By Reza Shafa
The Iranian regime's schemes with regards to Gaza have been planned at the highest levels and personally approved by the mullahs' Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, since a long time ago. According to classified reports obtained from inside the regime, the regime’s internal and extra territorial bodies, such as the terrorist Qods Force, were fully marshaled in this regard to implement the regime’s schemes.
Following the start of the war in Gaza, the regime opened another front and ordered its forces to implement pre-planned and organized attacks against embassies, consulates, and interests sections of Arab countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan in Iranian cities of Tehran, Mashhad, and Isfahan, combined with setting these countries’ flags on fire, while insulting and threatening Arab leaders. State-run media widely reported on these acts on a daily basis.
In addition to these actions, the mullahs’ regime has initiated a provocation scheme in other countries through its proxies and affiliated media. It has given guidelines to its agents in the form of an open call, which in part reads:
“Employed Muslims in foreign companies operating in Muslim nations must go on strike. By working together, Muslim nations must attempt to close all straits in close proximity to their lands, including the Bab-el-Mandeb, Suez Canal, Bosporus, and Hormuz, to compel Western countries to prevent the continuation of attacks against Hamas.”
The Iranian regime’s main goal from this initiative is to exploit the Gaza crisis to expand its fundamentalist and belligerent objectives in the region. Various regime officials, including Khamenei, have repeatedly and openly declared that Palestine and Lebanon represent their regime’s strategic depth, and in actual fact, the mullahs’ regime has drawn its line of defense for a proxy war in those countries.
The regime’s recent warmongering, as reflected, for example, by the confidential report about the call to close vital passageways for oil in Asia, Europe, and Africa, can be analyzed in this context, and constitutes acts of terrorism and blackmail.
Previously, relying on confidential information from inside the mullahs’ regime, we revealed that the mullahs have deployed long-range missiles in the suburbs of Eritrea’s Port of Assab, under the cover of repairing an oil refinery, to bring the Bab-el Mandeb strait, located 30 km from Eritrea and Yemen, within their missile range and disrupt the flow of oil through this passageway.
Of course, the regime’s warmongering only serves to reveal its true nature. This is a regime which threatens the lives of Palestinian women and children in Gaza, and pursues regional domination through terrorist bombings in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries. Through such policies, the regime will become more isolated, and will invite more rage toward itself from the international community, and especially the people and governments of the Arab world.
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Reza Shafa is an expert on the Iranian regime's Intelligence networks, both in Iran and abroad. He has done extensive research on Iranian Ministry of Information and Security (MOIS) also known as VEVAK, Intelligence Office of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and Qods Force among others. Currently he is a contributor to NCRI website.