Jimmy Carter Started The END (Daniel 8:3)

It was 1979 (not 2003) that Unleashed Political Islam

By Manda Zand Ervin

It has become the fact in American political talking points, even Mr. Trump insists that what is going on in the Middle East today is the result of the President Bush’s 2003 policy in Iraq that opened the doors to chaos and the creation of ISIS.

No one, however, is going back to search for the root causes of the events in today’s complicated and problematic Middle East. The facts are, notwithstanding the forever continuing Palestinian/Israeli war, that the Middle East was kept relatively peaceful and political Islam and its terrorism was kept under control in a secular Iran until 1979.

It was President Jimmy Carter and the Western European leaders, with the total support of the Western media and socialist elites as the likes of Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky, who decided to support the radical Shi’a Ayatollah Khomeini in taking over peaceful modernity-seeking Iran and establishing political Islam. Unfortunately, the same people are still supporting Islamic clerical imperialism as their child.

The sequence of pugnacious events in the Middle East since the advent of political Islamic domination of Iran in 1979 is evidence that many Middle Eastern problems are related to the ideological policies of the Islamic imperialist regime in Iran. It is the mullah’s goal to establish the Islamic kalifate through interference, intrusions, and promotion of terrorism in the internal affairs of the neighboring countries.

On October 21, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbors. Eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.” In this case, the snake that was established to bite only Iran has been biting the whole world.

Khomeini considered Iran a platform and a financial source for launching his expansion of the Islamic kalifate throughout the world, beginning in the Middle East. I was there and heard his terrifying speech every day.

He established an Islamic military made up of thugs and hoodlums called the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — not to defend the country but to protect, guarantee, and expand Political Islam in Iran and abroad.

Khomeini began by announcing a war against Israel as soon as he took control of Iran; calling it a “Zionist entity” and surrounded it by financing and arming the Palestinians, Hamas, and Hizb’allah in Lebanon.

He encouraged and financed Hizb’allah’s terrorism to destabilize the Lebanese Christian government and take the control of Lebanon.

He instigated eight years of brutal and bloody war with Saddam Hussein to remove Sunni power over the Shi’a population of Iraq. Khomeini’s successor Khamenei selected the Iraqi Shi’a mullah Moqtada al Sadr to establish a Shi’a movement against Saddam Hussein, financed and armed by the Iranian regime.

By 2003, the Revolutionary Guards had infiltrated the Shi’a community of Iraq through Moqtada al Sadr, the anti-American rabble-rouser puppet of Iran whose goal was to remove the Sunnis from military and government positions.

The Bush Administration was able to successfully arbitrate a reconciliation between the Sunnis and the Shi’as, bringing them together and under control.

When the United States military evacuated Iraq in 2011, the Ayatollah Khamenei took the opportunity to expand his domination of Iraq by becoming the sole adviser of President Nouri al Maliki. Khamenei flooded Iraq with IRGC solders, assassins, and spies to keep the Sunnis out of power. With the Iranian regime behind them, the majority Shi’a took the control of the Iraqi government and military and established not only an embassy in Baghdad and three consulates-general in the cities of Sulaimaniya, Arbil, and Karbala, that provide them with a foothold in Iraq.
U.S. State Department 2012 reports maintain that Iran remains an active state sponsor of terrorism and increased its terrorist-related activity in 2011. “Weapons are smuggled into Iraq and used to arm Iran’s allies among the Shiite militias, including those of the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army.”

The Sunnis of Iraq were forcefully isolated and, in the absence of the American military, created a disgruntled angry Sunni population, that, joined by the defeated Al Qaida, became ISIS.
Former American ambassador to the United Nation Zalmay Khalilzad writes in his book The Envoy: “With money and bombs, Tehran’s Shia Muslim regime was fueling frictions between Iraq’s Shia majority and its Sunni minority, pushing the country into civil war”. Mr. Khalilzad writes that it was a “tragedy” that President Obama withdrew all the American Military from Iraq. “That move paved the way for the terrorists”.

