Wednesday September 9, 2009
Iran Banks Move Into Ecuador to Avoid UN Sanctions
In its latest bid to avoid international banking sanctions, Iran has reached an agreement with the Central Bank of Ecuador to allow the Export Development Bank of Iran to operate in this Andean nation.
The move came even though Ecuador is fully aware that EDBI is under U.S. Treasury Department sanction for illicitly providing or attempting to provide financial services to Iran's Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL).
According to the Treasury Department's designation statement:
"In response to international sanctions and the refusal of many responsible banks to do business with Iranian banks, Iran has adopted a strategy of using less prominent institutions, such as the Export Development Bank of Iran, to handle its illicit transactions." said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey. "Today's action exposes EDBI's role in helping Iran violate UN sanctions so that financial institutions around the world can take appropriate steps to protect themselves."
Established in 1991, the EDBI is an Iranian state-owned financial institution whose primary purpose is to serve Iran's import and export communities. In addition, the EDBI operates as the Iranian representative for the Islamic Development Bank, a multinational institution that cultivates economic and social improvements in member nations, in accordance with Islamic law.
However, the EDBI provides financial services to multiple MODAFL-subordinate entities that permit these entities to advance Iran's WMD programs. Furthermore, the EDBI has facilitated the ongoing procurement activities of various front companies associated with MODAFL-subordinate entities.
At the same it designated EDBI, Treasury also designated the "Venezuelan" Banco Internacional de Desarrollo (BID), a wholly-owned Iranian bank that was constituted in 2007.
Its founding documents show the BID (not to be confused with the multi-national lending agency, Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, also known as BID) is wholly owned (all 40,000 shares) by Bank Saderat, an Iranian bank under U.S. and UN sanction. The BID (Venezuela) was also granted an operating license, along with EDBI, in Ecuador.
According to the U.S. Treasury designation:
Bank Saderat has been a significant facilitator of Hizballah’s financial activities and has served as a conduit between the Government of Iran and Hizballah, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
District Attorney in Manhattan, Robert Morgenthau, in a speech yesterday at the Brookings Institution warned that the proliferation of Iranian banks through Venezuelan auspices was a danger to the region.
"Generally speaking, nobody is focused sufficiently on the threat of the Iran-Venezuela connection," said Morgenthau, whose New York jurisdiction includes the offices of numerous U.S. financial institutions.
Venezuela is not under U.S. or international economic sanctions. That means U.S. banks processing wire transfers from Venezuelan banks rely on their Venezuelan counterparts to ensure the exchanges are for legitimate purposes, Morgenthau said.
"I have little faith that this is being effectively done, and the Iranians, aware of this vulnerability, appear to be taking advantage of it," he said.
Now, with an Ecuadoran branch set to open, the vulnerabilities have grown and diversified.
The move came even though Ecuador is fully aware that EDBI is under U.S. Treasury Department sanction for illicitly providing or attempting to provide financial services to Iran's Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL).
According to the Treasury Department's designation statement:
"In response to international sanctions and the refusal of many responsible banks to do business with Iranian banks, Iran has adopted a strategy of using less prominent institutions, such as the Export Development Bank of Iran, to handle its illicit transactions." said Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey. "Today's action exposes EDBI's role in helping Iran violate UN sanctions so that financial institutions around the world can take appropriate steps to protect themselves."
Established in 1991, the EDBI is an Iranian state-owned financial institution whose primary purpose is to serve Iran's import and export communities. In addition, the EDBI operates as the Iranian representative for the Islamic Development Bank, a multinational institution that cultivates economic and social improvements in member nations, in accordance with Islamic law.
However, the EDBI provides financial services to multiple MODAFL-subordinate entities that permit these entities to advance Iran's WMD programs. Furthermore, the EDBI has facilitated the ongoing procurement activities of various front companies associated with MODAFL-subordinate entities.
At the same it designated EDBI, Treasury also designated the "Venezuelan" Banco Internacional de Desarrollo (BID), a wholly-owned Iranian bank that was constituted in 2007.
