The White House asked for options to strike Iran

[Pitcher]

The White House's national security team last fall asked the Pentagon to provide it with options for striking Iran after a group of militants aligned with Tehran fired mortars into an area in Baghdad that is home to the US Embassy, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.

The request by the National Security Council, which is led by John Bolton, sparked deep concern among Pentagon and State Department officials, the newspaper reported, citing current and former US officials. 

The Pentagon complied with the request, but it is not known whether the options for an Iran strike were also provided to the White House or if President Donald Trump knew about it.

The decision to seek options striking Iran was prompted by an incident in September in which three mortars were fired into a diplomatic quarter in Baghdad, the newspaper said. The shells landed in an open lot and no one was hurt.

State Department Secretary Mike Pompeo did not comment on the story when asked about it by reporters and a State Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

A Pentagon spokesman did not have any immediate comment on the story and the White House and National Security Council could not be immediately reached.

A spokesman for the National Security Council was quoted in the Wall Street Journal, however, as saying: “We continue to review the status of our personnel following attempted attacks on our embassy in Baghdad and our Basra consulate, and we will consider a full range of options to preserve their safety and our interests."

 

https://www.thebaghdadpost.com/en/Story/35138/The-White-House-asked-for-options-to-strike-Iran

[WISKY291]

I'd be all in on that one. 

[ChuckFinley]

56 minutes ago, WISKY291 said:

I'd be all in on that one. 

that

[GreedyDinar07]

Like My Father said 'Hold Your Horses"......No bombs and no wars..if you have noticed a lot of Countries are involved including our Great Military (Thank you for your Service be safe and strong) the "good" people in Iraq, the US and the World. Once Iraq establish the Government and the Security is Consistent we can move forward. "Fools rush in were wise men fear to go". God Bless..and to the Iraqi people and the Middle East Allah Bless!! One God! God is the Master of the Universe and All Worlds. Peace,Prosperity and Love.Stay Strong!!! Go USA and Go Iraq!!...Rise Babylon Rise!! Iraq....Kurds ,Shiite and Sunni you are all brothers and sisters. Find a peaceful way...the wealth belong to the people and it is your God given right to have access to it and turn it into an empire...!!! Peace!!

[Pitcher]

Iran Space Launch Cover for Test of Nuclear-Capable Missile Tech, U.S. Determines

 

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates—The United States has determined that Iran's planned launch of satellites into space is actually a cover for the regime's continued testing of advanced missile technology capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the Washington Free Beacon on Saturday ahead of private meetings with Gulf State officials regarding Tehran's ongoing support for terror groups.

Iranian officials, the United States estimates, are gearing up to launch multiple satellites into space in the coming days, stoking concern the Islamic Republic is using these space launches as a ruse to test intercontinental ballistic missile technology (ICBM), according to Pompeo, who held a small briefing with reporters in Abu Dhabi.

The test-firing of ICBM technology violates United Nations statutes barring such activity, according to Pompeo, who described Iran's actions as provocative and said the Trump administration will rally nations to hold Iran accountable for this nuclear-related work.

"You'll see in a handful of days the Iranians intend to launch a space launch vehicle," Pompeo said in response to questions from the Free Beacon. "The claim is that it is to put some satellites in the air. The truth is this will be another step in their understanding of how it is you can launch an ICBM."

 

"The whole world needs to come together to oppose that," Pompeo said, confirming that administration's view that this type of test violates U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, which calls upon Iran to stop its ongoing tests of various types of advanced ballistic missiles.

Pompeo, in the UAE during the second leg of a weeklong trek across the region, signaled that the Trump administration is relying on Middle Eastern nations to join the United States in stymieing Iran's intervention across the region, including in Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.

Pompeo will also travel to Qatar, an Iranian ally that also enjoys American military support. Qatar's alignment with Tehran has been a source of consternation in Washington, D.C., and it appears Pompeo will be seeking to disrupt that alliance during his high-level meetings here.

Asked by the Free Beacon how the Trump administration plans to make good on its promise to expel "every Iranian boot" from Syria amid its withdrawal of American forces, Pompeo acknowledged the tough reality of this goal.

"Every Iranian boot is an ambitious objective, but it's ours," he said, conveying a clear-eyed view of the situation placed before him. "It's our mission. The tools we will use are broad. The fact that a couple thousand uniformed personnel in Syria will be withdrawing is a tactical change. It doesn't materially alter our capacity to be able to perform military actions that we need to perform."

American forces are not wholly vacating the region, Pompeo said, and the anti-Iran coalition the United States leads is fully capable of sustaining military operations aimed at exorcizing Iranian forces from Syria.

