A special covert Iranian Revolutionary Guard terror cell is helping foment violence across the Middle East, funneling weapons to Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthi rebels in Yemen and other radical groups,
Fox News reports.
The cell is called Unit 190, a covert arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) Quds Force.
Western intelligence sources told Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin that a key player in the cell is an Iranian in his mid-to-late 40s named Behnam Shahariyari. He is said to run a network of straw companies which evade international sanctions by smuggling night-vision equipment, long-range rockets and RPGs to terrorists and conflict zones.
The cell, which has several dozen employees, does its work by concealing arms and explosives beneath legal cargo such as cement, spare vehicle parts, and powdered milk.
The U.S. Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on front companies used by the Qods Force to transport weaponry to Iran-backed terror groups like Hezbollah. That group, which dominates Lebanon, has also been involved in Syria's civil war, where it has played a large role on the battlefield by fighting to save President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
"Many times when you see the United States government imposing sanctions on so-called 'commercial businesses' in Iran, it's in reality the Quds Force that they are trying to sanction," said
Ali Alfoneh, an Iranian-born analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
On Dec. 21, 2010,
the U.S. Treasury designated the Liner Transport Kish shipping company, for providing material support including weapons to Hezbollah on behalf of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The firm's manager, Sayyed Jabar Hosseini, is also an employee of Unit 190, Fox News reported.
In January 2013, the U.S. Navy intercepted a boat carrying 40 tons of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles destined for the Houthis -- the very group that just seized power in Yemen, forcing the evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa this week.
"We know that there is a relationship between the Houthis and Tehran," Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby said Tuesday. "We've been clear on multiple occasions about our concerns about the tentacles that Iran has throughout the region."
Israel has had a number of major successes in disrupting Iranian efforts to funnel weapons to terrorists and rogue regimes.
In March 2011, it intercepted a ship carrying Iranian C-704 shore-to-sea missiles reportedly bound for Hamas-controlled Gaza.
In October 2012, Israeli F-15 fighters reportedly bombed on Iranian weapons stockpile in Khartoum. The airstrikes destroyed an arms depot which was being used to store weaponry before it was smuggled overland through Egypt, into Gaza, and on to other trouble spots across the Middle East.
Last March, the Israeli Navy stopped the Klos-C, a commercial vessel filled with Syrian long-range rockets.
Iranian fingerprints have been noticed on illicit shipments from West Africa to Europe in recent years, Fox reported.
In October 2010, Nigeria arrested Qods Force activists after intercepting a shipment of rockets and mortar shells bound for Gambia.
In January 2009, a U.S. ship helped intercept a former Russian ship in the Red Sea that was full of explosives from Iran. The vessel was escorted to Cyprus, where the cargo later exploded, leaving a 600-yard-wide crater and killing a senior officer in the Cypriot Navy.
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