Its founding documents show the BID (not to be confused with the multi-national lending agency, Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, also known as BID) is wholly owned (all 40,000 shares) by Bank Saderat, an Iranian bank under U.S. and UN sanction. The BID (Venezuela) was also granted an operating license, along with EDBI, in Ecuador.
According to the U.S. Treasury designation:
Bank Saderat has been a significant facilitator of Hizballah’s financial activities and has served as a conduit between the Government of Iran and Hizballah, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
District Attorney in Manhattan, Robert Morgenthau, in a speech yesterday at the Brookings Institution warned that the proliferation of Iranian banks through Venezuelan auspices was a danger to the region.
"Generally speaking, nobody is focused sufficiently on the threat of the Iran-Venezuela connection," said Morgenthau, whose New York jurisdiction includes the offices of numerous U.S. financial institutions.
Venezuela is not under U.S. or international economic sanctions. That means U.S. banks processing wire transfers from Venezuelan banks rely on their Venezuelan counterparts to ensure the exchanges are for legitimate purposes, Morgenthau said.
"I have little faith that this is being effectively done, and the Iranians, aware of this vulnerability, appear to be taking advantage of it," he said.
Now, with an Ecuadoran branch set to open, the vulnerabilities have grown and diversified.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Friday September 4, 2009
A New Look at the Multi-Headed Hydra of Transnational Organizations
The DEA and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York have unveiled a new indictment for drug trafficking that shows just how truly transnational and intertwined with terrorists, aircraft merchants, and little-scrutinized company registries these groups have become.
The case centers on Jesus Eduardo Valencia-Arbelaez, aka "Padre," aka "Pat," who was extradited from Romania to stand trial for drug trafficking and money laundering. I think these two paragraphs sums up the huge challenges faced with these organizations that have now grown tentacles around the world. Plotting this on a map would help give the true dimensions of the enterprise.
Valencia-Arbelaez was a leader of a sophisticated international cocaine trafficking organization (the Organization) based in Colombia and Venezuela that operated worldwide, including in Bolivia, Spain, Holland, Sierra Leone, Guinea Conakry, Mauritania, Mali, Cyprus, and the United States.
Beginning in September 2007, members of the Organization sought to purchase a cargo airplane for the purpose of transporting metric tons of cocaine from Venezuela to West Africa. Between September 2007 and March 2009, Manuel Silva-Jaramillo, a member of the Organization arrested earlier this year, conducted meetings in connection with the Organization's efforts to acquire the airplane in, among other places, Madrid, New York and Virginia. Silva-Jaramillo arranged to finance the purchase of the airplane through a corporation based in Cyprus and to register it in Sierra Leone.
It would be incorrect to assume the Organization has an organic structure in each of the countries named. Rather, it has carved out important links to existing criminal organizations there, and have key operatives in the country or region to keep an eye on the operations and collect or pay money, as necessary.
But it does show a remarkable integration across four continents and the ability to manage multiple moving pieces. It also shows how mobile the Organization's key personnel are. Valencia-Arbelaez was arrested in Romania, where he had gone to further discuss the purchase of aircraft for his organization. Unfortunately, Viktor Bout, denied bail yesterday by a Thai judge, was unavailable for business.
This case follows closely on another one where the DEA, using the tried and true uncover tactic of pretending to be buying weapons for the FARC in Colombia, captured a former Syrian military officer in Honduras, purporting to have weapons obtained from Hezbollah to sell on the international market.
Jamal Yousef, aka "Talal Hassan Ghantou," an international arms trafficker, was charged with participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy. What is interesting about the case is that it was to be a transcontinental weapons for cocaine trade. While such trades are reported anecdotally, there has been little first-hand evidence of this type of activity among designated terrorist organizations.
So, we have a Syrian in Honduras offering to sell Hezbollah weapons stashed in Mexico, reportedly stolen from Iraq. Again, the geographic space in the operation is significant and, until fairly recently, an insurmountable obstacle.
