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ISLAMIC STATE VS. ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

At first glance, it looks like an ordinary video produced by the so-called Islamic State with all the usual trappings. Its sleek yet macabre. A young boyin all probability, not even a teenagerspeaks to the camera as he stands on a battlefield. Dressed in military uniform and brandishing a knife, he goes on to behead a spy.

But what makes the video almost unique is its language. The boy speaks in fluent Persian and is explicitly addressing the inhabitants of Iran, especially its majority Shia population. While Persian propaganda used to be somewhat of a rarity for ISIS, it has recently become more common.

In this case the young protagonist, Al-Qatada the Persian, addresses all those who take part in and cooperate with the war against the Islamic State and issues an explicit threat: We will destroy your land and your home, we will disrupt your security and we will shed your blood.

At one level, this certainly is an act of desperation. Iranian-backed and in some cases Iranian commanded militias have played a key role fighting ISIS in Iraq and supporting the Assad regime in Syria. The ayatollahs and their acolytes no longer even try to be discreet about their military role in the region, as IranWire has reported.

But ISIS has proved flexible, imaginative, and resilient many times, to the chagrin of its enemies, and its current unconventional offensive against Iran should be taken seriously.

ISISs propaganda has long been multilingual. From glossy magazines in English and French to videos in Hebrew and songs in Chinese, it has sought to globalize its outreach. But it is only recently that it has seriously turned to Persian, one of the main languages of the Muslim world and the official tongue in three Muslim-majority countries (Afghanistan and Tajikistan in addition to Iran). Apparently its trying to increase recruitment in Iran and target Iranian territory.

Less than two months ago, on June 7, a group of Iranian recruits (mostly Sunni Kurds) staged attacks on the Iranian parliament and the shrine of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini. Twenty-three people died, including the five attackers themselves.

While Iranians and commentators were caught by surprise, ISIS-watchers would have known that the attack came after months of extensive publishing of Persian-language propaganda. In fact, less than 24 hours before the attack, Radio Free Europe had published a report entitled IS Propaganda Increasingly Targeting Iran And Its Sunnis.

In the few months leading up to the attack, four issues of ISISs magazine, Al-Rumiyah, had been published in Persian for the first time. These seem to have been a direct translation of the previously-published English output. Articles detailed the supposedly religious justification for the killing of unbelievers. One issues front cover featured a blood-soaked blade and gave tips on using to kill using a knife.

More significantly, ISIS produced and posted a sophisticated 37-minute video in March, perhaps timed to coincide with the Iranian new year celebrations, that gave a detailed history of Iran and explained why the country, its rulers and its majority Shia inhabitants should be targeted.

The video recounts the time of pre-Islamic Iran when the Persian Sassanian empire had installed the religion of Magi [a pejorative term for Zoroastrianism] as its official creed and people worshipped fire. The ancient Persian empire is depicted with elaborately-staged reenactments that could be straight from a Hollywood production. The video falsely claims that the Sassanian capital was in the cities of Persia, in what is today Iran (the Sassanian capital Ctesiphon was, in fact, near what is today Baghdad, the Iraqi capital).

The historical narrative continues, with the championing of Salman the Persian, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad who, the video explains, helped the Muslims win a crucial battle by advising the prophet to build a moat around their trenches a common Iranian military tactic at the time. Iranians then remained Muslims for nine centuries, the video says, until the rise of Shah Ismail in the 16th century and his founding of the Safavid empire, which made Shia the official religion of Iran. In the video, talking heads remind viewers of the massacres in Tabriz, Shiraz, Yazd and Mazandaran by the Safavids.

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A Portuguese envoy is quoted as having allegedly documented the destruction of Sunni mosques and killing of the Sunni scholars under the Safavids. It is further alleged that the Safavids turned Abo Lo Lo, the Iranian-descended assassin of Omar, the second Islamic caliph, into a brave national hero.

Historical reenactments and documentary-style talking heads might not seem like effective propaganda tools, but the video tries to build a powerful narrative aimed at the Sunni minority, which forms up to nine percent of the Iranian population.

