Iran is recruiting an “invisible army”
of revolutionary sympathizers in Latin America to infiltrate the U.S.
through the “soft belly” of the southern border, U.S. officials and
national security experts told TheBlaze. And they’re using one website
in particular to do it.
The Iranian regime’s conversion efforts
are becoming increasingly aggressive, especially over the Internet,
with the goal of conducting operations against United States interests
in the Western Hemisphere, according to U.S. government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the nature of their work in
the region.
Islamoriente.com,
which focuses on religion and politics, is one of Iran’s main
recruitment and conversion websites for Latin America on the Internet,
TheBlaze has learned. The site, which launched in 2008, includes links
to Iranian television for Spanish speakers, anti-American news stories,
essays on reasons to convert to Islam, chat rooms and a personal message
from the Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran.
“Historically, Iran has tried to
recruit agents from the Lebanese Shi’ite diaspora in South America and
West Africa,” Phillips said. ”This emphasis on Hispanic converts is
something new.”
In the past, “U.S. intelligence focused
on Iran’s relationship with Hezbollah but now with the people they are
recruiting it could be much more difficult to gauge who is infiltrating
the U.S.,” Phillips added.
In August, the U.S. State Department
decided to order a new review of Iranian terror activity in Latin
America, based on a 500-page report issued by Argentinian prosecutor
Alberto Nisman on Iran’s terrorist strategy in the region. Nisman was
the original prosecutor in the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite
Mutual Association that killed 85 people and wounded hundreds more.
Nisman believes Hezbollah, on orders from Iran, was responsible for the
bombing.
The report
states that Iran has attempted to infiltrate “for decades, large
regions of Latin America, through the establishment of clandestine
intelligence stations and operative agents which are used to execute
terrorist attacks when the Iranian regime decides so, both directly or
through its proxy, the terrorist organization Hezbollah. These actions
have been taking place within the so-called ‘export of the revolution,’
which was never masked by Tehran and is, in fact, written in their own
constitution.”
Nisman’s report supports the evidence
U.S. officials say they’ve found in the region. Iran’s revolutionary
guard is focused on Latin America and has ramped up its efforts over the
past decade, utilizing the same Internet tools they censor and ban from
their own citizens. It is ”part of their effort to build an invisible
army to penetrate the U.S. and our interests without suspicion, and it’s
something we should be extremely mindful of,” said a U.S. official
familiar with Iranian operations in Latin America.
The official said recent Iranian
activity in Latin America shows the importance of the region in Iran’s
political and ideological goals. Those goals are not only to cultivate
anti-American sentiment in the region but also to build a network of
support among Latin American converts in positions of power, the
official said.
TheBlaze attempted to trace the domain
and creators of the server hosting IslamOriente.com but the site is
protected by a privacy company based out of the U.S. Attempts to call
the number on the website led to a voice recording from a telephone
number out of Queensland, Australia, which said that the website is
protected by privacyprotect.org.
According to a 2012 report from
the Middle East Media Research Project (MEMRI), a think tank providing
translation on video and Internet websites from the Middle
East, privacyprotect.org is one among many U.S. companies that are used
by Al Qaeda and other nefarious groups use to hide their
information. MEMRI also attempted to trace the Iranian website to no
avail.
Ayelet Savyon, the director of the
Iran desk for MEMRI, told TheBlaze that Iranian activities seem to be
focused more on recruiting from the local populations with more
sophisticated approaches.
“(Iran) is doing so in all parts of
the world with the aim at targeting the U.S. soft belly,” said Savyon,
who is based in Israel. “Latin America is a long-term goal for them with
direct national security implications for the U.S., and I do think it’s
of special interest to the U.S.”
She referred to The Washington Post’s recent report
revealing how Iranian embassies in Latin America use cultural attaches
to recruit young impressionable students to special conversion programs
in Iran.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who
was elected in June to replace the openly anti-American Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, said in a recent public address that his support for Latin
America is strong. Rouhani told Vasquez Bucaro, the president of the
Central American Parliament and the head of Euro-Latin American
Parliamentary Assembly, that he welcomes increased interaction between
the two groups and Iran’s legislature to strengthen their relations.
“Just because Iran has a new
president, that hasn’t changed their goals,” Savyon said. “They are
looking to recruit people who can support Iran’s revolutionary values.
Their agenda hasn’t changed, only thing that has changed is the image
they are trying to present to the world.”
A U.S. counterterrorism official said
Iran’s activities are being closely monitored by U.S. intelligence
agencies and “there’s no question that Iran has tried to cultivate ties
with some of Latin America’s left-leaning governments.”
“As an element of this strategy,
Tehran has mounted a charm offensive that includes using Internet
propaganda to influence public opinion in these countries,” he added.
Even as President Barack Obama waits
for Congress to make a decision on Syria, the Iranian website wastes no
time and has no shortage of stories ridiculing the U.S. administration
for threatening to strike President Bashar Assad’s regime, a staunch
ally of Iran.
Jim Phillips, a senior research fellow
at the Heritage Foundation and expert in Iranian affairs, said Iran’s
focus on Hispanic converts is a new evolution in Iranian operations in
Latin America. Phillips said Khamanei’s message titled “The Importance
of Work and the Nobility of the Worker” in Islam, is significant because
the Ayatollah is “normally a background player in these sorts of
efforts and doesn’t usually play such a public role.”
Another U.S. official, who has worked
in Latin America for more than a decade, said Iran has dedicated a large
number of resources to recruiting and converting people in Mexico, who
have easier access to the U.S. border and can easily blend in with other
migrants crossing the border.
In 2009, six U.S. officials confirmed
in an earlier investigation conducted by this reporter that the
designated terrorist group Hezbollah, which is supported by the Iranian
government, had been using the same narcotics routes used by drug
cartels into the U.S.
That has not changed but now “Iran’s
goal is to recruit people that can be utilized against U.S. interests”
and blend in without raising suspicion, the U.S. official said.
Hezbollah is based in Lebanon and was
founded after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It has grown into
a major political, military and social welfare organization, which is
controlled and financed by Iran and in 2006, it fought a 34-day war
against Israel.
Hezbollah members and supporters have
entered the U.S. through the southern border as early as 2002, with the
case of Salim Boughader Mucharrafille, a Mexican of Lebanese descent. He
was sentenced to 60 years in prison by Mexican authorities on charges
of organized crime and immigrant smuggling. Mucharrafille had owned a
cafe in the border city of Tijuana, near San Diego. In 2002, he was
arrested for smuggling 200 people into the the U.S., including Hezbollah
supporters, according to a 2009 Congressional report.
In 2005, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, the
brother of a Hezbollah chief, pleaded guilty to providing material
support to Hezbollah after being smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border
and settling in Dearborn, Mich.
“Now what they desire is a proxy
terrorist group that can easily slip past U.S. border security,” the
U.S. official added. “Who’s going to suspect an illegal immigrant from
Venezuela, Mexico, or anywhere else for that matter, of being a
jihadist?”
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