Iran Negotiates Peace In Vienna, Funds War in Gaza
While the Obama administration and major world powers were engaged in nuclear negotiations with Iran in Vienna, Tehran in recent weeks has been busy financing terrorism in the Gaza Strip and reaching out to the most radical jihadi elements based in the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, KleinOnline has learned.
For the second consecutive month, Iran transferred money to pay the salaries of Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades terrorist organization, Mideast defense officials said.
The money was intended only for the Brigades and was not meant to pay salaries for the tens of thousands of Hamas municipal and government workers.
The cash for Hamas’s terror Brigades comes as Hamas’s political leadership has been locked in an internal dispute about the group’s future relationship with Tehran amid more successful outreach talks with Sunni Arab countries, primarily Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
By providing funds for Hamas’s “military wing” only, Iran may be seeking to cause a fracture within the Hamas leadership, especially as Hamas strongman Salah al-Arouri, currently based in Turkey, continues to amass significant power within the terror group’s infrastructure and directs his own rival Hamas wing from his sanctuary in the NATO country.
Iran may also be seeking to bolster its waning influence in Gaza via Hamas’s Brigade. Jihadist sources in Gaza said that Islamic Jihad, traditionally backed by Iran, has not received funding from Hamas for the last five months because of the terrorist group’s refusal to provide support for the embattled regime of Iran’s ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Meanwhile, Hamas fighters are not the only Mideast jihadists to benefit with Iran’s financial largesse.
An Egyptian security official said that some Salafist terrorists captured in the Sinai Peninsula by Egypt in recent weeks admitted under interrogation that Iranian agents initiated contact with their groups with an offer to supply weapons from Libya and Sudan.
The security officials said the Salafists who divulged the Iranian offer were not members of the Islamic State, but were other rebel Salafist jihadists who have been aiding in the campaign to target the Egyptian military infrastructure in the Sinai.
White House Teams Up With Dovish Group
The White House is coordinating its public-relations strategy on Iran with an organization that opposes America’s development of a missile-defense system and contributes to scores of anti-war groups highly critical of U.S. foreign policy and military expansion.
Last Monday, the Washington Free Beacon reported that White House officials held a private strategy conference call that day with progressive organizations to discuss ways of convincing lawmakers to support a deal with Iran.
A close analysis of the groups and activists who participated in the call reveals the radical nature of many of them.
The conference call, with some 100 participants, was organized by the anti-nuclear weapons advocacy group Ploughshares Fund. Ploughshares Fund has a long history of anti-war advocacy and is a partner of the Marxist-oriented Institute for Policy Studies. The institute has urged the defunding of the Pentagon and massive decreases in U.S. defense capabilities, including slashing the American nuclear arsenal to 292 deployed weapons.
The Ploughshares Fund also opposes America’s development of a missile-defense system and itself disburses financing to scores of anti-war groups.
Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, has stated that he wants Israel to give up its nuclear weapons, arguing that such a move will ensure Iran halts its illicit nuclear program and will help to create a Mideast nuclear-free zone.
FBI Report Documents Illegal Aliens-Crime Link
According to largely unreported data published by the FBI, criminal gangs – in some regions comprised mostly of illegal aliens – are wreaking havoc in the U.S., with 65 jurisdictions nationwide reporting gang-related offenses committed with firearms, accounting for at least 95 percent of crime in those areas.
The FBI further documented that gangs in southwestern border regions were committing a multitude of crimes in America, “including drug-related crimes, weapons trafficking, alien smuggling, human trafficking, prostitution, extortion, robbery, auto theft, assault, homicide, racketeering, and money laundering.”
This information is contained in the FBI’s 79-page National Gang Report published in 2013, the most recently released extensive agency report providing an overview of gang activities and trends in the United States. It documents, extensively, that criminal gangs, some comprised in large part of illegal aliens, are importing drugs and committing a high percentage of violent crimes throughout the U.S.
One section of the 79-page report discusses “Gangs and the U.S. Border.” It reports that gangs, “especially national-level Hispanic gangs, such as MS-13, the Eme, Sureños, and TB, continue to pose a significant threat to the Southwest border region.”
The FBI documented that surveys conducted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection indicate that in some southwest border sectors “the percentage of non-U.S. citizen gang members was as high as 80 percent.”
The report states that once deported, gang members have repeatedly attempted to re-enter the U.S. illegally “in order to re-join the gang and engage in criminal activity.”
The FBI statistics demonstrate that gangs “exploit opportunities along the nearly 2,000 miles of contiguous U.S.-Mexico territory” to engage in a multitude of crimes, “including drug-related crimes, weapons trafficking, alien smuggling, human trafficking, prostitution, extortion, robbery, auto theft, assault, homicide, racketeering, and money laundering.”
“Of these offenses, drug-related crimes – such as production, smuggling, trafficking, and distribution – are the most widely reported criminal acts committed by gangs of all types,” according to the 2013 report.