The narrative is updated to the present time with attacks on the Islamic Republic, whose founder Ayatollah Khomeini, it says, came from Paris with an airplane of French crusaders.

Along with the other crimes committed by the republic, the video points to its alleged attempts to disseminate Shiism around the world, its support for militias in the Arab world and its tolerance of Jewish synagogues and Christian churches in Iran.

The video features a film of Iranian Jews worshiping in peace in Tehran and Isfahan as signs of the Islamic Republics un-Islamicness. It also attacks Iranian Sunni imams like Mowlana Abdolhamid, the Friday prayer leader in Sunni-majority Zahedan, who has been a popular stalwart of the Iranian Sunnis due to his efforts to better their conditions and fight discrimination while also countering the influence of Takfiri groups like al Qaeda and ISIS, which regard those who do not share their rigid orthodoxy and heretics deserving death.

In addition to using Persian, the video also features a protagonist speaking in Balochi, a language spoken by about two percent of Iranians, most of them living in the southeast. Another speaks in fluent Arabic and is introduced as Al-Ahwazi, meaning he is allegedly from the Arab-populated southwest of Iran that has long harbored separatist and Pan-Arabist factions but has been mostly immune to Sunni radicalism (the majority of Iranian Arabs are Shia). The video also calls on Kurds and Persians to join ISIS and fight Iran.

It is perhaps surprising that it took ISIS so long to target Iran seriously. There have been many reports of the groups recruitment efforts in Iran since its foundation in June 2014. Analysts believe some Iranians have long been among the groups forces and may have even been killed fighting for ISIS. But the pace of the groups propaganda and recruitment efforts has accelerated in the last year.

In June 2016, Iranian media reported that 18 people had been arrested after using the popular Telegram app to join ISIS. Two months later, a military leader reported the killing of two ISIS members in the Western province of Kermanshah in clashes with security forces. Then, Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi said his forces had prevented 1,500 Iranians from joining ISIS.

Just days before the deadly June 2017 attack, authorities in the eastern province of Nangarhar in Afghanistan released a video in which a man, introduced as Yasser from the Iranian province of West Azerbaijan, claimed to have joined ISIS via the app Telegram. The recent release of the Al-Qatada video might signal an ISIS effort to further target Iran with terrorist attacks just as it stands on the edge of losing its last territorial holdings in Iraq and Syria.

The group will continue to have major difficulties for recruitment in Iran. Many Iranian Sunnis are under the influence of their official imams and religious leaders who, as the example of Mowlana Abdulhamid shows, often work hard to fight against Takfiri influences. The anti-government and regionalist efforts in Kurdistan and Arab-populated Khuzestan have historically been secular and nationalist.

Baluchistan seems to be the only region in Iran where Sunni radicalism has a foothold (and its capital, Zahedan, was the scene of a major terrorist attack in 2010). But even there, local, regionalist groups will be a serious rival for any outside group.

As ISIS furthers its Sunni-aimed propaganda, however, the Iranian authorities and society will need to remain vigilant. Despite existing discrimination toward Sunnis, senior Islamic Republic figures do not publicly malign or attack them. (This is in contrast to the pressure put on Shias in many Sunni-majority countries, especially Saudi Arabia. There, the Grand Mufti openly accuses millions of Saudi Shias of being unbelievers.)

Ayatollah Khamenei, Irans supreme leader, issued a fatwa back in 2010 banning any insult against Aisha, a favorite wife of the Prophet Mohammad who, after his death, fought against the forces of Ali, the first Shia Imam. The same fatwa extended the ban to insults against symbols of our Sunni brothers.

This is important, as occasional Shia sermons do include rants against Aisha, who Sunnis hold dear as the Mother of Muslims. Sectarianism has undoubtedly been used to bolster Shia militias as they fight in the territories of Iraq and Syria, filled with the holiest of shrines for Shias.

