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Iran Prepares 'Judgment Day' Attack Plan Kenneth R. Timmerman The Islamic Republic of Iran is planning to use as many as eight different terrorist groups to launch attacks against the United States and its allies in the region should the United States launch military strikes against its nuclear facilities, a London-based newspaper reported. Another Iranian intelligence source tells NewsMax that Iran plans suicide strikes in the United States, and may seek to hold mass numbers of Americans hostage. Ali Reza Nourizadeh's column in Al Sharq al Awsat, a London newspaper, citing a "senior source" in the office of Iranian joint chief of staff Hassan Firouzabadi, noted that "eight fundamentalist Islamist organizations have received large sums of money in the last month from the Iranian intelligence services" as part of the plan. The Revolutionary Guards' "al Qods" [Jerusalem] Force will coordinate the plan, codenamed "al Qiyamah, the Islamic word for Judgment Day," Al Sharq al Awsat reported. The al Qods force is the fourth branch of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, after its ground, naval and air forces. The al Qods trains foreign terrorist organizations, both in Iran and in camps in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, the Sudan and elsewhere. Counterterrorism officials in France, Germany and Austria have identified the al Qods force as the "strike force" used by Iran to assassinate Iranian dissidents living overseas. The U.S. military has captured al Qods force officers in Iraq, where they have delivered special explosives used in roadside bombs by terrorists against U.S. forces and against Iraqi civilians.
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Over the last four months, leaders of the eight foreign terrorist groups have made public visits to Iran, where they have met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other leaders. According to the London-based daily, the foreign visitors also met secretly with Iranian intelligence minister Gholahossein Mohseni Ezhei and top aides, who asked them if they were prepared to aid Iran in the event of a U.S. or Israeli attack. The paper's source said that Iran's Revolutionary Guards force had opened training camps in Iran for fighters of the Shiite Muslim "Mahdi Army" of Iraq, the militia controlled by firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr, and had "increased its financial assistance" to al Sadr to "more than $20 million" per month. Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Lebanon's Hezbollah are also receiving large sums of money and fresh weapons, the source said. Eighty members of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement received terrorist training last year in launching suicide attacks using hang-gliders and small submersibles designed to deliver commando divers or suicide attackers.
The "Judgment Day" plan will include:
NewsMax reported in February on similar contingency plans by the Iranian navy to block the Straits of Hormuz in the event of a U.S.-led military strike on Iranian nuclear or missile facilities. The "Judgment Day" plan appears to be an extension of these plans. Separately, NewsMax has learned from an Iranian intelligence source that the regime plans to carry out suicide bombings in the United States and take 400 to 500 U.S. hostages as part of its overall response to eventual U.S.-led military strikes. The regime has already positioned "sleeper cells" in the United States to carry out these attacks, that would be "activated" in the event of U.S. military strikes on Iran, the source said. A White House official, speaking on background, told NewsMax that the recent "Noble Prophet" naval exercises conducted by Iran in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman showed that the Iranian regime was "seeking to demonstrate strength and deter others" from acting against it. The United States is working with its allies to craft a strong multilateral response beyond just a U.N. Security Council resolution to "demonstrate to Iran that it cannot continue on its present course, which in our view is headed toward nuclear weapons capability," the official said. Among those responses were stepped up measures under the Proliferation Security Initiative [PSI] to interdict shipments of equipment and material that Iran needs for its nuclear and missile programs, he said. Under the PSI, the United States and its allies have intercepted ships on the high seas and captured nuclear materials before they could reach Libya and Iran. Unlike previous multilaterial organizations, "the PSI does things, instead of just considering things," the official added. Iran's stepped up missile development has had the untended consequences of getting "greater cooperation among our allies in missile defense," the official said. While not confirming recent press reports that Iran has purchased Russian missiles from North Korea capable of launching a nuclear warhead against Europe, the official noted that "missile defense is now integral to our alliance and to our security."
Editor's note:
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