IRAN IS SUFFERING ATTACK AFTER ATTACK on its infrastructure.
The ayatollahs stopped short of blaming either the Great Satan (the U.S.) or the Little Satan (Israel), but still make noise.
Neither the U.S. nor Israel admit to either committing the strikes or having anything to do with the strikes.
The Persians turned out one despotic ruler, the Shah, and got another, the Grand Ayatollah, in return. Having succeeded once, are they about to try again?
Not everyone is happy
According to an article in Newsweek1,
- The Iranian regime has long battled multiple militant insurgencies in different parts of the country, whether separatist groups among Kurdish, Baloch, and Arab communities or extremist religious groups like those pledging allegiance to what remains of the Islamic State organization.
Almost everyone knows about the Kurds, but the Baloch are an unknown.
Wikipedia2 describes the Baloch thus:
- The Baloch are an Iranian people who live mainly in the Balochistan region of the southeastern-most edge of the Iranian plateau in Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. There are also diaspora communities in neighboring regions, including those in India; and having a significant diaspora in the Arabian Peninsula
Persians do not consider themselves “Arabs,” and generally look down on Arabs as lesser people.
Not mentioned in the Newsweek piece are the on-going conflict between the dominant Shi’a and a minority Sunni Muslims.
Foreign aid
During World War 2, the Allies provided financial and military support to “partisans” fighting the nazis.
In most cases, foreign nationals — personnel from the Allied countries — were not sent to aid the partisans. (Inserting a foreign national, particularly one native to the country fighting the nazis happened, but the most common assistance was weapons, communications gear, an intelligence, the latter a two-way street.)
Many of the occupied nations had governments in exile, safely ensconced far from the fighting; often in London.
Iran has one, perhaps two, groups claiming to be its “government in exile.”
Newsweek3
- On July 13, 2019, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Rudi Giuliani, addressed an Iranian opposition group called the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK) at the group's tightly guarded encampment in rural Albania, where some 3,400 members have been preparing for the overthrow of the clerical regime in Tehran.
Calling the MEK Iran's "government-in-exile," Giuliani assured MEK members that the Trump administration regards the group as an acceptable replacement for the current regime. "It gives us confidence that if we make those efforts to overthrow that horrible regime, sooner rather than later, we will not only save lives but we will be able to entrust the transition of Iran to a very responsible group of people," the former New York City mayor told his cheering audience.
At the same time, there is a Wikipedia entry4 that
- The National Council of Iran (NCI), officially the National Council of Iran for Free Elections, is a loosely based umbrella group of the exiled opposition to Iran's Islamic Republic government. It serves as Reza Pahlavi's government in exile in order to either reclaim the former throne, or as the new president of Iran, after overthrowing the current government.
The NCI is based in Paris, France.
The Newsweek piece3 notes that
- The opposition groups remain deeply divided, which undermines their chances of ever taking power, Iran experts say. Over the years, several opposition groups have tried repeatedly to form a united front against Tehran, but their attempts have failed because of clashing histories, agendas and personalities.
President Trump apparently is not promoting a regime change in Iran; preferring to challenge the ayatollahs with sanctions. Yet, Giuliani was promoting regime change when he met with the MEK, ibid.
MEK has, according to Newsweek, a long history that dates back to the overthrow of the shah. It was behind the take-over of the U.S. embassy in Tehran; it “broke with Khomeini over his decision to release the American hostages.”
Lesson not learned? The U.S. supported the Taliban in Afghanistan against Russia. Once the Russians were kicked out of the country, the Taliban turned on the U.S. The MEK already has a bad history with the U.S., but the Pahlavi group, while friendly to the U.S. when the U.S. kept it in power, was over-thrown by the ayatollahs and the MEK. Is Iran worth America’s involvement?
Israel has a history with Iran that predates the ayatollahs.
Israeli communications gear found its way to Arab armies via Iran when the Persians sold Israeli military radios with a Made in Persia label.
There is a very large population of ex-pat Iranians in Israel and they are active in all segments of Israeli society.
Iran and Israel seem to be — Israel refuses to acknowledge it — in a cyber war in which, if Iranian claims are true, Israel seems to have better defenses and better offenses. Iran allegedly attempted to attack Israeli water resources (and failed) and Israel allegedly attempted to interrupt operations at an Iranian port (and succeeded).
For its part, Iran has a blatant Fifth Column in Israel’s Knesset; members who support the overthrow of the Israeli state.
On the other hand, Israel’s Mossad has been known to infiltrate agents into foreign countries.
Attacks on Iran
Foxnews.com5 reports that
- Black smoke rose as flames engulfed the Shahid Tondgooyan petrochemical plant in the Khuzestan province of Iran late Sunday afternoon.
Hours earlier, more than 500 miles away, detonations rocked the basement of an old, nondescript home in a northern pocket of Tehran. The two-story dwelling was said to have housed at least 30 gas cylinders that were used for unclear purposes.
Both incidents came fewer than two days after a string of explosions – and power outages – were reported west of Tehran in the early hours of Friday. Local reports indicated that multiple “mortar-like sounds similar to anti-aircraft missiles” were heard.
The blasts reportedly took place at an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) missile depot.
These most recent attacks happened on the heels of multiple other mysterious explosions at sensitive sites over the course of the last three weeks – and no one is precisely sure what is going on, other than its rattling of the regime and stymieing its controversial nuclear program.
A short timeline:
- June 26 at a liquid fuel production center that makes ballistic missiles in Khojir, near Parchin, southeast of the capital.
June 30, 19 people died following an explosion at a medical center in Tehran.
July 2, the Natanz uranium enrichment plant was struck by a mammoth blast
July 3, an unexplained fire erupted at a power plant in the southwest city of Shiraz, triggering a power outage in the region.
July 4 yet another explosion and inferno tore through a power plant in Ahwaz, while at the same time, a chlorine gas leak was detected at a Karoun petrochemical plant in Mahshahr, about 75 miles away.
Foreign or domestic?
The BBC’s Persian service reported that just after midnight on June 30, some of its journalists received an email from a group purporting to be the "Homeland Cheetahs" – comprised of anti-government, underground dissidents – claiming credit for earlier attacks. The outlet also said they were informed of the Natanz attack hours before it was documented by officials.
David Kennedy, CEO of TrustedSec and a former NSA and Marine Corps cyber-intelligence expert asks “was this a cyber-attack or physical sabotage, the answer could be 'both.' The most likely suspects are the U.S. and Israel working in tandem. Both countries have very sophisticated cyber warfare units and significant capabilities when it comes to cyber-kinetic attacks," Kennedy explained "An attack of this magnitude would require a great deal of planning and preparation, and is very complex because you are exploiting industrial control systems and air-gapped devices."
Inside, outside, neither, both. The ayatollah’s so far are avoiding the issue.
Sources
1. Newsweek: https://tinyurl.com/ycn9vqlm
2. Baloch: https://tinyurl.com/yad4pvgd
3. MEK: https://tinyurl.com/yd3ujcy2
4. NCI: https://tinyurl.com/y9w4fpyq
5. Fox: https://tinyurl.com/y6wuphcm
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Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
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