The silver lining in this is that the arrests were made. It is a part of the shifting tactics of the DEA and others to target the "shadow facilitators" like Yousef who have access to different criminal and terrorist networks and broker the deals that are profitable to all.
But the scary part is just how far-flung and inter-active these groups have become. Globalization and market forces at their best.
The case centers on Jesus Eduardo Valencia-Arbelaez, aka "Padre," aka "Pat," who was extradited from Romania to stand trial for drug trafficking and money laundering. I think these two paragraphs sums up the huge challenges faced with these organizations that have now grown tentacles around the world. Plotting this on a map would help give the true dimensions of the enterprise.
Valencia-Arbelaez was a leader of a sophisticated international cocaine trafficking organization (the Organization) based in Colombia and Venezuela that operated worldwide, including in Bolivia, Spain, Holland, Sierra Leone, Guinea Conakry, Mauritania, Mali, Cyprus, and the United States.
Beginning in September 2007, members of the Organization sought to purchase a cargo airplane for the purpose of transporting metric tons of cocaine from Venezuela to West Africa. Between September 2007 and March 2009, Manuel Silva-Jaramillo, a member of the Organization arrested earlier this year, conducted meetings in connection with the Organization's efforts to acquire the airplane in, among other places, Madrid, New York and Virginia. Silva-Jaramillo arranged to finance the purchase of the airplane through a corporation based in Cyprus and to register it in Sierra Leone.
It would be incorrect to assume the Organization has an organic structure in each of the countries named. Rather, it has carved out important links to existing criminal organizations there, and have key operatives in the country or region to keep an eye on the operations and collect or pay money, as necessary.
But it does show a remarkable integration across four continents and the ability to manage multiple moving pieces. It also shows how mobile the Organization's key personnel are. Valencia-Arbelaez was arrested in Romania, where he had gone to further discuss the purchase of aircraft for his organization. Unfortunately, Viktor Bout, denied bail yesterday by a Thai judge, was unavailable for business.
This case follows closely on another one where the DEA, using the tried and true uncover tactic of pretending to be buying weapons for the FARC in Colombia, captured a former Syrian military officer in Honduras, purporting to have weapons obtained from Hezbollah to sell on the international market.
Jamal Yousef, aka "Talal Hassan Ghantou," an international arms trafficker, was charged with participating in a narco-terrorism conspiracy. What is interesting about the case is that it was to be a transcontinental weapons for cocaine trade. While such trades are reported anecdotally, there has been little first-hand evidence of this type of activity among designated terrorist organizations.
So, we have a Syrian in Honduras offering to sell Hezbollah weapons stashed in Mexico, reportedly stolen from Iraq. Again, the geographic space in the operation is significant and, until fairly recently, an insurmountable obstacle.
The silver lining in this is that the arrests were made. It is a part of the shifting tactics of the DEA and others to target the "shadow facilitators" like Yousef who have access to different criminal and terrorist networks and broker the deals that are profitable to all.
But the scary part is just how far-flung and inter-active these groups have become. Globalization and market forces at their best.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Monday September 7, 2009
Afghanistan's Difficult Counterinsurgency
It is clear that the counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan (only now seriously beginning as a counterinsurgency effort) is in serious difficulty. As the New York Times reports, there is little actual support from the central government's police or military forces outside of Kabul.
Support for the war is dropping at home and among key allies, particularly Britain. The most optimistic assessment that the commanding general there, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, can come up with is that the situation is serious but salvageable. Hardly the rose colored glasses.
But the underlying problem, as McChrystal and others know, is not the military, but the complete and utter incompetence of the Karzi regime, to which we are so tightly wedded.
The corrosive corruption and unwillingness/inability/blindness of the Karzi is what will be the ultimate demise of that war. A foreign fighting force cannot win unless a host government, viewed as legitimate by its people, is fighting the war as well. That is not the case in Afghanistan.