YouTube abounds with anti-Sunni rants by charismatic Persian-speaking preachers. Some Shia mosques in Iran organize festivities on the anniversary of the killing of the caliph Omar, sacred to the Sunnis, and celebrate his assassin, who is said to have been of Iranian descent.

But Iranians must understand that any fanning of the flames of sectarianism can have grave consequences that they will come to regret.

This article is adapted from one by Arash Azizi that appeared originally on IranWire.

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ISIS Turns its Gunsand Propaganda Machineon Iran - Daily Beast

That said, any crisis that occurs is likely to be less severe than the 2008 catastrophe that struck the United States because Iran generally has much less debt in its economy. But the threat remains significant.

The prospect of a banking crisis is so serious that in a speech earlier this year, the head of Iran's central bank, Valiollah Seif, warned financial executives that non-performing loans were a threat to all the gains the Rouhani government is making on the economic front. While he has proposed possible solutions, nothing has been agreed upon.

Turquoise's fund has no bank holdings Rabii said he exited the sector three years ago. He said he believes the central bank may need to intervene in the next 18 months to stave off a major threat.

Year-to-date, Turquoise's signature fund is up 12 percent, easily outpacing Tehran's main benchmark, which is up 3 percent. Turquoise has holdings in Iranian industrials, refined petroleum and the chemical sector.

"We have seen a big increase in European corporations coming to Iran, although inflow of foreign portfolio investment is still slow," he said. "It's better than it was, but it is still slow."

Read the rest here:
Iran already has a lot of problems, and the next one could be a banking crisis - CNBC

In testimony before a House committee Tuesday, the youngest son of a former FBI agent who disappeared in Iran a decade ago urged greater sanctions on Iran if it does not account for his father and release U.S. citizens imprisoned in the country.

Doug Levinson, who was 13 when Robert Levinson was last seen on Irans Kish Island, described being crestfallen that his father was not among five Americans freed as part of a prisoner swap to accompany the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal in 2016.

Do not let Iran off the hook. They know exactly where he is, Doug Levinson told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee. Hold their feet to the fire. Threaten them with sanctions. Do something. Do anything.

Levinson was among three relatives of Americans imprisoned or missing in Iran who testified in support of a House bill calling for their freedom on humanitarian grounds. On Friday, the White House said President Trump is prepared to impose new and serious consequences on the country if they are not released and returned.

[With U.S. scholars conviction, power struggle escalates between hard liners and president in Iran]

Iran is known to be holding at least four U.S. citizens and two permanent residents of the United States. U.S. officials have never been able to ascertain the whereabouts of Robert Levinson, whose family is convinced he is still alive, although Tehran insists it has no idea where he is or what happened to him.

Levinson entered Iran to gather information on government corruption on a mission for CIA personnel who did not have authority to run such overseas operations. Ten agency employees were disciplined because of the Levinson case. Iran has never acknowledged holding him.

The other Americans have been accused of espionage, charges that their families and the U.S. government say are baseless.

My dad is innocent, and he will not be forced to do things against his will, including signing forced confessions, said Omar Zakka, whose father, Nizar, is an Internet-freedom advocate arrested in 2015 when he traveled to Iran for a conference. He is in the fifth week of a hunger strike protesting his imprisonment.

I fear for his life and safety, his son said.

Iran has used Americans as bargaining chips ever since the 1979 revolution, when Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy and held 52 U.S. diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days. Only this month, Princeton graduate student Xiyue Wang was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he accessed thousands of archived documents relating to his research on 19th- and early-20th-century Iran.

The prisoner swap that accompanied the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal in 2016, buying freedom for five Americans including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, brought bitter disappointment for the families of those who were left behind.

Babak Namazi told the committee he was devastated that his brother, Siamak, was not among the Americans flown out of Tehran that night with the others. Their father, Baquer, a former UNICEF official, was arrested in early 2016 when he went to Tehrans Evin prison hoping to visit Siamak. In October, father and son were sentenced to 10 years in prison for cooperating with a foreign government, meaning the United States.

