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Copyright © 1994-98, by the Middle East Data Project, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Islamic Republic has launched a major effort to establish new networks of agents and sympathizers in the United States, to gather strategic intelligence, penetrate opposition organizations, and eventually to provide logistics for possible terrorist attacks, according to a top Iranian intelligence officer who defected to the United States in 1994 and other sources.
The Iranian government is using the current campaign by President Mohammad Khatami to develop cultural ties with the United States as a cover to establish new intelligence networks in the United States, Manoucher Moatamer told The Iran Brief in a recent interview.
Moatamer claims he was a top aide to intelligence minister Ali Reza Fallahian from 1985 until March 1994. He fled Iran in March 1994, and defected in Latin America shortly after the July 18 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires. To prove his bona fides, he carried with him microfilms containing the minutes of meetings in Tehran relating to the bombings in Argentina, a bombing in London that had not yet taken place, and of an impending terror campaign against the Saudi royal family - a campaign which began in November 1995 with the bombing of a National Guard headquarters in Riyadh. Moatamer's information so convinced the Argentineans of his bona fides that they immediately ordered the expulsion of Iran's ambassador and other Iranian embassy officials implicated in the AMIA bombing [Cf. "Iran defector implicates regime in terrorist attacks," TIB Jan. 5, 1995].
Moatamer told The Iran Brief he had recently received information from sources inside Iran of ongoing Iranian government plans to develop agents of influence and build intelligence-gathering networks in the United States.
"The regime has a new approach," Moatamer said. "They are using seminars, held on [President] Khatami's direct orders, under cover of his program of rapprochement with the US. Seminars of this type were held by Khatami in New York during his UN trip, and [by others] in other cities. Under this cover, the Islamic Republic is approaching Iranian-Americans, trying to recruit them and use them for intelligence and terrorist purposes, though not actually to carry out specific terrorist acts."
In Los Angeles, seminars in guise of rapprochement have been organized by Massoud Khojasteh, Moatamer said, who works for AFTAB television, an Iranian-government sponsored broadcasting network in the United States. " He and others like him are arranging interviews and seminars, but their main activity is to recruit people and to organize them, to penetrate the Iranian-American community."
Warning on Dhahran: Asked about Iran's involvement in known acts of terrorism, Moatamer said he had warned the United States two weeks before the June 1996 bombing of a U.S. military barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia of an Iranian government campaign against the Saudi royal family, and gave specific information relating to the attack on the Khobar Towers barracks. Iran was also seeking to push the U.S. to withdraw its military presence from the Persian Gulf
In September, Judge Juan Jose Galeano, the Buenos Aires judge in charge of the AMIA investigation, traveled to Los Angeles and spent several days meeting with Moatamer, who said he had fresh information on Iran's involvement in the Argentina bombings. "I warned that it was still possible to have more bombings there, since there are many Syrians in Buenos Aires who are on the payroll of the MOIS, and lots of Iranian cab drivers" who have been used by MOIS in support terrorist operations in the past, he said.
New attacks: Independently of Moatamer, opposition leader Manoucher Gandji said he has received recent reports of increased Iranian government preparations for terrorist attacks in the United States and in Latin America. "We've been hearing that the Islamic Republic has been moving terrorists into Paraguay and Brazil," Gandji said, "and has a plan to blow up the Israeli embassy in Paraguay."
Gandji added that sources in Iran had informed him of increased activity on the part of MOIS in the United States. "They have been enticing green-card holders to return to Iran to receive training and money, then have sent them back to the United States to carry out surveillance and prepare operations. This regime hasn't changed. Everybody is going to be surprised when the terrorist acts start again. They were involved in Kenya and Tanzania, and everyone kept it quiet. They were involved in Dhahran, and everyone has been keeping it quiet. The economy inside Iran is being hard hit, and the regime is moving closer to the Iraqis. It's at times like this that they step up terrorist activities," Gandji said.
Sunni extremists: Moatamer said he has long warned about the cross-overs between the Islamic Republic intelligence agencies and Sunni extremists groups involved in terrorism. "Look at Afghanistan, or at Lebanon," he said. "There is a strong link between radical Sunni groups and the Islamic Republic for two reasons: Iran wants to get a foothold in Afghanistan, and in Lebanon. The son of Imam Moussa Sadr is currently in Tehran, and he coordinates and organizes these links with the Sunni groups."
The most notorious of the Sunni groups active today are the followers of renegade Saudi financier, Ossama Bin Ladin. "Since the 1987 massacre of Iranian pilgrims in Mecca," Moatamer said, "the Iranians have asked Bin Ladin not to come to Iran. But they keep in contact with him through the Iranian embassy in London.... Bin Ladin is one of the very few people who can pick up the phone and speaker directly with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamene'i, in Tehran."
TWA 800: As we have reported previously, new information uncovered by a former U.S. Navy commander, William Donaldson, has cast doubt on the official version of the TWA 800 disaster [Cf. "New evidence suggests Iranian involvement in TWA 800," TIB 8/3/98]. Comdr. Donaldson alleges that TWA 800 was downed by two large anti-aircraft missiles, launched for boats near the site of the disaster.
Moatamer offered a different version, but agreed with Donaldson that the plane had been downed by a terrorist act. "I alerted the CIA in June 1996 that there was a plane coming to the United States from Greece with a bomb on board," Moatamer says. (TWA 800 flew into New York from Athens, before refueling for its fateful trip to Paris). "According to my information, an Iranian agent placed high-pressure capsules on board the plane in Athens. That is what brought it down. The crash was the result of sabotage."