At the same time, Khamenei’s IRGC was also interfering in the internal affairs of Syria, widening the division between the Alawites and Sunnis. By financing one side against the other and supporting Bashar Assad’s rule, they caused the internal war against the majority of the Syrian citizens who wanted sovereignty and democracy.

While the children of Iran are living in hunger and poverty, Khamenei has been financing and arming Hamas, Hizb’allah, Moslem terrorism in poor African countries, and interfering in the internal affairs of Yemen, not to mention influence buying in South American countries.
It is, by all documents and reports, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his Revolutionary Guards that have been instrumental in creating the current atmosphere of chaos throughout the Middle East.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/05/_it_was_1979_not_2003_that_unleashed_political_islam_.html#ixzz49F1mJ4TT
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Fulfilling The Prophecy Of Esau (Gen 27)

 

Top Khamenei Advisor: We Have Divine
Permission to Destroy Israel

MAY 12, 2015 6:36 PM
An official close to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei asserted that his government has a godly ordained right to annihilate Israel, Al Arabiya reported on Tuesday.
The “government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has divine permission to destroy Israel,” said Mojtaba Zolnour, a Khamenei representative in the elite Revolutionary Guards.

According to semi-official state news agency Fars, Zolnour said that, “the Noble Koran permits the Islamic Republic of Iran to destroy Israel.” He added that, “Even if Iran gives up its nuclear program, it will not weaken this country’s determination to destroy Israel.”

This is by no means the first time that Iranian political or military officials have threatened Israel with destruction.

Iran has raised the specter of “wiping Israel out of existence,” since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power in the country in 1979. Khomeini’s animosity towards Israel was based on an ideological and religious opposition to Zionism, amplified by the challenge Israel’s military and economic strength posed to Iranian regional expansionism.

Perhaps most famously, former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeatedly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” in a 2005 speech that he gave. More recently, in late March 2015, General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the commander of Iran’s Basij militia – a volunteer paramilitary organization under the command of the IRGC – said that, “wiping Israel off the map is not up for negotiation.”

Iran also actively finances and militarily backs proxy terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah that are ideologically opposed to Israel’s existence.

The Islamic Revolution: Esau Breaks Jacob’s Yoke (Genesis 27)

Supreme Leader: Islamic Revolution Stood against Imperialism



Al-Manar
Local Editor

Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei said that the recent Iranian scientific advances have been achieved thanks to martyrdom for the sake of Allah.
During a message published Thursday, and delivered when his eminence received members of the secretariats of Congress of Educational Martyrs, Congress of University Student Martyrs and Congress of Artist Martyrs, Ayatollah Khamenei said the elites’ effective contribution to the Sacred Defense has exemplified the fact that the heavenly motivation to “sacrifice for the sake of Allah” had been deeply rooted in the multitudes of the pious.

He emphasized on the necessity of honoring the martyrs and reviving their valuable and beloved memories.

“The sessions to honor martyrs are in fact to perpetuate their path; their lifestyle and memories should be sought as a public way of finding virtues of their life in society,” the Supreme Leader said.

Ayatollah Khamenei brought a historical example of the early decades of Islamic history to compare between the today’s martyrs and the life of Imam Hussein (AS) and his epic campaign in saving and protecting Islam, Quran, and Islamic tradition and teachings.

“Any society which finds martyrdom as an everlasting truth, would not accept defeat. And that nation would move in its path toward progression without any fear and qualms,” asserted the Leader.

His eminence praised ‘the great feat’ by Iranian great nation as rejecting the division of the world to two categories of dominated and dominant.

“Rather, our nation brought to the scene an identity called Islamic Identity, which courageously stands against the imperialism drawing upon Godly and moral principles,” he said, adding that “this is despite the fact that the colonial powers still have continued to dominate over the downtrodden and oppressed of the world through many mechanisms available.

Source: IRNA

It All Began At The First Horn (Daniel 8:3)

Paris Attack: Jihadi Cancer Has Its Roots in Tehran

“The spread of violent jihad across the world was the inspiration of Ayatollah Khomenei.”

