The Mullahs’ regime has intensified its efforts to expand fundamentalism and terrorism abroad. The two examples below demonstrate the extent to which the mullahs have widened their reach to Eastern Europe and smaller countries such as Solomon Islands.
Solomon Islands:
Spending large amounts of money in Solomon Islands, the mullahs’ regime intends to spread its influence and meddling in this region. This trend, which is tied to the regime’s policy of exporting fundamentalism and terrorism abroad, has faced opposition and protest from national parties and forces of this country.
To break out from the mold of international isolation and various crises it is facing, the regime, by spending large sums of money and through various methods and tactics, is trying to increase its involvement in various regions. The Iranian regime has particularly focused on smaller countries so that it can buy their votes in international bodies or take advantage of them economically. The Solomon Islands, which is located in the Pacific Ocean northeast of Australia is one of the regime’s targets.
Recently, the mullahs’ regime announced its readiness to Solomon Islands’ authorities for providing technical engineering services and Iranian contractors for the implementation of so-called development projects in the country. Additionally, the regime is funding the travel of Solomon Islands university students to Cuba for medical training, and intends to provide these students with the necessary equipment and computers at Cuban universities. All these are being paid for by the regime at a time when university students in Iran are deprived of the most basic and elementary resources.
Deals about sending off and funding students took shape when in September 2008 the Solomon Islands Prime Minister, Derek Sikua, met in secret with the mullahs’ President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, at the UN General Assembly. It was agreed that this money would be paid to the Solomon Islands’ diplomatic representation at the UN.
The “Solomon Star” daily wrote on November 6, 2008 that the paying of funds is the latest news following a leak during the past weeks regarding secret talks between the ruling coalition and Tehran’s regime. The newspaper had written that the money was provided to Solomon Islands representation at the UN in New York, although the exact amount of the Iranian regime’s financial transfer has not been revealed yet.
Bilateral negotiations and relations between the Solomon Islands government and the mullahs’ regime has led to protests and concerns among national and political figures as well as the press in Solomon Islands. As a first step, they began to expose these relations. For example, some of the regime’s economic trades in that country were revealed by a Peter Boyers, a member of parliament in the Islands. Next, these relations faced strong protest from opposition leader Manasseh Sogavare. The opposition leader stated that the government’s actions were shocking as the Iranian regime is a sponsor of terrorism, and thus allying oneself with that regime is contrary to the values of Solomon Islands. Sogavare went on to say that his country should instead sign economic agreements with countries that have common values with Solomon Islands. He added, terrorism is an issue which has been condemned by the UN and no sane country would enter diplomatic relations with another country which supports actions and activities that lead to the suffering of millions of people.
Belarus:
The mullahs’ regime is also attempting to export its fundamentalism and terrorism to Belarus, increasing its meddling through activities dressed as diplomatic, economic, and cultural.
Belarus is another one of the targets of the mullahs’ terrorism and fundamentalism. The regime is pursuing this policy through various means, including so-called cultural activities. One of the main organs for the regime’s exporting of fundamentalism, the so-called Cultural and Islamic Communications Organization (CICO), is directly involved. The regime’s internal documents reveal instructions to the regime’s ambassador to Belarus, Abdollah Hosseini. In these instructions, Hosseini has been told to fully cooperate with CICO and prepare the stage for the organization’s activities in Belarus.
In this regard, the regime provides the necessary guise for its activities by organizing meetings and events with titles such as “Mahdaviat,” by building a religious institution called “Beit-al-Zahra” in Minsk, by organizing events on the occasion of religious holidays such as the Nime-Shaaban, or by arranging a conference called Qods at the medical university of this country. As well, using such covers, the regime gathers its operatives from various countries under one roof.
A few cases exemplify the status of the political relations between these two countries. On October 22, 2008, the regime’s Minister of Communications, Revolutionary Guards Soleimani, traveled to Belarus and requested cooperation in the field of aerospace sciences and launching satellites into space. He had stressed that the news of this must not be exposed, and no reports or pictures were dispatched to Tehran.
In conjunction with such projects, according to reports obtained from inside the regime, the highest ranking officials and delegations of the mullahs’ regime have been adamant to invite officials from Belarus to visit Iran. However, such invitations have not been accepted and Belarus officials have deferred possibility of trips until after the establishment of an atmosphere of bilateral cooperation between the two countries.
Recently, the Belarus government decided to expel the cultural envoy of the mullah regime’s embassy in Belarus, Ramroudi, on charges of ethical corruption. The scandal broke out after a complaint by one of the citizens in Belarus, and met angry protests by the people of this country. Although Ramroudi’s three-year mission had only several months left, the government decided to expel him anyway. Of course, this had precedent. Last year, the same person was about to be expelled on similar charges, but the regime’s embassy used its leverage to avoid that outcome. The second time around, however, the Belarus government ignored the regime’s attempts and expelled its corrupt cultural envoy.
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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.