nearly so daunting as might appear.

We defeated the Soviet Empire at a time when only a small minority of the people was willing to fight for freedom. We overthrew Milosevic with a minority of the Yugoslavs. In Iran we have upwards of 70 percent of the people on our side. If we supported them, I think it quite likely that we could liberate Iran in a matter of a few months. And if Iran falls, Syria will most likely come right alongside.

If we do not quickly expose the vulnerability of mullahs and empower the Iranian people, I believe the next few months in Iraq will, if Tehran has its way, be bloodier than anything we have seen to date. Not to mention the planned attacks against us here at home.

Faster. Please?

http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.21058,filter.all/news_detail.asp

Thanks for allowing us to read that, Honestly. Here is a good companion article to the piece you posted about the Lebanese fugitive Imad Fayez Mugniyeh (as always, his name is spelled differently in various places). I knew he had surgically altered his appearance, but I did not know he had multiple facial surgeries! He is a real terror and needs to be stopped. The article below was first posted by Casey (who reconfirmed her kind permission to repost her posts here) at ItsHappening.com yesterday. It is in the members only section, but here is a general link: http://www.itshappening.com/index.php

Multiple Iran's Al-Quds Corps Chief Reportedly Admits Providing Facilities to Al-Zarqawi
11 Aug 04
FBIS

London: Al-Sharq al-Awsat in Arabic 11 Aug 04 p2 ['Exclusive' report by Ali Nurizadeh in London: "Iranian Admission of Providing Facilities to Al-Zarqawi in his Terrorist Operations in Iraq. Commander of Revolutionary Guards' Al-Quds Corps: Al-Zarqawi's Activities Serve the Higher Interests of the Islamic Republic"]

London, ExclusiveA reliable Iranian source has asserted that Brigadier General Qasem Solaimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Al-Quds Corps, admitted at a closed seminar that Iran has provided facilities to the Jordanian hardliner Abu-Mus'ab al-Zarqawi who is accused of organizing most of the suicidal attacks and operations in Iraq. He justified this by saying that Al-Zarqawi's activities in Iraq "serve the higher interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran", among them preventing the establishment of a federal secular regime that cooperates with the United States.

The source, which attended the seminar, told "Al-Sharq al-Awsat" that Brig. Gen. Solaimani said at the seminar that was held at a camp for the students of higher strategic and defense studies at the Imam Al-Hoseyn University: "Al-Zarqawi and elements of his organization's command (Ansar al-Islam) do not need prior authority to enter Iran. There are certain border points from Halabjah in the north to Ilam in the south. Al-Zarqawi and more than 20 fighters from Ansar al-Islam leaders can enter the Iranian territories through them whenever they want." The source added that Solaimani, who is in charge of the intelligence units of the Revolutionary Guards and Al-Quds Corps operating in Iraq, was answering some students' questions about the reasons for Iran's support for a person like Al-Zarqawi who is hostile to the Shiites and who was accused in the past by circles close to the regime's guide Ali Khamene'i of involvement in the assassination of Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, chairman of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Solaimani said Al-Zarqawi's involvement in Al-Hakim's death was not confirmed and his actions at present moreover serve the Islamic Republic's higher interests. According to Solaimani, the establishment of a federal secular Iraq cooperating with the United States is much more dangerous than the former Ba'thist regime because the new regime will pose "a real threat to the pure Mohammedan revolutionary Islam and the velayat-e faqih", as the source reported.

"Al-Sharq al-Awsat" learned that Al-Zarqawi moved to Iran some months ago after the Al-Fallujah events and spent several weeks in a Revolutionary Guards camp in the Mahran area on the border with Iraq before leaving it to the Iraqi city of Ba'qubah with the help of Al-Quds Corps.

It is recalled that Al-Quds Corps was established during the final days of Khomeyni's rule for the purpose of hunting down the opposition figures and forces inside and outside the country. Its tasks and the limits of its responsibilities changed during the past years and it has become today responsible for the affairs of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Arab and Islamic countries in connection with the indirect war with the United States.

A former corps official revealed to "Al-Sharq al-Awsat" after he escaped to Turkey last year that Abu-Mus'ab al-Zarqawi was in Iran and had entered Iraqi territories more than a year ago. He also asserted to this newspaper that a meeting was held last June between Al-Zarqawi and the Lebanese fugitive Imad Maghniyah in one of Al-Quds Corps' centers in Kermanshah Province west of Iran.

The source pointed out that Maghniyah played an influential role in forming the "Al-Mahdi Army" of the hard-line Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and in training its elements in camps inside Iran. The entry of Lebanese Shiite fighters into Iraq disguised as students of religion and their joining "Al-Mahdi Army" later on was supervised by Imad Maghniyah who recently underwent cosmetic surgery to change his facial features in one of the Revolutionary Guards' clinics in northern Tehran. That was the fifth operation for Maghniyah whom Western and Arab intelligence services have been hunting for years.

The source went on to say that Maghniyah maintained close ties with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second man in "Al-Qa'ida" organization, despite the recent difficulties in communicating with Al-Zawahiri. It added that Maghniyah submitted earlier this year a report to the Revolutionary Guards' intelligence chief after a visit to Iraq in which he underlined the importance of expanding the cooperation between the "Al-Mahdi Army" and Al-Zarqawi's group because Muqtada al-Sadr was losing very quickly his popularity among the Iraqi Shiites, especially in Al-Najaf city where it was observed that the Shiite families were preventing their sons from joining his militia, while his popularity in the Sunni triangle was rising. The source added that Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, who opposes strongly the Revolutionary Guards' interference in Iraq's internal affairs, was recently surprised when he received a report from an official in the Iraqi Government who is a friend of Iran that included precise information backed with figures about the extent of the involvement of the Al-Quds Corps and the Revolutionary Guards' intelligence in the terrorist operations targeting Iraq's Government and people in addition to its infrastructure.

http://cobalt.carebridge.org/TIRR/DT-IRR282.htm#_Iran's_Al-Quds_Corps_Chief_Reported