“Iran busts sanctions by using other nations to get WMD – German intel,” Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post, October 2, 2020.
“Protests Erupt In Iran Backing Azerbaijan In Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict,” RFE/RL, October 2, 2020.
“Iran’s refusal to fully cooperate has resulted in this. “Canada forms own probe into Iran downing of Ukraine plane,” AP, October 2, 2020.
“Second Hendijan platform in place offshore Iran,” Offshore, October 2, 2020.
“Sugar workers in Iran striking for wages and public ownership,” People’s World, October 2, 2020.
FM Zarif again reminds the world where Iran is going for protection and support, which does not bode well for Iran acting as a normal country. “Ambassador: Iran-China ties accelerating,” Tehran Times, October 2, 2020.
“Hussein Amir-Abdollahian, the special aide to the speaker of the Iranian Parliament on international affairs, told al-Alam news network in early September. Amir-Abdollahian said Israel’s main goal in normalizing relations with Arab countries was to gain broad access to Arab and Muslim countries to disintegrate the region’s countries including the UAE itself. The Israelis want to carry out their “big Zionists plot,” which aims to disintegrate the region as soon as possible. “Saudi Arabia will conclude from its relationship with the Zionist entity that the U.S.-Zionist plots to disintegrate Saudi Arabia will be implemented faster, and there is a similar view about the UAE as well. You might say that the UAE is not a big country, but the Zionists want, through their secret plots, to divide the UAE into seven separate states or regions, and this is what they have sought to achieve in recent years against Iran, Iraq, Syria, and even Egypt and Turkey,” the special aide warned.” See “Israel plotting to partition Saudi Arabia: Iran,” Tehran Times, October 2, 2020.
“Lawyer Says Iran Transferring Political Prisoners To Mental Asylum In ‘New Project’,” Iran News Wire, October 2, 2020.
“France looks to restore influence in Lebanon, but Iran isn’t budging,” Israel Kasnett, JNS, Israel Hayom, October 2, 2020. Note the long excerpt. “David Wurmser, director of the Project on Global anti-Semitism and the US-Israel Relationship at the Center for Security Policy, said that “the real government of Lebanon is Iran right now, which rules through Syria and Hezbollah.” “Lebanon is perhaps one of the most important assets that Iran still has left beyond Iraq,” he said. “It serves a critical strategic role, as well as financial [one].” For this reason, according to Wurmser, “the effort to reshape the Lebanese government broke down because the key players in it cannot afford to meaningfully surrender power.” “Strategically, Lebanon is the anchor to Iran’s attempt to turn the fertile crescent into a contiguous swath of territory from the Gulf to the Mediterranean,” he said. “Without Lebanon, it cannot effectively threaten Israel, and thus loses its ability to exploit the Arab-Israeli conflict to assert some claim to leadership over the broader Islamist world, let alone purchase status in the global third-world ‘liberation’ camp.” In his recorded speech to the annual UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Netanyahu dropped a bombshell when he exposed Hezbollah rocket warehouses ensconced in civilian neighborhoods and situated near gas-storage facilities. His point: Iran’s threat to Israel is real, and the Islamic regime will even destroy Lebanon to maintain the threat. According to Wurmser, Lebanon’s importance to Tehran “extends far beyond the geostrategic: the Shi’ites of Lebanon threaten Tehran if left to their own will.” “Iran lives every day in fear of delegitimization of its regime by Shi’ite clerics,” he said, “which is why control of all major Shi’ite population centers is existentially important for the regime.” Wurmser noted that “Lebanon has become of the main, if not the main, funding structure still nourishing not only Iran’s external terror structure – Hezbollah, the Iraqi militias and the other parts of the IRGC’s Al Quds Force – but increasingly is also a funnel of money to Iran itself to circumvent sanctions.” Not only does the regime need to control the global structure of Lebanese Shi’ite funding networks, according to Wurmser, “but also the bank structure, including the central bank of Lebanon and all the government institutions of Lebanon.” “These have become one of the last bastions compromising the tightening financial noose closing in on Iran,” he said. “Losing control of Lebanon’s government thus is an absolute red line for Tehran. It can under no circumstance genuinely surrender control of it.” “In short,” he said, “Iran cannot afford to lose full control of Lebanon, and whether invisible or overt, it must retain uncompromised power over all its governmental and banking institutions – let alone over its territory and the Shi’ite community. It will fight to the last Lebanese to maintain its dominance.” Wurmser said the Lebanese people “only want their country back, and to exit the dangerous and destructive morass of Iranian regional strategic aggression.” But until Western nations address Iran’s complete domination of Lebanon, he warned, “any effort at Lebanese reform is doomed since it crosses Tehran’s red line.” He said Lebanon’s reconstruction must start “with the complete expulsion of Iran and its minions from any structure of power or finance; the eradication of all Iranian financial presence and influence; and the removal of all armed militias who answer to Iran. And then to ensure the void is not filled by the other great regional threat: militias answering to Ankara and the neo-Sultan Erdoğan of Turkey, which over the long run intends just as dark a future of Lebanon as the one Iran had thus far imposed on it.”