[Trump promised not to let Iran jail Americans. When will he help free my father and brother? ]

Namazi said his fathers health is declining, and his brother, who has spent most of the past two years in solitary confinement, has grown despondent waiting for their release. He fears time is running out.

The whole thing is crazy, he told a small group of journalists Tuesday morning. The whole thing is beyond comprehension.

Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told CBS News that the elder Namazi was not behind bars but also that he was not free to leave the country. But Babak Namazi said his father, who has been taken briefly out of prison twice to be hospitalized, remains in Evin.

Several Iranians are in U.S. prisons on sanctions-related charges. In recent weeks, officials in Tehran and Washington have suggested they may be willing to make a deal over the prisoners. Their fate has been brought up during bilateral meetings between U.S. and Iranian officials monitoring the nuclear deal and by allies from other countries who have met with Iranians.

Read the rest here:
Son of American who disappeared in Iran pleads: 'Do something. Do anything.' - Washington Post

By Andrew deGrandpre By Andrew deGrandpre July 25 at 7:04 PM

Officials say a U.S. Navy ship fired warning shots when an Iranian vessel in the Persian Gulf came within 150 yards on Tuesday, July 25. (Reuters)

A U.S. Navy patrol boat fired two bursts of machine-gun fire at an Iranian military ship Tuesday as it made an alarmingly fast and close approach in the Persian Gulf, marking the latest aggressive encounter between the two adversaries.

The unidentified Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessel got within 150 yards of the USS Thunderbolt and risked a collision, U.S. officials said, before the American patrol boat fired warning shots and quickly ended the encounter.

One Pentagon official who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity described it as an isolated incident and confirmed that no one was hurt.

U.S. officials have not specified where the incident occurred, saying only that U.S. and coalition ships were participating in a daytime training exercise when the Iranians conducted an unsafe and unprofessional interaction by failing to observe internationally recognized maritime customs.

Its also unclear how many Americans were aboard the Thunderbolt. Based in Norfolk, it can carry a crew of 27 and is used primarily for patrolling coastlines and to provide surveillance for interdiction operations.

U.S. officials have not yet disclosed what type of weapons the crew fired, although the ship is armed with .50.-caliber machine guns and Mk 38 chain guns in addition toautomatic grenade launchers.

At least three other American vessels were nearby at the time.

Video released by the U.S. Central Command shows the Iranian vessel approaching the Thunderbolts starboard side, extremely close to the ships bow. An American sailor can be heard radioing the ships coordinates, and then the sound ofmachine-gun fire.

The Iranian vessel did not respond to repeated attempts to establish radio communications as it approached, said Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Defense Department spokesman. Thunderbolt then fired warning flares and sounded the internationally recognized danger signal of five short blasts on the ships whistle, but the Iranian vessel continued inbound. As the Iranian vessel proceeded toward the U.S. ship, Thunderbolt again sounded five short blasts before firing warning shots in front of the Iranian vessel.

Iranian military officials characterized the incident as a U.S. provocation and took credit for having neutralized the threat.

In a report published last winter, the Office of Naval Intelligence indicated that vessels operated by the Revolutionary Guard Corps routinely monitor U.S. and allied warships in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, a busy waterway that links to the Gulf of Oman. The majority of these encounters are safe and routine, it said, but unprofessional or aggressive run-ins are becoming more frequent.

Such operations increase the likelihood for a mishap at sea, potentially leading to strategic tension and insecurity in the region, the report said.

The Pentagon documented 35 such interactions with Iranians last year, up from to 23 in 2015. This year, it has acknowledged at least five.

[Iranian navy points laser at Marine helicopter in altercation involving three U.S. ships]

Last month, Iranian forces harassed a formation of three American ships the amphibious assault ship Bataan, the guided-missile destroyer Cole and the dry cargo ship Washington Chambers shining floodlights on them from a distance of 800 yards and pointing a laser at an airborne U.S. helicopter.

