Assadollah Assadi – Iran Lobby

France Points Finger at Iran for Bomb Plot Targeting Resistance Group

In what might be one of the more anti-climactic findings revealed yet about the Iranian regime, France publicly linked Iran’s notorious intelligence services to the failed plot to bomb a meeting of Iranian dissident groups near Paris last June.

A plot of “such extreme seriousness on French territory could not be let go without a response,” France’s ministers of foreign affairs, interior and finance said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

“France has taken preventive, proportionate and targeted measures,” the ministers said. “In taking this decision France reiterates its determination to fight terrorism, especially on its own territory.”

France also acted by announcing it would freeze the assets of the Iranian regime spy ministry, otherwise known as the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), which has been the puppet master in a string of terror attacks and assassinations spanning decades, and most recently spearheaded efforts to utilize social media in coordinated cyberattacks against Iranian dissident groups.

According to the New York Times, the decision to freeze the assets of the spy ministry seemed to be a clear sign France was angry that Iran appeared to be ignoring international norms and acting with impunity. It also indicated that, at least indirectly, France endorsed the Trump administration’s judgment that Iran was a rogue regime.

The French findings certainly didn’t help the Iran lobby’s ceaseless campaigning to have European nations bail the Iranian regime out of its financial woes that have only increased since the U.S. withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and began levying economic sanctions.

“Behind all this was a long, meticulous and detailed investigation by our (intelligence) services that enabled us to reach the conclusion, without any doubt, that responsibility fell on the Iranian intelligence ministry,” a French diplomatic source said.

The source, speaking after the government announced asset freezes, added that deputy minister and director general of intelligence Saeid Hashemi Moghadam had ordered the attack and Assadollah Asadi, a Vienna-based diplomat held by German authorities, had put it into action.

The ministry is under control of top mullah Ali Khamenei, which makes the decision to bomb the Iranian resistance groups on French soil even more brazen and a deliberate act of state policy by the regime.

According to Reuters, the plot targeted a meeting of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) outside the French capital. President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and several former European and Arab ministers attended the rally.

It unraveled after Asadi, an accredited diplomat in Austria, was arrested in Germany, two other individuals were detained in Belgium in possession of explosives, and one other individual in France.

On Monday, a court in southern Germany ruled the diplomat could be extradited to Belgium.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian spoke to their Iranian counterparts about the issue at the U.N. General Assembly after demanding explanations over Iran’s role.

An internal French foreign ministry memo in August told diplomats not to travel to Iran, Reuters revealed, citing the Villepinte bomb plot and a toughening of Iran’s position toward the West.

Paris has also suspended nominating a new ambassador to Iran and not responded to Tehran nominations for diplomatic positions in France.

The plot marked one of the first times that an Iranian official has been caught allegedly taking part in a covert operation in Europe. Police in a number of different European countries are investigating alleged attacks against Iranian opposition figures, including two murders in the Netherlands since 2015.

In July, Dutch authorities said they had expelled two Iranian diplomats whom foreign officials say were linked to the assassinations of at least one Iranian dissident, Ahmad Mola Nissi. He was shot and killed in November by a masked assassin in The Hague. U.S. officials believe Iran’s MOIS was involved. Dutch authorities are investigating, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Predictably the Iranian regime fired back by falling back on its usual tirade claiming the meeting being targeted was comprised of terrorists and called the accusations against its diplomat as a “false flag ploy.”

Considering the precarious state of the Iranian economy and near-constant state of demonstrations against the regime, it is mind boggling the mullahs would order such a reckless act given Iran’s desperate need for an economic lifeline from Europe.

But past history shows that the mullahs care less about rationality and more about silencing the perceived threat and free and open opposition poses to their continued existence.

The pressure being mounted by outside opposition and dissident groups has helped drive internal protests, as well as ensured a steady conduit of videos, pictures and eyewitness reports continue to stream out even as the regime tries to stymie the flow of information with stepped up arrests and imprisonment.

Also on Tuesday, around 200 French police launched a dawn anti-terror raid on one of the biggest Shiite Muslim centers in France, the Zahra Centre France, as well as the homes of its directors.

Eleven people were questioned — three of them arrested, security sources told AFP, including for the illegal possession of firearms.

The Zahra Center France was founded in 2009 by Yahia Gouasmi, a pro-regime activist and religious figure who has spoken in support of Hezbollah.

Gouasmi is also the founder of the Anti-Zionist Party in France and an associate of controversial comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, a convicted anti-Semite.

