Citing two unidentified senior US intelligence officials, the Associated Press recently reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has intercepted communications in January which exposed emerging terrorist plots from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). According to the report, in January the IRGC discussed carrying out a “USS Cole-style attacks” (a reference to the October 2000 al Qaeda suicide bombing of a US guided missile destroyer which killed 17 American sailors) on Fort McNair to kill General Joseph M. Martin, the vice chief of staff for the US Army.
According to the intelligence officials, the recent threat was one example ofthe Iranian regime’s apparent commitment to seeking revenge for the January 2020 killing of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the IRGC’s terrorist Quds Force. A number of senior officials of the regime, including the current commander of the Quds force, Esmail Qaani, have already threatened to carry out terrorist attacks on US soil for the same purpose.
“So long as there is a man around the world, he is ready to punish the cowards who did this,” Qaani said on January 1, 2021, adding, “With this crime you have committed, you have created another objective for all the free people in the world, and rest assured that someone, even from inside your house, will respond to your crime.”
He also tweeted: “We warn the US President, the head of the CIA, the Secretary of Defense, the US Secretary of State and other US officials involved in the assassination of Martyr Soleimani that they must learn the secret lifestyle of Salman Rushdie because the Islamic Republic will avenge Martyr Soleimani’s blood that was unjustly shed.”
The Fort McNair plot cannot be dismissed as mere talk or bravado.
From the assassination of Iran’s last pre-revolution Prime Minister in Paris in 1991to the bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina in 1994 to many more such attacks in foreign cities, Iran’s regime has consistently carried out extraterritorial terror attacks and assassinations against its enemies.
Read more at: Modern Diplomacy
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