CRC Open Sources
Counterterrorism Research Center Open-Source Intelligence Briefs
June 22, 2009
IRAN: World Tribune reports (from Iranian pro-democracy sources) that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the IRGC’s Basij paramilitary force have employed Shia Hizballah and Sunni Hamas operators in Iran in attacks against “anti-government [pro-democracy] protesters in the wake of the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”
So much for Western sympathizers and enablers of Jihadi-terrorists who since 9/11 have been propagating disinformation re: Shia and Sunni not operationally collaborating. Fact is, Shia and Sunni extremists do – and have – collaborated on every front worldwide for decades.
According to open sources: Farsi-speaking undercover security agents are issuing the orders. The orders are then translated into Arabic. The translated commands are given to “the militias.” The militias are attacking the demonstrators.
Our sources are telling us, IRGC forces “are utilizing foreign fighters from Lebanon” because – with all of the international focus on Iran – the IRGC does not want to appear “in an official capacity” to be conducting direct-action operations against Iranian civilians. The IRGC wants its foreign subsidiaries Hizballah and Hamas to do its dirty work. And the operations are ongoing.
Tom Harb, secretary general of the International Lebanese Committee for the Implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, tells us: “The UN must immediately investigate the validity of these disturbing reports, because this – like so many other Hizballah activities –would be in direct violation of UNSCR 1559 and 1701.”
IRAQ: On the victory-in-Iraq front (which far too many Western journalists and American politicians who have pretended to support the troops, but who have done their level-best to undermine U.S. military operations in Iraq since 2003): we have more news of amazing albeit underreported success on the ground in that country.
According to Agence France Presse and Stars & Stripes: “The U.S. Army handed over a base in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, once a bastion for anti-U.S. insurgents, to Iraqi forces on Saturday as the deadline nears for its pullout from Iraq’s cities. The transfer of the Joint Security Station comes barely more than a week before a June 30 deadline for U.S. forces to pull out of Iraq’s urban centers as required by a security accord signed between Baghdad and Washington in November.”
U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Daniel Bolger – commanding general of the 1st Cavalry Division, author, longtime friend of ours, and a general-officer with a reputation of leading from the front in combat – said, “This land has been bought with a very high price: 136 US soldiers and 184 Iraqi soldiers shed their blood to protect Sadr City [between January 2006 and present].”
Bolger added: “We Americans did not give you this place: you have earned it, paid with Iraqi blood, sweat and tears. … Fighting here was fierce and deadly. Thank God the worse of that has passed. ”
Bolger added that American forces would return to Sadr City “to respond to violence if requested by the Iraqi government.”
NORTH AMERICA: Christopher Holton, a vice president with the Center for Security Policy (CSP) and the director of the CSP’s Divest Terror Initiative, emails: “This evening [Saturday] we were alerted to a new, disturbing event involving a Jihadist organization holding an event at a private Islamic school in the Chicago, IL area. The purpose of the event is to call for Shariah and Islam to replace capitalism.
More detail at Shariah Finance Watch.
— Chris Carter contributed to this report.
— Visit W. Thomas Smith Jr. at uswriter.com.