History should not be forgotten. What propelled the Taliban to power in 1996 was the public disgust with the corruption and state violence of that time. Transportation was impossible because of the multiple road blocks. Constant bribes made it impossible to rebuild the country or attract anything like foreign investment. Warlords fighting over poppy revenues and ethnic interests left the country a wreck.
The Taliban's appeal then, as now, is rooted in the promise of restoring order and eliminating corruption. It is a sad measure of how bad things are currently that the fact that the Taliban utterly failed at this the first time around is often ignored or that their reign of religious terror is viewed as preferable to the current situation.
The public knowledge that his close family members are among the largest heroin traffickers in the country make any pretense of eradication or a successful "kingpin" strategy (knocking off the top traffickers to break up large criminal organizations) a bad joke.
I am not an Afghanistan expert but have covered and studied numerous insurgencies and counter insurgencies over more than two decades and that is the one lesson I take away as a universal.
The unfettered power of local, regional and national officials to make people pay for basic services, the administration of "justice," or any other basic transaction, is the most destructive force that gives insurgents the oxygen they need to thrive.
The impunity granted officials who steal, rape and pillage their own population will undercut any "clear and hold" strategy because the people do not want the government to come in behind. And the government, if it does come in behind, comes to loot and pillage.
This is the fundamental dynamic that more troops, no matter how well they fight and what sacrifices they make, cannot address. It is the result, in part, of the neglect of Afghanistan during the previous administration, coupled with the general unwillingness of NATO troops to view the situation as a war. The exploding poppy trade has made all the worst elements, from the Taliban to Karzi-allied warlords, rich enough to finance their conflict for years to come.
All this adds up to the fact that changing tactics on the ground for U.S. troops fighting in hostile conditions, or even a major strategic initiative to win hearts and minds, will ultimately fail. Only the Afghan people and their frightfully short-sighted and greedy leadership, can make the changes necessary. If you can make the Taliban look good, you are not really fit to govern.
Support for the war is dropping at home and among key allies, particularly Britain. The most optimistic assessment that the commanding general there, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, can come up with is that the situation is serious but salvageable. Hardly the rose colored glasses.
But the underlying problem, as McChrystal and others know, is not the military, but the complete and utter incompetence of the Karzi regime, to which we are so tightly wedded.
The corrosive corruption and unwillingness/inability/blindness of the Karzi is what will be the ultimate demise of that war. A foreign fighting force cannot win unless a host government, viewed as legitimate by its people, is fighting the war as well. That is not the case in Afghanistan.
History should not be forgotten. What propelled the Taliban to power in 1996 was the public disgust with the corruption and state violence of that time. Transportation was impossible because of the multiple road blocks. Constant bribes made it impossible to rebuild the country or attract anything like foreign investment. Warlords fighting over poppy revenues and ethnic interests left the country a wreck.
The Taliban's appeal then, as now, is rooted in the promise of restoring order and eliminating corruption. It is a sad measure of how bad things are currently that the fact that the Taliban utterly failed at this the first time around is often ignored or that their reign of religious terror is viewed as preferable to the current situation.
The public knowledge that his close family members are among the largest heroin traffickers in the country make any pretense of eradication or a successful "kingpin" strategy (knocking off the top traffickers to break up large criminal organizations) a bad joke.
I am not an Afghanistan expert but have covered and studied numerous insurgencies and counter insurgencies over more than two decades and that is the one lesson I take away as a universal.
The unfettered power of local, regional and national officials to make people pay for basic services, the administration of "justice," or any other basic transaction, is the most destructive force that gives insurgents the oxygen they need to thrive.
The impunity granted officials who steal, rape and pillage their own population will undercut any "clear and hold" strategy because the people do not want the government to come in behind. And the government, if it does come in behind, comes to loot and pillage.