While not specifically linked to the bombing plot, the raid sent a clear signal by French authorities to Iranian regime officials that the era of cozy accommodation was at an end.

Iran Regime Grows More Desperate

It’s no secret the mullahs controlling the Iranian regime despise any form of dissent, especially anything that could be construed as homegrown. While the mullahs try to brush off criticism from the international community, it’s harder to turn a blind eye when their fellow Iranians are the ones leading the protests.

A proverbial thorn in their side has been the Iranian diaspora made up of exiled and expatriate Iranians living around the world. Many were initially stranded outside of Iran when the Islamic revolution swept through Iran, while others have fled the regime’s extremism over the years.

That diaspora consists of nearly five million Iranians living abroad and large numbers of them actively participate in a variety of human rights and dissident groups dedicated to improving conditions within Iran or peacefully working for regime change or at least better human rights and religious freedoms.

One of the largest and longest active dissident groups has been the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) which has earned him top honors on the mullahs’ hit list of most wanted. It has received special attention from the regime, including its infamous Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) which has waged a decades-long campaign aimed at disinformation, slander and even organizing attacks against MEK members.

Those past attacks have included strikes against refugee camps for Iranians who fled Iran, many of them MEK members. The Iranian regime, working with Shiite militia allies in Iraq, staged frequent attacks at these camps where the residents were unarmed, slaughtering scores of them.

The MEK has continued to be a sore point for the regime by uncovering all sorts of secrets in Iran, including the clandestine nuclear program that soon became the focal point of international sanctions.

The dissident group has also provided one of the few reliable channels to the outside world of what is going on inside the closed of Islamic state, including photos, videos, and testimonials of public executions, abuse of women and mistreatment of ethnic and religious minorities.

The regime has not been able to shake these dissident groups off of itself no matter how hard it tries to kill off its detractors, but most of these efforts have been focused on attacks in distant places, cyberspace and in the arena of public opinion.

Recently the Iranian regime sanctioned what may be its most brazen effort yet in planning to bomb an annual gathering of Iranian dissident groups including the MEK a massive rally outside of Paris with scores of distinguished luminaries in attendance, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who now serves as President Donald Trump’s personal attorney.

Assadollah Assadi, a Vienna-based Iranian diplomat, was suspected of contracting a couple in Belgium to attack the according to German federal prosecutors.

He allegedly gave the Antwerp-based couple a device containing 500 grams of the explosive TATP during a meeting in Luxembourg in late June, prosecutors said in a written statement.

Assadi was detained earlier this month near the German city of Aschaffenburg on a European warrant after the couple with Iranian roots was stopped in Belgium and authorities reported finding powerful explosives in their car.

In their statement, German prosecutors allege that Assadi, who has been registered as a diplomat at the Iranian Embassy in Vienna since 2014, was a member of MOIS, whose tasks “primarily include the intensive observation and combatting of opposition groups inside and outside of Iran.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran of using its embassies to plot extremist attacks in Europe and warned Tehran that its actions have “a real high cost” after it threatened to disrupt Mideast oil supplies.

“Just this past week there were Iranians arrested in Europe who were preparing to conduct a terror plot in Paris, France. We have seen this malign behavior in Europe,” Pompeo said in an interview with Sky News Arabia.

The extent of the bomb plot and the potential to kill and maim so many non-Iranian dignitaries and journalists attending the gathering demonstrates how desperate the regime has grown as it faces unrelenting pressures at home and abroad with massive protests and demonstrations over a spiraling economy and renewed economic sanctions by the Trump administration.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran, an Iranian dissident umbrella group that sponsored the Paris gathering, quoted its intelligence sources inside the country as saying that Iran’s top mullah, Ali Khamenei, and President Hassan Rouhani approved the bombing plan.

“In Belgium, it is more probable that Assadi will face justice and has to answer all sorts of questions and does not have any diplomatic immunity,” said Shahin Gobadi, a MEK spokesman.

The MEK intelligence report said the Paris attack was approved months ago by every lever of Iranian power, from the supreme leader to the foreign and intelligence ministries to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The report said Assadi’s cover was as a counselor. In fact, he is the MOIS station chief in Vienna and the ministry’s coordinator for other stations in Europe.

“His main task was espionage and conspiracy against the [MEK], and he has been traveling to various European countries in this regard,” the report said.

The level of hubris it takes for the Iranian regime to stage an attack on French soil at an event with a global television audience makes it a worthy parent to terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

It may be high time for the mullahs to pay a heavy price for sanctioning such an act of terror.

Laura Carnahan