Iranically Iran, Middle East’s Karen…

Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
Apr 9, 2008
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Happy Saturday. Israel Strategically limited targeting seven military bases & apparently missile production facilities, leaving alone the oil infrastructure & Irans nuclear facilities, & of coarse any civilian targets ‘cuz JKK Zionist war mongers, etc…in response to Iran’s October 1st attack on Israel.

I “think” this was just a show of force to show Iran that it is capable of being hit on its own home front…with little damage…like a dog baring its teeth with a growl as a warning….?
The Israeli strikes appeared to be a limited attack aimed at deterrence, demonstrating military strength while avoiding a major escalation. While Iran has condemned the attack, it has made no mention of imminent retaliation, despite previous warnings of "harsher reactions" if Israel were to act against Tehran.

“A regional war is contradictive to anything that Iran is trying to achieve," Citrinowicz told NBC News. “Publicly speaking, Iran need to find excuses not to retaliate, because they obligated themselves before to respond to any Israel attack”

Citrinowicz added that there will be discussions behind closed doors about what steps to take, and he did not believe it would be easy to find consensus.

"I think that there will be discussions and people will argue from both sides, because the dilemma is there," he said. "Israel has offered a ladder for Iran to climb down the tree, but I’m not sure they will take it."
Under the cover of darkness early Saturday, Israel struck multiple sites in different parts of Iran. Explosions were heard in the capital, Tehran, which sits deep inside the country.

The Israeli military said its “precise and targeted strikes” hit missile air defense systems and “aerial capabilities” as well as missile manufacturing facilities used to produce weapons that have been used against Israel. Iran insisted the strikes caused only “limited damage.”

It was not immediately clear how hard of a blow Israel dealt, with neither country providing detailed assessments of the destruction. Iran said the strikes targeted military bases in the provinces of Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran.
 
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Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
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An emergency UN Security Council meeting will take place on Monday at Iran's request, with Tehran calling for it to condemn the Israeli strikes in response to Iran’s two separate ballistic missile attacks on Israel. The previous day's limited strikes by Israeli planes were strictly on military targets in Iran.

Israel's strikes were in retaliation for an October 1 attack by Iran, which fired about 200 missiles at Israel, though most were intercepted.

Netanyahu said: "We kept our promise. The air force attacked Iran and hit Iran's defence capabilities and missile production."
 
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Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
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TEHRAN, IRAN — In a touching, romantic statement on X (formerly Twitter), the Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei let American college students know that he appreciates their anti-Semetic protests and support of his regime and that he also has a few open slots in the harem if any of the women might happen to be interested.
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"Dear university students in the United States of America, you are standing on the right side of history," Khamenei wrote in his X post. "Thank you for all the effort you put into hating the Jews.
1730084498973.jpegAlso, if any of you women over there happen to be into wearing hijabs, having no freedom, and genocidal psychopaths in their 70s, a few slots in the presidential harem have opened up ;)"
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"Applicants can apply for a visa through the Iranian government website," Khamenei wrote in a follow-up post.
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While Khamenei's post has been well-received by college protesters, most of the female college students have decided "swipe left" on the Supreme Leader of Iran, citing the lack of Starbucks in Iran and the fact that they could be executed for showing a bit too much nose.
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At publishing time, Khamenei had retracted his offer after all of the students who responded to his offer turned out to be gay men or transgender women.
 

Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
Apr 9, 2008
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Hezbollah has announced the group’s deputy secretary general will become its new head.

Naim Qassem replaces long-term leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in Beirut last month.

The new Hezbollah leadership was expected to be passed to cleric Hashem Safieddine, but on 22 October it was revealed that he had been killed in an Israeli air strike nearly three weeks prior.

Naim Qassem is one of the few senior Hezbollah leaders who remains alive, after Israel killed most of the group’s leadership in a series of retaliatory attacks.