This is the fundamental dynamic that more troops, no matter how well they fight and what sacrifices they make, cannot address. It is the result, in part, of the neglect of Afghanistan during the previous administration, coupled with the general unwillingness of NATO troops to view the situation as a war. The exploding poppy trade has made all the worst elements, from the Taliban to Karzi-allied warlords, rich enough to finance their conflict for years to come.
All this adds up to the fact that changing tactics on the ground for U.S. troops fighting in hostile conditions, or even a major strategic initiative to win hearts and minds, will ultimately fail. Only the Afghan people and their frightfully short-sighted and greedy leadership, can make the changes necessary. If you can make the Taliban look good, you are not really fit to govern.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Saturday August 29, 2009
Chávez Excellent Adventure
Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, apparently afraid that Colombia's willingness to allow Forward Operating Locations (FOLs) in Colombia, will spend early September visiting a number of pariah states in an effort to strengthen his standing.
According to the official presidential press office, Chávez will spend most of the first two weeks of September visiting Libya (where a convicted terrorist was just received as a hero by Gadaffi et al); Iran (whose newly-nominated defense minister Ahmad Vahidi is a wanted terrorist and responsible for numerous terrorist attacks, including one that killed Americans), then off to buy a battalion of tanks from Russia, arriving via Syria, another state sponsor of terrorism.
Lovely trip. While visiting Gadaffi, Chávez will also participate in an African Union summit, perhaps for the chance to rub elbows with Mugabe, Kabila and others to share lessons learned in destabilization.
Chávez is deeply vexed that Colombia would allow the United States to locate several FOLs in its national territory, a move largely designed to offset the loss of the Manta FOL in Ecuador, where the 10-year lease expired in July and was not renewed by the Correa government.
One of the issues that is of serious concern is not just the loss of the ability to monitor the Pacific corridor drug flights without Manta (a capacity that would be enhanced by the Colombian SOLs but would still be far less than it was in Manta), but the impact of the loss on the Mexican drug situation.
Already drug traffickers are switching to the Pacific corridor, knowing the route is now unwatched. That cocaine will land directly into Mexico, further enhancing the ability of the Mexican cartels to continue their bloodshed and threaten the central government.
Chávez's protestations about the evils of a foreign military base ring a bit hollow, however, given his enthusiastic and unsolicited offer to house Russian military air facilities for long-range strategic bombers, an offer that is under review by the Russians. The Russian bombers visited Venezuela last year, the first time since the end of the Cold War.
Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, has offered a Caribbean island for the base and a team of Russian officers has already inspected the facilities, it has emerged.
Major General Anatoly Zhikharev, the Russian air force's chief of staff for long-range aviation, told reporters in Moscow that Chávez had proposed the site and the Russian side was considering it. "If a relevant political decision is made, this is possible," he said.
Hmm, what makes more strategic sense: a) negotiating the use of operating locations, under national control, in a friendly country with no increase in personnel, where a democratically elected government is fighting an armed insurgency that uses terrorism and is supported by drug trafficking, or b) offering an island for strategic long range bombers to a country that has no strategic interest in the region and with no protocol governing how Venezuela will safeguard its control of the process.
Chávez has already publicly acknowledged some $5 billion in weapons purchases from Russia since 2005. But he was badly humiliated in 2008 when, in that tiff with Colombia, he ordered 10 battalions to the Colombian border. Only he didn't have the capacity to carry out the order, or even come close. Russia, desperate to rebuild its arms industry, will sell to anyone with no conditions so Chávez wants more, even as his oil-filled coffers run dry.
So things are likely to get more tumultuous in Latin America before they get better. Chávez is upset he has been unable to reverse the ouster of Zelaya in Honduras and has lost Brazilian and Chilean support (vital because they are both socialist governments and alternatives to Chávez's radical populism) in his efforts to whip up anti Colombian and anti-U.S. sentiment over the FOLs. So he has to look outside the region to allies he hopes can save him, even if all they have to offer are new terrorist strategies.