"But more broadly than that," he continued, "the campaign to create a better world, to allow the Iranian people to have opportunity and democracy has lots of pieces to it: Economic, financial, diplomatic for sure."

To that end, the United States announced on Friday that it will hold a ministerial in Warsaw, Poland, on Feb. 12 to galvanize countries across the globe to confront Iran. Leaders from nearly every continent, including Asia, the Western hemisphere, the Middle East, and Africa will attend the summit, Pompeo said.

"The coalition is big and growing and the tools that we get from having that coalition all working together on that mission gives us an opportunity to create that chance for the Iranian people," he said.

However, the United States has no appetite for going at it alone, Pompeo said, echoing a critical point emphasized in his major address in Cairo, Egypt, earlier this week.

"We're happy to be an important part of" the coalition, Pompeo told the Free Beacon. "It's an important part of President Trump's agenda. The nuclear proliferation risks from Iran are incredibly real."

"Our mission set is certainly to stop the terror regime, stop the funding of Hezbollah and Shia militias, and funding the Houthis in Yemen, but it has a nuclear component," as well, he said.

The central message on this trip remains: "The United States is in fact a force for good. We want to be their partners, we want to work alongside of them to achieve ends in their country's best interests, as well as the United States."

Pompeo also addressed criticism by former Obama administration officials about his speech in Cairo, which described the Obama administration as a chief enabler of Iran and ISIS.

"I wasn't critical of any of those individuals. It was the ideas that underlay the previous administration's policies. It was their diagnosis of the problem that was all ‘honked out'," he said, invoking "a word from Kansas," Pompeo's home state.

"If you diagnose the problem incorrectly you get ISIS. If you diagnose the problem incorrectly you get the Islamic Republic of Iran on the march" across the region, Pompeo said.

Addressing the ongoing government shutdown and its potential impact of the morale of Foreign Service employees, Pompeo assured reporters that "morale is good."

"They understand that there are squabbles in Washington, but their mission remains," he said.

 

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-space-launch-cover-for-test-of-nuclear-capable-missile-tech-u-s-determines/

[Pitcher]

US officials say California men were agents of Iran

 

They seemed an unlikely pair of spies.

The older man, Majid Ghorbani, worked at a Persian restaurant in Santa Ana. At 59, he wore a thick gray mustache and the weary expression of a man who had served up countless plates of rice and kebab.

The younger man, Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar, was a Long Beach native who held U.S. and Iranian citizenship. Round-faced and bespectacled, the 38-year-old answered to the Farsi nickname “Topol,” or “Chubby.”

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Yet even as the men sipped coffee at a Costa Mesa Starbucks, chatted outside an Irvine market, or made trips to Macy’s at South Coast Plaza, they were trailed by federal agents.

Despite the men’s disarming appearance, U.S. authorities allege that they were operating in Orange County as agents of the Islamic Republic of Iran — an accusation that has alarmed many in the local Persian community because it suggests that tensions between the U.S. and Iran have spilled over into Southern California.

The men’s goal, authorities say, was to conduct surveillance on Israeli and Jewish facilities in the U.S., and to collect information on members of the Mujahedin Khalq ––the MEK –– an Iranian exile group that has long sought to topple the regime in Tehran and has newfound support among members of the Trump administration.

From the summer of 2017 to the spring of 2018, authorities say, the men crisscrossed Orange County and the U.S., making videos of participants at MEK rallies in New York and Washington, D.C., and photographing Jewish centers in Chicago.

During that time, the men also flew back and forth between Iran and Los Angeles International Airport, and appeared to be assembling “target packages” — dossiers that would “enable an intelligence or military unit to find, fix, track and neutralize a threat,” according to documents filed in Washington federal court.

In at least one instance, the men were recorded by an FBI listening device as Ghorbani briefed Doostdar on a New York MEK event in September 2017, according to court documents.

“I took some pictures and collected some information of them and some senators that they are working with,” Ghorbani said, according to court documents. “I have prepared a package, but it is not complete.”

The MEK is a shadowy organization with a militant past. Until 2012, it was deemed a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. Although few Americans have heard of it, the group has vexed the Iranian government since the revolution of 1979, when members helped to overthrow the shah.

Led by a husband-and-wife power couple — Massoud and Maryam Rajavi — the group was sheltered and armed by Saddam Hussein for nearly 20 years. Known for its female-led military units, the MEK was disarmed after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Massoud Rajavi went missing that same year and is believed to be dead.

Despite a long history of lobbying U.S. lawmakers and officials for support, few have taken the group seriously —until now.

President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, is not only a prominent hawk on Iran, he also has championed the MEK. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, has also supported the group.