By Struan Stevenson

January 09, 2015

 

The horror assassination of ten journalists and two policemen in Paris is simply the latest manifestation of the spread of Islamic fundamentalism whose genesis can be traced directly back to the Iranian revolution and the coming to power of Grand Ayatollah Ruholla Khomenei, who made Iran the world’s first Islamic Republic. His medieval belief that his authority came directly from God enabled him to rule over a fascist theocracy that could imprison, torture, maim and execute at will, ruling by fear and violence and defending these excesses by stating they were the will of God. Similar to the “divine right of Kings” which bathed Europe in blood for centuries, this discredited anachronism plunged the 74 million forward-looking and highly civilized Iranians back to the Middle Ages, where women could be stoned to death and men hanged from cranes in town squares because they were guilty of “waging war on God.”

After executing 130,000 members of the People’s Mojahedin Opposition Group in the 1980s, Khomenei set about spreading his fundamentalist cancer across the Middle East. His successor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has internationalized this obscene distortion of Islam by funding, training and equipping terrorist organizations across the Middle East. Iran is now extending its hegemony across the entire region and it is worth remembering that ISIS is not the only organization intent on using violence and bloodshed to create a worldwide Islamic caliphate; it is a core principle of the Iranian Constitution, drawn up by Ayatollah Khomenei, that they will export the Islamic revolution with the clear intention of creating an Islamic caliphate. Tehran regards ISIS as direct Sunni competitors in this struggle to enslave the world in a medieval corruption of the Muslim faith.
Iran now funds not only the brutal Shiia militias in neighboring Iraq, but Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Bashir al-Assad in Syria and the Shiite Houthi militia who seized Sanaa, the Yemeni capital last September. The so-called “moderate” President Hassan Rouhani also finances Iran’s hugely expensive program of uranium enrichment, the construction of nuclear weapons and the purchase of sophisticated missile delivery systems.

The plummeting oil price has caused a massive problem for the mullahs. Their future budget was predicated on oil prices rising from $112 to $130 a barrel. Today it has fallen to below $50 and experts predict it will fall to $45. This, combined with Western sanctions, is catastrophic for Tehran. Rouhani has found himself in an impossible trap. He was elected on a pledge to improve the Iranian economy and to improve living conditions for ordinary Iranians. But the hardliners in Tehran corruptly live off the back of the billions poured into the terrorist Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Despite the collapsing oil price, Rouhani last month announced a 50 percent increase in the IRGC budget, taking their total annual spend to over €5 billion, which is more than half of Iran’s total defense budget which itself was increased by 33 percent last month. Buried in the small print of the budget was a further €2.5 billion that will go directly to the IRGC’s construction and engineering wing known as Khatam al-Anbia, a crooked vehicle for distributing largesse to the IRGC hierarchy.
Iran simply cannot afford this. The 74 million Iranians are facing economic meltdown. The people are fed up. They don’t want to be international pariahs. There is a seething undercurrent of protest in the air. Bread prices rose by 30 percent last month and the likelihood of another popular uprising is looming. Sanctions and the collapsing oil price are biting hard. Now is the time for the West to support the Iranian opposition and foment regime-change. The West must help the Iranian people overthrow the tyrannical mullahs and restore freedom, peace and democracy to Iran.

The spread of violent jihad across the world was the inspiration of Ayatollah Khomenei. The way to tackle this obscenity cannot simply rely on advanced intelligence and sporadic arrests. The primary cancer must be surgically removed at its core in Tehran and replaced by a modern and benign vision of Islam as espoused by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi and her National Council for Resistance in Iran.
Struan Stevenson was a Member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014. He was President of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq from 2009 to 2014 and is currently President of the European Iraq Freedom Association (EIFA).

Nuclear Negotiations Spinning Down The Toilet

New Khamenei Demands Make Tough Iranian Nuke Talks Even Tougher 

Iranian Horns: Khamenei and Khomenei

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has laid out an unusually detailed set of demands for what he would accept in a nuclear deal, further complicating the high-stakes efforts to reach an agreement before a July 20 deadline.