According to the official presidential press office, Chávez will spend most of the first two weeks of September visiting Libya (where a convicted terrorist was just received as a hero by Gadaffi et al); Iran (whose newly-nominated defense minister Ahmad Vahidi is a wanted terrorist and responsible for numerous terrorist attacks, including one that killed Americans), then off to buy a battalion of tanks from Russia, arriving via Syria, another state sponsor of terrorism.
Lovely trip. While visiting Gadaffi, Chávez will also participate in an African Union summit, perhaps for the chance to rub elbows with Mugabe, Kabila and others to share lessons learned in destabilization.
Chávez is deeply vexed that Colombia would allow the United States to locate several FOLs in its national territory, a move largely designed to offset the loss of the Manta FOL in Ecuador, where the 10-year lease expired in July and was not renewed by the Correa government.
One of the issues that is of serious concern is not just the loss of the ability to monitor the Pacific corridor drug flights without Manta (a capacity that would be enhanced by the Colombian SOLs but would still be far less than it was in Manta), but the impact of the loss on the Mexican drug situation.
Already drug traffickers are switching to the Pacific corridor, knowing the route is now unwatched. That cocaine will land directly into Mexico, further enhancing the ability of the Mexican cartels to continue their bloodshed and threaten the central government.
Chávez's protestations about the evils of a foreign military base ring a bit hollow, however, given his enthusiastic and unsolicited offer to house Russian military air facilities for long-range strategic bombers, an offer that is under review by the Russians. The Russian bombers visited Venezuela last year, the first time since the end of the Cold War.
Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, has offered a Caribbean island for the base and a team of Russian officers has already inspected the facilities, it has emerged.
Major General Anatoly Zhikharev, the Russian air force's chief of staff for long-range aviation, told reporters in Moscow that Chávez had proposed the site and the Russian side was considering it. "If a relevant political decision is made, this is possible," he said.
Hmm, what makes more strategic sense: a) negotiating the use of operating locations, under national control, in a friendly country with no increase in personnel, where a democratically elected government is fighting an armed insurgency that uses terrorism and is supported by drug trafficking, or b) offering an island for strategic long range bombers to a country that has no strategic interest in the region and with no protocol governing how Venezuela will safeguard its control of the process.
Chávez has already publicly acknowledged some $5 billion in weapons purchases from Russia since 2005. But he was badly humiliated in 2008 when, in that tiff with Colombia, he ordered 10 battalions to the Colombian border. Only he didn't have the capacity to carry out the order, or even come close. Russia, desperate to rebuild its arms industry, will sell to anyone with no conditions so Chávez wants more, even as his oil-filled coffers run dry.
So things are likely to get more tumultuous in Latin America before they get better. Chávez is upset he has been unable to reverse the ouster of Zelaya in Honduras and has lost Brazilian and Chilean support (vital because they are both socialist governments and alternatives to Chávez's radical populism) in his efforts to whip up anti Colombian and anti-U.S. sentiment over the FOLs. So he has to look outside the region to allies he hopes can save him, even if all they have to offer are new terrorist strategies.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH
Saturday August 22, 2009
Iran's Cynicism in the Face of Terrorism
One of the clearest signs of the danger that the Iranian presence poses in Latin America is the decision by president Ahmadinejad to name one of the masterminds of the 1994 AMIA bombings as minister of defense.
Ahamd Vahidi, who at the time of the bombing was the head of the Quds Force, is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice, asking for his arrest for his part in the worst terrorist attack in Latin America.
He was deputy defense minister in Ahmadinejad's first government, and is now being promoted. Seven other senior Iranian officials are subject of Interpol Red Notices as well.
Alberto Nisman, the Argentine prosecutor who has spent years investigating the case (and presenting enough evidence to Interpol to get the Red Notice issued), called Vahidi "a key participant in the planning and of having made the decision to go ahead with the attack."
"It has been demonstrated that Vahidi participated in and approved of the decision to attack AMIA during a meeting in Iran on August 14, 1993. Iran has always protected terrorists, giving them government posts, but I think never one as high as this one," Nisman told the Associated Press.