Twice in March, the USNS Invincible, which is outfitted with sonar and radar equipment, had close encounters. In one incident, an Iranian frigate moved within 150 yards. In the other, Revolutionary Guard fast boats cut in front of the U.S. ship, forcing it to rapidly change course to avoid a collision.

Such adversarial behavior between the two nations navies comes amid whathas become a more complicated dynamic on the ground inside Iraq and Syria.

Speaking at a security forum in Colorado last week, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, Army Gen. Raymond Thomas, acknowledged how American troops now routinely come coffee-breath close to Iranian-backed forces, according to CNN.

Last month in Syria, where fighters trained by Iran are supporting President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. forces shot down at least two armed Iranian drones near the border with Iraq and Jordan.

Thomas noted, too, that during one recent trip into northern Iraq, where Iranian trained militias are battling the Islamic State, his plane was parked beside one belonging to Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, commander of Irans infamous Quds Force.

We bump into them everywhere, he said.

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An Iranian ship refused to heed the Navy's warning. Then shots were fired. - Washington Post

An overwhelming majority of House lawmakers voted to pass a sweeping sanctions package Tuesday evening that threatens to tie President Trump's hands in negotiations with Russia, and also punishes two other rogue regimes: Iran and North Korea.

"This is a strong, bipartisan bill that will increase the United States' economic and political leverage," House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce said Tuesday just before the House passed the measure 419-3.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said after the vote that Congress has to take action against these "bad actors."

A bill that started out weeks ago as a vehicle for cracking down on Iranian belligerence turned into pack mule for lawmakers determined to guide U.S. foreign policy while navigating domestic politics. The Iran bill passed the Senate only after the addition of a Russia sanctions bill opposed by the Trump administration, before stalling in the House due to procedural fights.

When the dust settled, the bill was laden with a new batch of North Korea sanctions in addition to smaller tweaks.

"Our job isn't done obviously until we get this thing across the finish line. And we need to do that, because this bill is critical to our national security," New York Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs panel, said Tuesday on the House floor. "It does far more than just send a message to leaders in Russia, Iran, and North Korea it exacts a heavy price for their aggressive and destabilizing behavior."

The House previously approved the North Korea bill as a stand-alone item in a 419-1 vote, but it has yet to be taken up in the Senate, which has been consumed with debates over how to repeal Obamacare as well as Trump's political appointments. "I hope we don't face further delays when this bill gets back to the other house," Engel said.

The Russia and Iran components of the bill have run into a series of snags already, chiefly due to procedural issues. The original version of the Senate-passed bill violated a constitutional requirement that all legislation which raises revenue must start in the House. Once that was fixed, lawmakers clashed over how much power Democrats should have to force votes on bills that would condemn various decisions Trump might make while implementing the Russia sanctions.

The Russia language is a rare addition for sanctions bills, in that it allows Congress to vote down decisions by the White House to waive sanctions against Russia. Democrats said that language was critical given their skepticism that President Trump would maintain sanctions against Russia.

For weeks, Democrats said resolutions disapproving of Trump's decision to waive sanctions should be able to be called up by any lawmaker, including Democrats in the House. But the final language will let House GOP leaders decide whether or when to call up those resolutions.

Lawmakers praised the final product as a way to address national security threats to the U.S.

"North Korea and Russia and Iran all pose serious threats to our national security," Royce said. "Successive administrations have struggled and failed to address them, and it is well past time to respond with meaningful action."

Trump's team lobbied against the Russia sanctions as written, saying that Congress should give him more discretion when negotiating to improve relations with the former Cold War rival. But Congress has ignored those appeals, leaving them with a choice about vetoing or allowing the bill made all the more difficult by the fact that the Russia-related provisions are tied to Iran and North Korea sanctions.

"He's going to study that legislation and see what the final product looks like," White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Monday.

House passage sends the bill to the Senate, which is expected to approve it by a wide margin. The Senate approved the Russia and Iran language in a 98-2 vote, and passage by another veto-proof majority would force the Trump White House to accept the bill as is.

View post:
House passes sweeping sanctions bill punishing Russia, Iran, and North Korea - Washington Examiner