Khamenei’s declaration that any nuclear deal preserve Tehran’s right to enrich uranium on an industrial scale to fuel its long-term energy needs echoes what Iranian negotiators have said throughout the talks, which began in earnest last year and are currently continuing in Vienna. Still, by drawing a red line in public, a rarity for Iran’s top cleric, Khamenei signaled that Tehran wasn’t prepared to accede to Western demands that it sharply curtail its enrichment activities. The United States and its allies have long accused Tehran of trying to produce weapons-grade uranium to build a weapon, a charge Khamenei has repeatedly denied.

The remarks come amid signs of disunity among big-power diplomats as talks near a self-imposed July 20 deadline for a deal between Iran and the permanent five members of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States — plus Germany, which are negotiating collectively as the P5+1.

Speaking to senior-level technocrats on Monday, Khamenei said Iran signaled that Tehran would eventually need up to 190,000 centrifuges, depending on their sophistication — far more than the 10,000 he says world powers are willing to allow Tehran to acquire. Western governments want to curb Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity in order to inhibit its ability to develop a nuclear bomb. Tehran insists it wants such a large quantity for peaceful purposes, such as medical isotopes and nuclear energy.

“On the issue of enrichment capacity, [the West's] aim is make Iran accept 10,000 SWU,” Khamenei said, using an acronym for a highly technical term, “separative work units,” that measures how much uranium individual centrifuges can enrich in a year. “Our officials say we need 190,000 SWU…. [T]his is our absolute need and we need to meet this need.”

Iran hawks said Khamenei’s insistence that Iran have greater enrichment capacity was an attempt to force the United States and its allies into a bad deal.

“Khamenei is trying to trap the United States by demanding industrial-size enrichment capacity,” said Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Khamenei’s comments came as French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told a parliamentary committee in Paris on Monday that countries within the P5+1 were beginning to disagree about the makeup of a final deal with Iran. Fabius said the Western powers had previously been “very homogeneous” in their negotiations with Iran, but that “in the past days representatives in the negotiations have put forward a certain number of different approaches between part of the P5+1 and our Russian partners.”

Fabius didn’t spell out the West’s differences with Moscow, which has traditionally been more sympathetic to Iran than those in the Western camp. Some Western officials have long feared that Washington’s confrontation with Moscow over its annexation of Crimea would make Russian President Vladimir Putin even more willing to break with the West over Iran.

Still, the French foreign minister hinted that there was some daylight between the countries over whether to call in senior government officials to put the talks back on track or leave things in the hands of mid-level diplomats. Speaking before France’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, Fabius said the Obama administration has a “desire” to carry out a meeting of foreign ministers before the July 20 deadline. “I don’t have a strong view on it, but at one point between now and July 20 we shall know where we stand,” he said.

The talks currently underway in Vienna are centered on a deal that would require Iran to provide verifiable assurances that its nuclear program is limited to fueling the country’s energy needs in exchange for easing international sanctions.

Fabius said that “none of the primary points [of contention] have been resolved,” including the fate of a heavy water reactor at Arak that Western powers fear could be used to produce plutonium, as well as procedures for monitoring Iran’s compliance with any nuclear deal and easing sanctions.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters that “significant gaps remain with Iran” but stressed that the P5+1 countries remained united on how to proceed in the talks.

Despite Khamenei’s demands, Laicie Heeley of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation said that it’s natural for both sides to stake out hard-line positions before a final deal is struck.

“At this point we should realize that we’re still very much involved in a negotiation, and each side is likely to hold out for compromise as long as it can,” she said. “In the end, they’ll both have to move.”

Iran Seeking Khomeinist Dome

Khomeinist Nuclear Dome

 

The Khomeinist Dome: Iran’s larger nuclear strategy

 

Sunday, 4 May 2014

 

As a reader of Khomeinist global strategies since the early 1980s, and as I have argued over decades in books and articles, Tehran’s regime possesses a much larger nuclear strategy than the simple acquisition of mass destruction weapons. Over the last few years, the United States and its Western allies have been led to focus on the visible part of the Iranian buildup, missing the much greater construct undertaken over several generations of rulers of the same Iranian regime. Since the so-called “Iran nuclear deal” was inked last fall, Washington acts as if it has somewhat halted (or at least slowed) the strategic program of Tehran and thus has been rewarding the Ayatollahs, but the reality flies in the face of this assumption and agreement. Iran’s regime is employing a much larger strategy in order to reach the level of an armed nuclear power, and – perhaps ironically – one of the regime’s strategic policies is to mislead the international community, particularly the U.S., in its campaign to irreversibly transform itself into a nuclear power.

