FTO-Listed Iranian Terrorist IRGC Rockets Unarmed Opposition City

by Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker

International Analyst Network, May 29, 2008

On Monday, May 26, 2008, 16:23 local time, agents of the Sepah-e Qods (Qods Force), the Islamic Republic of Iran’s elite secretive unit of the Sepah-e Pasdaran (Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps), the regime’s military organization tasked with executing IRGC extra-territorial terrorist operations, and the section that was proscribed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization this past October (2007) by the U.S. Department of State in an unprovoked attack, fired a Grad missile at Ashraf City in Diyala Province, Iraq. Ashraf City is home to the 3,400 members of the Iranian opposition organization, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), the most prominent group within the Iranian parliament-in-exile, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), led by Mde. Maryam Rajavi . 

The Grad (Arash) missile is an Iranian production version of the old Soviet Katyusha and is the same rocket with which the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas has been targeting the southern Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon. Fragments from the Grad missile were engraved with the Persian date of manufacture “24-5-1384,” which corresponds to August 15, 2005, revealing that the rocket was manufactured in Iran. Fortuitously, it fell harmlessly in an open space in Ashraf. 

In 2004, the residents of Ashraf City were granted “protected person” status under the Fourth Geneva Convention and currently reside there under the protection of the Multinational Force-Iraq. The IRGC attack is a flagrant violation of international law. President-elect Maryam Rajavi, speaking on behalf of the Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, called upon the government of the Arab Republic of Iraq to expel Iran’s ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, himself a Qods Force commander-turned-ambassador. Mrs. Rajavi, called upon the International Red Cross, High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Security Council, the Coalition Forces and the government of Iraq to condemn and bring the mullah regime to justice for its assault on Ashraf City which is a clear violation of international and humanitarian rights and the Geneva Conventions, 

Dr. Saleh Mutlaq, leader of the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, in a statement, condemned the missile attack of the clerical regime on Ashraf City and asked the UN Security Council to take decisive measures in order to prohibit the Iranian regime’s meddling in Iraq, The Deputy Governor of Salah Ad-Din Province, Hossein Abdullah Jabbarra, in an interview with INTV, called the missile attack on Ashraf an aggression against Iraq and an assault on his fellow Iraqi citizens. He asked the Iraqi government to investigate this incident and to expel the Iranian regime’s mercenaries and its intelligence agents from Iraq.

Professor Rabbi Daniel M. Zucker is founder and Chairman of the Board of Americans for Democracy in the Middle-East, a grassroots organization dedicated to teaching elected officials and the public of the dangers posed by Islamic fundamentalism and the need to establish genuine democratic institutions in the Middle-East as an antidote to the venom of such fundamentalism. The organization’s web site is www.adme.ws.