Given Iran's rapidly-expanding and largely opaque diplomatic presence in Latin America and the history of Iranian diplomatic missions in housing Quds Force special operatives and Hezbollah, this is a bad sign indeed.
With a large and unmonitored diplomatic presence in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua, Iran has positioned itself for spreading mischief throughout the region. It is not happenstance that these resources are being spent in a continent where Iran has historically had no presence, no cultural affinity and no strategic interests.
What it does have is a marketable expertise in asymmetrical warfare, intelligence gathering and terrorism, and a shared hatred for the United States with Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega.
And crossing Iran can be dangerous.
Argentina's crime, in the eyes of Iran at the time, was to refuse to cut off the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran. The result was Iranian retaliation.
For a fascinating look at the relationship between Iran and Hezbollah, see this fascinating translation of two statements, one by Hezbollah and one by a senior Iranian official, of their mutual dependence and structure.
As one can read, Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's deputy commander, says "the Imam Khamenei (Iran's highest authority) is the one who "decides general guidelines for us, which free us from blame and give us legitimacy."
So it was in the AMIA bombings. The Iranian leadership (including Vahidi) decided on the action, and franchised out the actual execution to Hezbollah, with the resulting 85 people dead.
Ahmadinejad's willingness to spend precious political capital internally and externally by naming Vahidi to a highly public post shows how important it is for his regime to keep their ability to execute state terrorism operational at a very high level. (He has dismissed protests of Vahidi's naming to the cabinet as part of "a Zionist plot).
This is not an accidental nomination, but one that should set off alarm bells across Latin America.
Ahamd Vahidi, who at the time of the bombing was the head of the Quds Force, is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice, asking for his arrest for his part in the worst terrorist attack in Latin America.
He was deputy defense minister in Ahmadinejad's first government, and is now being promoted. Seven other senior Iranian officials are subject of Interpol Red Notices as well.
Alberto Nisman, the Argentine prosecutor who has spent years investigating the case (and presenting enough evidence to Interpol to get the Red Notice issued), called Vahidi "a key participant in the planning and of having made the decision to go ahead with the attack."
"It has been demonstrated that Vahidi participated in and approved of the decision to attack AMIA during a meeting in Iran on August 14, 1993. Iran has always protected terrorists, giving them government posts, but I think never one as high as this one," Nisman told the Associated Press.
Given Iran's rapidly-expanding and largely opaque diplomatic presence in Latin America and the history of Iranian diplomatic missions in housing Quds Force special operatives and Hezbollah, this is a bad sign indeed.
With a large and unmonitored diplomatic presence in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua, Iran has positioned itself for spreading mischief throughout the region. It is not happenstance that these resources are being spent in a continent where Iran has historically had no presence, no cultural affinity and no strategic interests.
What it does have is a marketable expertise in asymmetrical warfare, intelligence gathering and terrorism, and a shared hatred for the United States with Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega.
And crossing Iran can be dangerous.
Argentina's crime, in the eyes of Iran at the time, was to refuse to cut off the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran. The result was Iranian retaliation.
For a fascinating look at the relationship between Iran and Hezbollah, see this fascinating translation of two statements, one by Hezbollah and one by a senior Iranian official, of their mutual dependence and structure.
As one can read, Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's deputy commander, says "the Imam Khamenei (Iran's highest authority) is the one who "decides general guidelines for us, which free us from blame and give us legitimacy."
So it was in the AMIA bombings. The Iranian leadership (including Vahidi) decided on the action, and franchised out the actual execution to Hezbollah, with the resulting 85 people dead.
Ahmadinejad's willingness to spend precious political capital internally and externally by naming Vahidi to a highly public post shows how important it is for his regime to keep their ability to execute state terrorism operational at a very high level. (He has dismissed protests of Vahidi's naming to the cabinet as part of "a Zionist plot).
This is not an accidental nomination, but one that should set off alarm bells across Latin America.
POSTED BY DOUGLAS FARAH