Hezbollah said he was elected by the Shura Council, in accordance with the group’s rules. His whereabouts are unclear, however some reports suggest he has fled to Iran, which is Hezbollah’s main supporter.
Israel is now engaged in hostilities with armed forces and non-state armed groups in several countries in the Middle East, including Iran, Syria and Iran-backed groups operating in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
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Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Sunday that Iran is no longer able to effectively use its proxies Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel.
In its official Arabic account on X, the Israeli government said: "His tenure in this position may be the shortest in the history of this terrorist organization if he follows in the footsteps of his predecessors Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine."

"There is no solution in Lebanon except to dismantle this organization as a military force," it wrote.
 

Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
Apr 9, 2008
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Iran failed to abort Irwin Cotler in the 338th trimester?
Mr. Cotler has been under 24/7 RCMP protection for more than a year after the Oct. 7, 2023 mass killings in Israel by Hamas gunmen. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) told him that he was a high-profile target of Iran, a long-time sponsor of the militant group.
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
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Iran failed to abort Irwin Cotler in the 338th trimester?
Mr. Cotler has been under 24/7 RCMP protection for more than a year after the Oct. 7, 2023 mass killings in Israel by Hamas gunmen. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) told him that he was a high-profile target of Iran, a long-time sponsor of the militant group.
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Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
Apr 9, 2008
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Iran allegedly plotted to assassinate Irwin Cotler, a noted Canadian human-rights advocate and harsh critic of the clerical regime, but the attempt on his life was recently foiled by law-enforcement authorities.

According to a source, the RCMP on Oct. 26 informed Mr. Cotler, a former Liberal justice minister, that he faced imminent threat of assassination within 48 hours from Iranian agents.

The source said legal authorities had knowledge of two suspects in the plot but it is not known whether they have been arrested or fled the country. The source said the 84-year-old Mr. Cotler was advised on Thursday that the threat against him had been significantly lowered. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the source because they were not authorized to discuss national-security issues.

The RCMP did not immediately respond when contacted Sunday by The Globe.

Mr. Cotler has been under 24/7 RCMP protection for more than a year after the Oct. 7, 2023 mass killings in Israel by Hamas gunmen. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) told him that he was a high-profile target of Iran, a long-time sponsor of the militant group.

The close protection provided to Mr. Cotler includes bulletproof vehicles, heavily armed officers and other security measures.

He has been on Iran’s radar for his global campaign since 2008 to list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] as a terrorist entity. He has also represented Iranian political prisoners and is a strong supporter of Israel. In June, under pressure from opposition parties, Canada joined the United States in declaring the IRGC a banned terrorist group. Ottawa severed diplomatic ties with Iran more than a decade ago.

Mr. Cotler served as Canada’s first special envoy on Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism from 2020 to 2023. He is the international chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. Mr. Cotler’s daughter, Gila, who heads the centre, did not respond to a request for comment.

On top of the alleged plot against Mr. Cotler, Canada is grappling with foreign interference from China, Russia, India and other countries, and allegations that New Delhi was behind the killings of two Sikh separatist activists in Canada, Hardeep Singh Nijjar and Sukhdool Singh Gill, as well as extortion and other violent acts.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has also been in touch with Mr. Cotler about the unsealing of an indictment in New York involving an Iranian murder-for-hire operation, the source said. Although not mentioned in the indictment, the source said Mr. Cotler was told by the FBI that his name came up in its probe.

On Oct. 22, the U.S. Justice Department accused senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard official Ruhollah Bazghandi of involvement in a 2022 plot to kill American human-rights activist Masih Alinejad, using members of an Eastern European criminal organization in New York.

“That is happening more and more with intelligence services using criminals to do work for them and it gives them plausible deniability,” said Alan Treddenick, a former CSIS station chief in Saudi Arabia.

Recent U.S. indictments have revealed that Iran’s transnational repression operations involved murder-for-hire plots to kill U.S. president-elect Donald Trump and Ms. Alinejad. U.S. authorities say the IRGC’s elite Quds Force has for years targeted critics and recently began outsourcing assassination plots to organized crime groups and violent criminals.

