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Hizbullah's American Sleeper Cells: Waiting for Iran's Signal to Strike U.S. and Israeli Targets

(Ha'aretz) Dr. Matthew Levitt - As tensions spike between Iran and the West, Iran has been able to draw upon its network of militant proxies to carry out attacks on Iran's behalf. As former IRGC commander Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari said, "The upside of the recent (conflicts) has been the mobilization of a force of nearly 200,000 armed youths in different countries in the region," including Iraqi Shia militias, Yemeni Houthi rebels, and Lebanese Hizbullah, overseen by the IRGC's Qods Force. Over the past several years, the activities of Hizbullah's external operations unit 910 have been on the rise. Hizbullah's last successful attack targeted Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria, in 2012. But a long list of other plots have since been foiled in Bolivia, Cyprus, Peru, Thailand and the UK. Hizbullah preoperational surveillance has also been revealed in Canada, Panama, and the U.S. One such Hizbullah operative, Ali Kourani, told an FBI agent: "I am a member of 910...the Black Ops of Hizbullah. The unit is Iranian-controlled," and described himself as part of a "sleeper cell." The writer, a former FBI and Treasury Department official, directs the program on counterterrorism and intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
2019-08-05 00:00:00
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