The United States Department of Justice revealed on Tuesday that in later 2019 and early 2020, two large caches of Iranian weapons had been seized in the Arabian Sea as they were being shipped to Yemen. Among the largest forfeiture of Iranian weapons to date were 171 surface-to-air missiles and eight anti-tank missiles.
In the complaint that led to the forfeiture of that oil, the US Justice Department noted that its sale would have benefited the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an entity designated as a foreign terrorist organization.
Around the same time, over a million barrels of Iranian petroleum, due to be delivered to Venezuela, was also seized. The confiscated oil was later re-sold, and the profits were reportedly added to a fund to compensate victims of terrorism around the world.
From the US Marine barracks bombing in 1983 in Lebanon, to the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the list of victims from acts of terrorism is extensive. In 2020, a U.S. federal judge in New York ruled that the Iranian regime was liable for damages in relation to the 9/11 terrorist attack in 2001 as they harbored Al Qaeda operatives prior to the attack, providing them with ‘critical training and support’.
In 2018, the list of victims almost grew longer due to the failed terrorist plot of the Iranian Resistance rally near Paris which would have claimed the lives of lawmakers and dignitaries from across the world, along with many activists and Iranian expatriates.
Under the command of high-ranking Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi, three Iranian operatives were planning to attend the rally with a device laden with 500 grams of the highly-explosive TATP, which had been transported across Europe from Tehran by Assadi himself. Belgian authorities managed to intercept the operatives before they could cross the French border and seize the device, destroying it in a controlled detonation, which unfortunately wounded an officer despite him being outside of the detonation zone.
Source: Iran Focus
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