Iran’s Quds Force is a clandestine wing of the IRGC that is largely responsible for foreign operations such as arming Hezbollah and Hamas and carrying out assassinations.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Justice Department charged Farhad Shakeri, said to be an Iranian government asset who spent time in American prisons for robbery, in connection with an alleged plot ordered by Iran’s IRGC to kill Mr. Trump and Ms. Alinejad.

Mr. Shakeri is at large and remains in Iran. Two other men were arrested on charges that Mr. Shakeri recruited them to follow and kill Ms. Alinejad.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei denied the allegations as a “repulsive” plot by Israel and Iranian dissidents to “complicate matters between America and Iran.”

Daniel Stanton, a former CSIS senior manager, said Iran targets high-profile critics like Mr. Cotler and Ms. Alinejad as a warning to others.

“Regimes like Iran and also India want to hit the most high-profile, outspoken critics and dissidents because that sends a message to the people who don’t have that status to basically shut up,” said Mr. Stanton, now director of the national-security program at the University of Ottawa Professional Development Institute. He recently played host to Ms. Alinejad at the university.

“A lot of these intelligence agencies find it difficult to operate in countries like Canada and the United States so they have to hire unscrupulous proxies to carry out the dirty work and that is easy to detect.”

Mr. Cotler, a renowned international human-rights lawyer, has criticized many authoritarian governments, including Iran for its conduct in the 2020 downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, which left about 55 Canadians and 30 permanent residents dead, as well as Tehran’s funding of Hamas. The group, designated a terrorist entity by Canada, carried out the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel that left about 1,200 people dead, and hundreds taken hostage.

He warned that authoritarian regimes are waging a war against Western countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia and many of those in Europe “through three primary methods – electoral interference, transnational repression, and the spreading of harmful disinformation.”

In 2015, Mr. Cotler founded the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, a Montreal-based organization dedicated to promoting human rights, advocating for political prisoners and combatting injustice around the world. The group works in the memory of Mr. Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved 100,000 Jews during the Second World War by issuing them diplomatic passports and sheltering them in safe houses.
 

Tecumsehsbones

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I'm curious about what their ambitions are.
 

Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
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“Acts of violent extremism and terrorism have no place in the world,” LeBlanc noted. “We will continue to take action to curtail the spread of these activities internationally and to counter threats to Canada, its citizens and its interests around the world.”
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Ansarallah is an Islamist militant and political group that has been a key player in Yemen’s civil war. Canadian officials say the group has “waged an insurgency” in the region since the early 2000s and is looking to unseat the current government.
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“Since November 2023, Ansarallah has contributed to unrest in the Middle East through numerous attacks targeting civilian and naval vessels on the Red Sea and other waterways, as well as those against Israel,” LeBlanc’s office wrote in a statement. “Ansarallah is also closely linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force and Hezbollah, two listed terrorist entities in Canada.”
Canadian officials say it is important to note the difference between the armed political movement known as “the Houthis” and the ethnic group in Yemen by the same name.
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The United States also listed Ansarallah as a terrorist group in January this year.
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
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“Acts of violent extremism and terrorism have no place in the world,” LeBlanc noted. “We will continue to take action to curtail the spread of these activities internationally and to counter threats to Canada, its citizens and its interests around the world.”
View attachment 25975
Ansarallah is an Islamist militant and political group that has been a key player in Yemen’s civil war. Canadian officials say the group has “waged an insurgency” in the region since the early 2000s and is looking to unseat the current government.
View attachment 25976
“Since November 2023, Ansarallah has contributed to unrest in the Middle East through numerous attacks targeting civilian and naval vessels on the Red Sea and other waterways, as well as those against Israel,” LeBlanc’s office wrote in a statement. “Ansarallah is also closely linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force and Hezbollah, two listed terrorist entities in Canada.”
Canadian officials say it is important to note the difference between the armed political movement known as “the Houthis” and the ethnic group in Yemen by the same name.
View attachment 25977
The United States also listed Ansarallah as a terrorist group in January this year.
Was Isis taken off the list? They played a big role in the fall of Alleppo.
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
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