 

The “dome” is a complex integration of Iranian foreign policy: Terrorism backing, using financial luring, exploiting Western weaknesses while at the same time expanding influence.

The Iranian global construct can be perceived as a “Khomeinist Dome.” Iran’s strategy has been twofold—and sustained over decades, not simply implemented over the past few years and months. The regime has two simultaneous goals. One is to create a defensive sphere over the forthcoming strategic weapon before it is unveiled, and two is to suppress any internal opposition to the regime’s policies. The “dome” is a complex integration of Iranian foreign policy: Terrorism backing, using financial luring, exploiting Western weaknesses while at the same time expanding influence in the region so that by the time the greater shield is established, most U.S. and allied measures will be useless.

The regime knew all too well, years ago, that if they produced one atomic weapon (or even two) without being able to protect it, they would run into the almost certainty of military action by the West and/or by Israel to disable it. They were unable to circumvent this strategic theorem for decades, at least since the end of the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-1987. The issue for them was not about obtaining the nuclear weapon, but how to deter their enemies from destroying it. Iran did not have the geopolitical or economic capacities, nor the international stature of either India or Pakistan, to produce large scale numbers of bombs and later announce them the way south Asia’s nuclear powers detonated their devices in 1999. Hence Iran’s grand strategy to equip itself with the ultimate weapon was different—and thus far successful.

After the Soviet collapse, Tehran knew Israel, or possibly a U.S. administration, would bomb the nuclear installations, not to mention the location of a potential weapon. The Israeli raid on Osirak in 1981 was clear evidence of Western determination to strike at a nuclear weapon in the hands of a dangerous regime. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the coalition’s massive response in 1990-1991 also told the Khomeinists that a post-Cold War West is more assertive than under the previously bipolar world. Finally, the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003 brought two powerful and hostile armies to Iran’s two borders. Tehran’s reading of the landscape change was so nervous that it declared itself as abandoning its nuclear ambitions, almost simultaneously with Muammar Qaddafi. The fear of being toppled by outside military forces pushed Iran to hide its nuclear ambitions while awaiting the outcome of the regional evolution.

Full steam ahead

By 2005, as the U.S. offensive in the Middle East came to a halt, the Iranian regime displayed its hardliner face with the coming of Mahmoud Ahmedinijad to power. From then on, the grand strategy of the atomic conquest went full steam ahead. On one track, Iran activated the production of nuclear material, making Bushehr and its sister sites the center of international focus. Washington responded with targeted sanctions, well-crafted but aiming at pressuring Tehran to halt the project. The failure of the sanctions-only policies to exert a full strategic halt was caused by the inability of the West to support a strong and organized Iranian opposition inside the country with a significant presence in neighboring Iraq. Sanctions to pressure, without a real resistance movement to push the regime into a corner, were doomed to fail and they did.

But the Iranian regime’s wider strategy was to create a shield for the nuclear weapons as they were produced. In fact, the Ayatollahs calculated that they would only unveil the weapon if and when it is protected. Hence, while the U.S. focused primarily on the fissile material, the fast track production of missiles was never stopped. The greater dome strategy includes missiles, anti-aircraft systems, geopolitical space and terrorism.

A large missile force, which would target a wide spectrum of cities and sites, has been under construction for years. In addition, the regime has been attempting to obtain advanced anti-aircraft missile systems to protect the potential offensive missiles. And when the two structures are fully ready it will be a greater challenge to eliminate the entire network as it would be armed with nukes and other WMDs while also surrounded with a vast AA system; all the while, the uranium production is moving forward. In parallel, Tehran has been expanding its reach in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Arabian Peninsula and parts of East Africa with its influence and through terror networks. Once the combination of all the above systems is in place, the bomb will come, but not before.

