Former Senior IRGC Commander Under CIA Protection in U.S., Book Says

A book being published Tuesday will say that a senior former Iranian intelligence officer who masterminded the 1983 bombing of U.S. embassy in Beirut was given asylum by George W. Bush administration in 2007 after he defected in Turkey, Newsweek reported today.

The Good Spy, a biography of Robert Ames, a legendary CIA officer who was killed in the embassy bombing, identifies the Iranian as IRGC Brigadier General Ali Reza Asgari and says he was recently living under CIA protection in the United States. The book is written by Pulitzer Prize winning author Kai Bird.

General Asgari was a former deputy defense minister of Iran. He had also served as the senior IRGC commander in Lebanon and was credited with being a key actor in the formation of the Lebanese Hezbollah.

Asgari reached the rank of brigadier general in 1997 and became the deputy defense minister. In 2004, he fell out of favor, for reasons not fully revealed, and was jailed for 18 months. In February 2007, he traveled through Damascus to Istanbul, where he disappeared.

“The decision to give Asgari political asylum under the CIA's Public Law 110 program was probably opposed by veteran CIA officers who have some knowledge of Asgari's alleged responsibility for Roberts Ames’s murder,” Bird writes. “But they and the agency were reportedly overruled by the George W. Bush administration's National Security Council (NSC).

“Some of President Bush's NSC advisers evidently believed that the intelligence Asgari brought to the table on the Iranian nuclear program was essential to the national defense,” Bird added.

File photo: Former IRGC Brig. Gen. Ali Reza Asgari (Wikipedia)

CIA Contractor Traveled to Kish to Meet An American Refugee - Report

Robert Levinson, the CIA contractor who disappeared during a trip to Iran’s Kish Island in 2007, had reportedly traveled there to meet with Dawud Salahuddin, an American who fled to Iran in 1980 (a.k.a. David Theodore Belfield and Hassan Abdulrahman), The New York Times reported.

Salahuddin, who was at the time working as a security guard at the Iranian interest section in Washington, killed Ali Akbar Tabatabai, an Iranian opposition activist living in exile in Bethesda, and soon fled to Tehran by way of Canada and Switzerland. He later described his action as an “act of war” on the opposition and not murder. He has since worked in Iran as an English teacher, a war correspondent and a web editor for an English-language TV. He even acted in a feature movie in 2000 by the famed Iranian director Makhbalbaf called Kandahar.

Robert Levinson, who had worked on money laundering cases by Iranian officials, had made arrangements to meet with Salahuddin at Kish Island (an Iranian free economic zone requiring no visas to enter). Salahuddin, who had been outspoken about his opposition to government corruption in Iran, was apparently ready and able to provide valuable information to Levinson. They were going to meet at Maryam Hotel in Kish.

For a detailed account on Levinson by Barry Meier of The New York Times, please click here.

To read The New York Times report on Salahuddin by Robert MacKey, please click here.

File photo: Dawud Salahuddin in a still image from a 2006 documentary. (The New York Times) 

Chemical weapons attack responses: 1983 and 2013

U.S. response to Iraq's CW use against Iran in 1983; Russia's on Syria in 2013

 

Left: Iranian military KIAs from Iraqi chemical weapons attack in 1988. Right: Syrian chemical weapons casualties in 2013. 

Below: CIA document acknowledging Iraq's use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war. At the United Nations, the United States effectively shielded its ally Iraq, diplomatically, for its use of chemical weapons during the course of the war. The U.S. also accused Iran of using chemical weapons during the conflict; it's widely understood that Iran did not reciprocate with chemical weapons of its own. For additional reading on the subject click HERE.

 

Below: Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said last Wednesday's alleged chemical attack in Syria, which U.N. chemical weapons experts began investigating on Monday, was probably the work of rebels who wanted to derail plans by Washington and Moscow to hold talks on Syria's future.

Operation TPAJAX Declassified-1953 Iranian Coup

The Full Story declassified On August 19, 2013

Photographer unknown

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB435/

Iran Military Commander: Mossad Controls CIA and MI6; Israel Taking Control of the World

Iran's Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Major General Hassan Firouzabadi said in Tehran that Israel’s Mossad controls CIA and MI6. He also warned that the “Zionists” are attempting to dominate the world.

“Today all spying and intelligence services of the enemies of Islam are acting in unison, and evidence indicates that Mossad, as the intelligence agency for the Zionists, has taken control of CIA in the US and MI6 in Britain,” Gen. Firouzabadi said (IRNA, 28 July).

“The Zionists plan to occupy all the Palestinian territories including al-Quds (Jerusalem), establish a government, and take control of the world at the same time,” Firouzabadi added.

Photo Credit: Major General Hassan Firouzabadi. IRNA 

Iran Sanctions Have Been Biting – U.S. Intelligence

Country Positioning Itself to Build Nuclear Weapons Should It Chooses to Do So

Iran is feeling the bite from economic sanctions imposed over its nuclear program, the director of CIA told Congress on Tuesday.

“The sanctions have been biting much, much more literally in recent weeks than they have until this time,” CIA Director David Petraeus said at a Senate intelligence committee hearing.

“What we have to see now is how does that play out, what is the level of popular discontent inside Iran, does that influence the strategic decision-making of the Supreme Leader and the regime, keeping in mind that the regime's paramount goal in all that they do is their regime survival,” Gen. Petraeus added.

But Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, giving testimony to the same panel, acknowledged that sanctions so far had not caused the Iranian leaders to change their behavior or policies.

“Iran's economic difficulties probably will not jeopardize the regime, absent a sudden and sustained fall in oil prices or a sudden domestic crisis that disrupts oil exports,” Clapper's written testimony said.

Evaluating the impact of the current sanctions on Iran oil exports, Petraeus said that China has reduced imports of Iranian oil but “it remains to be seen whether that continues.”

“It appears that Saudi Arabian production is ramping up and can fill some of the demand that might have been met by Iranian exports now that there are the sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran,” he said.

On state of Iran’s nuclear program, Clapper said Iran was positioning itself to produce nuclear weapons whenever it decides to do so.

"We assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons, in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so," Clapper said in written testimony. "We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons."

Source: Reuters, 31 January 2012