US Congress Eying New Measures Against Iran’s Missile Program

It followed the execution this week of Swedish-Iranian Habib Chaab (Asyud) which saw Sweden's Ministry of Foreign Affairs summon Iran's charge d'affaires in protest of the execution, one of hundreds since the start of the year.

Iran's relations with Sweden have been strained since July when a Swedish court sentenced a former Iranian jailor, Hamid Nouri, to life imprisonment over executions of political prisoners in 1988.

The European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution in January calling on the EU and member states to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group.

The resolution demanded Iranian authorities end the crackdown on popular protests that started last September after a 22-year-old woman was killed in hijab police custody.

It also demanded that Europe should sanction the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and its president Ebrahim Raisi.

Despite numerous requests and rallies by Iranians living abroad, the European Union has not yet proscribed the IRGC.

The United States designated the IRGC as a global terrorist organization in 2019. It has carried out multiple cyber-attacks and threats to the lives of Iranians abroad, including staff at Iran International based in the UK.

Numerous financially motivated threat actors have exploited PaperCut to deliver ransomware since its initial disclosure and patching on March 8.

The tech giant's threat intelligence team said it observed both Mango Sandstorm (Mercury) and Mint Sandstorm (Phosphorus), which are Iranian hacking groups, carry out operations to achieve initial access.

"The PaperCut exploitation activity by Mint Sandstorm appears opportunistic, affecting organizations across sectors and geographies," the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said over the weekend.

The PaperCut developer claims more than 100 million users from more than 70,000 companies use this enterprise printing management software worldwide.

“As more threat actors begin to use this vulnerability in their attacks, organizations are strongly urged to prioritize applying the updates provided by PaperCut to reduce their attack surface,” wrote Microsoft in a tweet.

The tech giant also warned last week that Iran continues to be a global threat with its state-backed hackers expanding their activities.

To achieve its geopolitical goals, Iran is now expanding its cyber playbook to include disinformation campaigns, Microsoft said.

According to the report, the Iranian government has been involved in 24 "cyber-enabled influence operations" in 2022, three times higher than 2021, when there were seven.

The majority of these operations are attributed to Emennet Pasargad, a sanctioned Iranian state actor that is seeking to undermine the poll integrity in 2020.

According to informed sources, Tehran exerted strong pressure on Hamas to respond to assistance it has received over the years and unite with Islamic Jihad, a close affiliate of the Iranian regime, to launch a fresh wave of attacks.

In a surprise air strike early Tuesday, Israel killed three Islamic Jihad commanders in Gaza, who had planned attacks from Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. 

A large number of rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel Wednesday afternoon, in what appeared to be Palestinian retaliation for the targeting of Islamic Jihad commanders.

Dawoud Shehab, a spokesperson for the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad, had said Israel "must expect a response at any moment and anywhere,” but one day after the air strike, a tense calm still prevailed.

The chief of Iran’s general staff Mohammad Bagheri said Wednesday that Iran “will assist Palestine with all its power,” according to Tasnim news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC).

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Meanwhile, one source told Iran International that Tehran’s pressure has deepened existing policy disagreements among Hamas leaders.

As a tense calm prevailed earlier on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel is ready to fight Iran on multiple fronts if needs be. He insisted that “95% of Israel’s security problems come from Iran,” referring to “an attempt by Iran to start a multi-front campaign against us.” 

Israel blamed Iran for a large-scale military confrontation in early April when Palestinian groups aligned with the Islamic Republic launched hundreds of rockets against Israel from Gaza and Lebanon.

Iranian officials did not try to hide their satisfaction that the “resistance front”, as they call their militant proxies in the region, had “humiliated Israel.” IRGC commander, in particular, call for more military action, boasting that end of Israel is near.

Israel “will do all it can to prevent Iran from establishing terror fronts around us,” Netanyahu said at a conference for a right-leaning group of former senior defense officers.

Iran International’s sources say Hamas leaders in Gaza understand that a new military confrontation will hurt Palestinian civilians and their livelihood. They also have to face the danger of being targeted by Israel. However, leading figures living outside Palestinian territories and enjoying more security and close cooperation with Iran advocate for joining the Islamic Jihad in a new confrontation with Israel.

Iran reached a Chinese-brokered agreement with Saudi Arabia in March to restore diplomatic relations after a seven-year hiatus. Official in Tehran have repeatedly claimed that the move was a strategic defeat for the United States and a victory for Iran. 

Having partly reduced their isolation in the region, the Iranian regime seemed emboldened and intensified its rhetoric against Israel in March and April.

Meanwhile, Israel is not just concerned about attacks by Tehran’s proxies and allies, but is also worried about its expanding nuclear program.

By most estimates Iran has accumulated enough enriched uranium to be able to build up to five nuclear weapons within a few months.

Netanyahu also reiterated in statements on Tuesday and Wednesday that Israel will do all it can to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and will try to prevent Iran from “establishing terror fronts around us.”