“The MEK in recent years has spent time and money building political capital,” said Daniel Benjamin, director of Dartmouth College’s Center for International Understanding. “Bolton has been the MEK’s most dedicated long marcher.”

Although the Trump administration has not explicitly said that it seeks regime change in Iran, it has reimposed economic sanctions and pulled out of a 2015 nuclear deal. Those actions and cozier relations with the MEK have apparently worried Iran enough to act against the group.

In a case similar to the one in Orange County, two Iranians in Albania were arrested in March after allegedly conducting surveillance of the MEK. In July, an Iranian diplomat in Germany was arrested on suspicion of plotting to bomb an MEK rally in Paris.

“This is escalation of Iran attempting to attack us,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, the U.S. deputy director of the National Council of Resistance of Iran — an MEK-linked organization.

It is unclear how Ghorbani and Doostdar first came into contact, but investigators believe their first meeting occurred behind Darya, the Persian restaurant where Ghorbani had worked for more than 20 years.

Doostdar was born in Long Beach but left at a young age for Canada and then Iran. An energy tech consultant, Doostdar had visited the U.S. only a few times, court documents say. His wife gave birth in late August and was hoping to bring her to the U.S.

Ghorbani, who neighbors and co-workers described as quiet and easygoing, was born in Iran but immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. He and lived with his brother in a Costa Mesa apartment complex not far from the restaurant.

Investigators said Ghorbani also infiltrated meetings the MEK held at Darya. In early August, Ghorbani met with MEK members as they discussed sending three American senators to evaluate the group’s base in Albania, according to the indictment.

Rene Redjaian, a spokeswoman for Darya, said the restaurant owners had no idea that Ghorbani was involved in spying. “Our owners love America and knew nothing about the events that took place at Darya,” Redjaian said.

As time went on, the men continued their alleged covert operation, unaware that federal agents were closing in.

In December 2017, Doostdar returned to Iran, allegedly to hand over the intelligence Ghorbani had collected. Unknown to him, FBI agents searched his checked luggage at LAX and found a CVS pharmacy envelope. Inside the envelope, FBI agents found photos of Ghorbani standing next to people who were at the New York City MEK rally from September 2017. Many of the photographs had names and positions of the individuals written on the back, including one photograph that had “Dr. Ahmad Rajavi, the brother of Massoud,” written on it, prosecutors said in court documents.

    
In March 2018, Ghorbani traveled to Iran to conduct a briefing on how to take photos for an upcoming conference supported by the MEK, prosecutors allege.

When he returned April 17, authorities found in his luggage a list written in Farsi that detailed his future tasks, including deeper infiltration into the MEK and recruiting another person, according to court documents.

The men never succeeded in allegedly recruiting another operative, however.

On Aug. 9, FBI agents swarmed Darya restaurant and arrested Ghorbani.

Doostdar was arrested the same day in Chicago.

Both men have been accused of acting as agents of a foreign government without notifying the U.S. attorney general, and with providing services to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. Both men have pleaded not guilty and remain in custody.

Ghorbani’s lawyer has declined to comment on the case. Doostdar’s attorney, Thomas Durkin, said he’s suspicious about the timing of his client’s arrest considering it comes soon after Trump reimposed sanctions against Iran.

 

“There’s political machinations going on between the Trump administration and Iran. Why did the government all of a sudden decide to arrest these people?” Durkin said.

(EDITORS: STORY CAN END HERE)

The arrests of Ghorbani and Doostdar have shaken many in Orange County’s Persian community.

“There is a sense of fear in the Iranian community that the regime in Iran are sending people to USA and keeping track of movements,” said Mike Kazemi, an Irvine immigration lawyer.

For those in the Persian community who are against the Islamic Republic but also disagree with the Trump administration’s Iran policies, the escalation in tensions has been disconcerting. They say it is a reminder of how American and Iranian officials view members of the Iranian diaspora with suspicion.

“We are in the middle of two hard places,” Kazemi said.

Yet others in the community say they refuse to allow geopolitics to interfere with their day-to-day lives.

Nasrin Rahimieh, a professor of humanities at the University of California, Irvine said she understands how recent developments might cause some Persians to feel afraid of being too visible.

Throughout her career, Rahimieh said, she has been chastised for either appearing pro-Islamic Republic or anti-Islamic Republic.

But those experiences led Rahimieh to speak out against what she said is the fearmongering rhetoric in today’s political environment.

“There is such rabid desire to show Iranians as bad actors and as bad agents that it’s had the opposite effect on me,” Rahimieh said. “To paint all Iranians with the same brush is something that needs to be protested.”

 

 

https://www.heraldcourier.com/content/tncms/live/