Unstoppable power

The Khomeinist dome is about preparing for the nukes before they are displayed and claimed. It is about signaling to the West that once the greater Iranian power is asserted, there will not be a first indefensible bomb. Rather, Iran will jump to the level of unstoppable power with a vast network of retaliation as deterrence will have been achieved. Unfortunately, Western posture towards Tehran has only helped in the building of the dome: sanctions worked but were limited, all Iran’s other military systems were unchecked, and its interventions in the region unstopped. Worse, a nuclear deal with the U.S. injected time and energy into the regime’s veins.

At this point, the regime is out to complete the buildup of its strategic shield while offering to slow down its fissile material production. Once the dome is complete, the nuclear material production will speed up, and by the time the West realizes the maneuver, the Middle East will have changed forever.
________

Dr. Walid Phares serves as an advisor to members of Congress on the Middle East. He is the author of the newly-released The Lost Spring: U.S. Policy in the Middle East and the Catastrophes to Avoid, as well as Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against America and The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad. He has served on the Homeland Security Board of Advisors and the National Security Council Task Force on Nuclear Terrorism. Dr. Phares taught at the National Defense University since 2006.

Reports: Iraq signs arms deal with Iran

Reports: Iraq signs arms deal with Iran

The Two Horns: Khomenei and al-Sadr

The Iraqi government has been battling armed groups, who have taken over western Anbar province [EPA]

Iran has signed a deal to sell Iraq arms and ammunition worth $195m, according to documents seen by Reuters news agency – a move that would break a UN embargo on weapons sales by Iran.

The agreement was reached at the end of November, the documents showed, just weeks after Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, returned from Washington, where he lobbied the Obama administration for extra weapons to fight armed rebels.

The official documents seen by Reuters showed that six of eight contracts were signed with Iran’s Defence Industries Organisation to supply Iraq with light and medium arms, mortar launchers, ammunition for tanks as well as artillery and mortars.

A final two contracts were agreed to with the state-owned Iran Electronic Industries for night vision goggles, communications equipment and mortar guiding devices.

One of the contracts includes equipment to protect against chemical agents.

The Obama administration pressed the Iraqi government on Monday to explain the media reports.
“We’ve certainly seen those reports. If true, this would raise serious concerns,” Jen Psaki, State Department spokeswoman, said.

She said that “any transfer of arms from Iran to a third country is in direct violation” of the UN embargo.

“We are seeking clarification on this matter from the government of Iraq and to ensure that Iraqi officials understand the limits that international law places on arms trade with Iran,” Psaki said.

Some in Washington are nervous about providing sensitive US military equipment to a country they worry is becoming too close to Iran. Several Iraqi legislators said Maliki had made the deal because he was fed up with delays to US arms deliveries.

Security troubles

A spokesman for Maliki would not confirm or deny the sale, but said such a deal would be understandable given Iraq’s current security troubles.

“We are launching a war against terrorism and we want to win this war. Nothing prevents us from buying arms and ammunition from any party and it’s only ammunition helping us to fight terrorists,” Ali Mussawi, the spokesman, said.

Three Iraqi legislators, who said they had knowledge of the deals, argued they were due to Maliki’s unhappiness with US response to his request to supply Iraq with arms and ammunition to fight armed groups.

The Iranian government denied any knowledge of a deal to sell arms to Iraq. It would be the first official arms deal between Shia Iran and Iraq’s Shia-led government and highlight the growing bond between them in the two years since the departure of US troops from Iraq.

One US official, told of Reuters’ findings, said such a deal could further complicate the US administration’s approach to negotiating with Iran on easing international sanctions over its nuclear programme, which the West suspects is aimed at producing bombs. Iran says its aims are purely peaceful.

“If true, this would raise serious concerns,” said the US official, who declined to be named. “Any transfer of arms from Iran to a third country is in direct violation of Iran’s obligations under UNSCR 1747.”

A UN diplomatic source close to the UN Security Council’s Iran sanctions committee was aware of the arms deal and voiced concern about it, while declining to disclose details about those concerns. The source spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.