Iran’s Wartime Preparations Include Terrorist Attacks and Assassinations
Iran’s Wartime Preparations Include Terrorist Attacks and Assassinations by Zach Dorfman – Yahoo News
In July 2017, Ahmadreza Doostdar, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, visited the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago, where FBI agents surveilled him performing what appeared to be a surreptitious exchange of information — a brush pass — with a woman in one of the museum’s rooms.
After leaving the museum, Doostdar walked toward two nearby Jewish centers, snapping photos with his phone camera, appearing to pay particular attention to entrances and exits, including a wrought iron fence at the perimeter of one the buildings. Doostdar then traveled to Los Angeles where, according to U.S. prosecutors, he met with another Iranian man and tasked him with collecting information on U.S.-based members of Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, an Iranian opposition group listed as a terrorist organization by the United States until 2012.
The details of Doostdar’s alleged activities in the United States were revealed in August 2018 when the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against him, claiming he was acting as an Iranian intelligence operative.
Iranian espionage is nothing new, but the charges against Doostdar, and other recent court cases, including the indictment of a former Air Force linguist who defected to Iran in 2013, highlight what the U.S. intelligence community sees as an increasingly worrying part of Tehran’s covert strategy. Iranian operatives are compiling what are known as “target packages” to undertake prospective future assassinations and terrorist attacks, according to more than half a dozen former U.S. intelligence officials.
The Department of Defense, CIA and FBI declined to comment. The Iranian Mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment…