Tag Archives: Hezbollah

Qatar and the Gulf Crisis

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 November 2017

I released a report today, published by the Henry Jackson Society, Qatar and the Gulf Crisis. The intent was to examine the charges made against the Qatari government by its Gulf neighbours with regard to the funding of terrorism, the hosting of extremists, the dissemination of hate speech and incitement, among other things. Having separated fact from fiction with regards to he accusations against Qatar, the report proposes how Britain might proceed in such a way as to press Doha on issues of concern, while avoiding being drawn into the middle of the Gulf dispute, and trying to foster reconciliation between allies, especially at a time when a united front is necessary to oppose the far larger challenge of the Iranian theocracy.  Continue reading →

America Reveals How Iran Funds Instability in Yemen

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 23 November 2017

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in the U.S. Department of Treasury, on 20 November, sanctioned “a network of individuals and entities involved in a large-scale scheme to help Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) counterfeit currency to support its destabilizing activities” in Yemen. Continue reading →

Iran Escalates its Subversive Activities in Bahrain

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Post originally appeared at The Henry Jackson Society

By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 19 November 2017

Fire at the oil pipeline in Buri village, south of Manama, Bahrain, 10 Nov. 2017. REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed

Just over a week ago, the major oil pipeline in Bahrain was bombed by operatives the government says were working for the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is the latest in an escalating series of terrorist attacks inside Bahrain. Throughout the year, Manama has also been rolling up terrorist cells that have links to Iran’s intelligence services and Bahraini citizens now in Iran that form part of Tehran’s regional terrorist network. The breakdown in Gulf unity is especially worrying in the face of this intensified Iranian aggression and subversion in Bahrain. Continue reading →

Iran Raises the Stature of One of Its Shi’a Jihadist Militias: Harakat Hizballah al-Nujaba

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 September 2017

Logo of Harakat Hizballah al-Nujaba

Reuters has published a profile of Harakat Hizballah al-Nujaba (HHN), sometimes simply called Harakat al-Nujaba, a Shi’a militia made up of Iraqi citizens that is loyal to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamene’i and the revolutionary theocracy’s ideology of absolute wilayat al-faqih (guardianship of the jurist). HHN, which first emerged in the summer of 2013, is one of a web of overlapping Shi’a jihadist groups recruited from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond—as far afield as the Ivory Coast—that have been used to spearhead Tehran’s imperial push into the Arab world, particularly the rescue of Bashar al-Asad’s regime in Syria that would otherwise have fallen to a popular rebellion. In recent months, Iran has been raising the profile of HHN. Continue reading →

The Syrian Regime Helped the Islamic State Murder Americans

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 26 August 2017

The Asad family regime in Syria has long been known to have had a key role in the formation and sustenance of the Islamic State (IS) and its predecessors. Without the Asad regime’s assistance, the IS movement could not have hoped to pose such a challenge to the Iraqi government, regional states, and Western interests and citizens. This has been underlined in a series of Federal Court rulings in the United States that have brought together evidence on this matter. In April, another such ruling found the Asad regime liable in the murder of three more Americans. Continue reading →

The Iranian Regime’s Terrorism Against the West

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 14 June 2017

The destroyed Marine barracks that Iran’s agents blew up in Beirut on 23 October 1983 (image source)

The United States Department of Justice released indictments on 8 June 2017 for two operatives of the jihadist terrorist organisation, Hizballah, the Lebanese branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which is tasked with exporting the Islamist revolution in Iran through terrorism, subversion, and other means. The two men, Ali Kourani of New York and Samer al-Debek of Michigan, had been arrested on 1 June, and are charged with conducting surveillance for potential future terrorist attacks in the United States.
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Raqqa Doesn’t Want to Be Liberated By the West’s Partners

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 May 2017

Map of the tribes around Raqqa city (source: WINEP report)

We are now on the eve of the operation to evict the Islamic State (IS) from its Syrian capital, Raqqa, and, as expected, the United States will partner with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the front-group for the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which President Donald Trump’s administration has committed to directly arming.

Many of the doubts voiced about this course relate to Turkey, since the PYD/YPG is—despite continued efforts to obfuscate the fact—the Syrian department of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the premier internal security threat to Turkey for many decades. The discussion then tends to fall into one of two grooves. Continue reading →

France Presents Evidence Assad Committed Chemical Weapons Atrocity

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 26 April 2017

The French government has released its assessment of the 4 April chemical weapons attack in Syria, and “independently and categorically confirms that sarin was used”. France “deployed the required resources to obtain its own samples,” the report notes, and “collected biomedical and environmental samples and munitions and pieces of munitions” from this attack site and several prior. Continue reading →

Russia and Iran Use Terrorism Against Western Interests

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 25 April 2017

The evidence is mounting that Vladimir Putin’s government supports the Taliban as a means of thwarting NATO interests in Afghanistan. Russia has long manipulated terrorists, internally and abroad, to suit its policy aims, but as Moscow solidifies its relationship with the Iranian revolution the Russian policy, particularly in Syria, has become something more like a conventional alliance—not least because those who run Tehran’s foreign policy and the clerical regime’s most powerful assets are themselves terrorists. Continue reading →

Outcome Uncertain as American Involvement in Syria Deepens

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By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on March 10, 2017

American ground forces are getting more deeply entangled in Syria as the offensive to push the Islamic State (IS) out of its de facto capital city, Raqqa, approaches. It remains unclear exactly which actors in Syria these troops will be assisting, though there are more and more indications that their mission will redound to the benefit of the regime of Bashar al-Assad and his allies, Iran and Russia. Continue reading →