Hamid al-Husseini is an Iraqi-born Shiite cleric who is the head of Iraq’s section of the Islamic Radio and Television Union (IRTVU), an affiliate of the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance that is practically run by the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). The union has more than 200 media outlets in 35 countries, including 100 satellite TV channels, 30 radio stations, and dozens of websites -- several of which are in Iraq.

Al-Husseini has close connections to the Office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and a was trusted companion of former Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike in January 2020.

The Iraqi city of Najaf issued an arrest warrant for Husseini on terrorism charges in 2021, accusing him of orchestrating an attack on the Al-Rafidain Center for Dialogue. However, Iraqi authorities have not acted upon the warrant. 

Al-Rafidain Center for Dialogue is a non-governmental organization established in Najaf in 2014 to shape public opinion in support of the democracy, peace and sustained development, but al-Husseini – under the influence of Khamenei – believes that the center is tasked with normalizing relations with Israel.

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According to Iran International's Mojtaba Pourmohsen, al-Husseini has managed to get the right to broadcast football (soccer) matches in Iraq for the Popular Mobilization Forces, an Iranian controlled Shia umbrella organization of more than 60 different armed factions, with around 128,000 fighters.

Apparently, al-Husseini has been using the media empire to promote the ideology of Iran’s ruler as programs on the sidelines of the matches. However, according to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global anti-money laundering watchdog, the cash-rich sport is among the most vulnerable to money laundering, with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimating that about $140 billion is laundered globally through soccer each year. 

Hacker group Backdoor (3ackd0or) provided Iran International with documents showing al-Husseini and several other people working with him launder money for the Islamic Republic in Iraq.

Al-Husseini, who also has an Iranian citizenship ID and a home in one of the northern neighborhoods in the capital Tehran, has connections in Iraq’s financial institutions and uses them to launder money for the IRGC and the Iranian regime.

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Moreover, the Islamic Radio and Television Union provides militia media outlets in Iraq with financial, technological, and organizational support, helps train their personnel, and devises a unified strategy for them to follow, according to the Washington Institute.

The US Treasury Department designated the IRTVU in October 2020 for being owned and operated by the IRGC’s Quds Force, in effect extending its designation of the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization to its media arm. The Treasury Department said at the time that IRTVU is “a propaganda arm of the IRGC-QF.” Not only does the IRGC have a hand in directing the military operations of Iranian-backed proxies, but it also takes a role in their media affairs, advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) said.

According to UANI, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) seized 33 websites used by the IRTVU in June 2021, including those associated with Al Alam TV and Press TV, adding to the 92 IRGC-linked domain names seized in 2020, based on a prior Department of Justice (DOJ) determination that the IRTVU disguised itself as a legitimate “news organizations or media outlets [to] target the US with disinformation campaigns and malign influence operations.”

Earlier in the year, Iran International unraveled some details about the inner workings of a Quds force unit tasked with smuggling money from Iraq to Iran. 

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According to the information, the Islamic Republic’s embassy in Iraq is also involved in the money laundering operations aimed at funneling revenues from oil and gas exports back to Iran. As per a repeatedly extended sanctions’ waiver by Washington, Tehran is only allowed to import medicine and some essential goods from Iraq in exchange for its exports.

This financial network is bypassing the US sanctions at the cost of the Iraqi economy. An informed source in Baghdad told Iran International late in December that Washington has received reports that Iraq is still conducting trade with Iran using US dollars despite sanctions.

The dinar went into a tailspin against the dollar after the New York Federal Reserve imposed tighter controls on international dollar transactions by commercial Iraqi banks in November to halt the illegal siphoning of dollars to Iran.

Under the curbs that took effect in January, Iraqi banks must use an online platform to reveal their transaction details. But most private banks have not registered on the platform and resorted to informal black markets in Baghdad to buy dollars.

Ali Salehi, Tehran's prosecutor general, issued arrest warrants on Monday for dozens of US officials involved in the assassination including Trump, Pompeo, and former Head of CENTCOM General Kenneth Franklin McKenzie.

On January 3, 2020, the US military, on the order of President Donald Trump, killed Soleimani in a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport, saying that he had been "actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region."

Soleimani, who was Iran’s top military and intelligence operator outside its borders, was in charge of supporting and organizing militant proxy forces, including the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militia groups that have repeatedly attacked US forces.

“Those convicted of involvement in the crime must be sentenced by a competent court under the guilty plea,” Salehi added.

The official stated he sent requests for judicial cooperation to nine countries that might have played a role in the assassination.

In 2020, Iran issued an arrest warrant for US President Donald Trump and 35 other people over the drone strike that killed a Soleimani.

Tehran had also asked Interpol to issue a Red Notice for the 36 individuals but the request was dismissed, explaining it was not in accordance with its rules and constitution. It said: “It is strictly forbidden for the organization to undertake any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character.”