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The Jewish Home | JUNE 23, 2022
The West Grapples with the Iran Challenge By Shammai SiSkind
O
ne morning in mid-April, in the north-western province of Ashnaabad Iran, Mansour Rasouli heard a knock on his door. It was strange to have guests at this hour, but he thought nothing suspicious of these early morning visitors. Mansour called out to inquire who was there, and the men outside responded in the local Turkic dialect. Mansour opened the door. Before he could get the words “good morning” out of his mouth, the men had violently grabbed him, placed a black cloth bag over his head, and threw him into their nondescript vehicle waiting outside. As the car drove away, one of the attackers began speaking. “Mr. Rasouli,” he said in flawless Farsi, “we have some questions for you.”
The Summer of Assassinations While the details of this incident are still in dispute (some even claim the nabbing took place in Europe and not in Iran), what is known for certain is that Mansour Rasouli was kidnapped by Israeli agents and interrogated around the first or second week of April. To confirm this fact, the Israeli government allowed actual footage of Rasouli to be aired on public news channels. In the released footage, the Iranian citizen of Kurdish origin can be clearly seen sitting in the back seat of a car. The men filming him ask his name and where he’s from. They then ask him what he was hired to do for the Iranian government. In a rather emotionless voice, Rasouli answers he was charged with “assassinating”
three high-profile Israeli citizens in Turkey in cooperation with the regime’s Quds Force, the paramilitary organization charged with carrying out the Ayatollah’s clandestine missions outside Iran’s borders. “I made a mistake,” Mansour pleadingly adds at the end of the interrogation. “From here on out, I won’t take any move regarding this, I swear.” Indeed, many regrets befall a man when tied up in the back of a truck. What is so interesting about the Rasouli incident is that it was far from a stand-alone operation. Indeed, Rasouli was seemingly just the first milestone in a complex Mossad effort to undo an Iranian plot of targeting Israelis abroad. This Israeli operation is but one piece of an all-new, ramped-up effort in clamping down on Iranian networks in the region. Despite his inconsequential demeanor, Rasouli was not the quaint Kurdish farmer he purported to be. In fact, Mansour was a member of Unit 840, an elite section of the Quds Force tasked with planning and executing overseas operations against Western targets – basically, Tehran’s specialized assassins. The London-based Iran International, an anti-regime Persian language newspaper, confirmed all of this in an expose shortly after the Israeli tape of Rasouli was released. According to the outlet, Rasouli was likely not an actual hitman himself but was certainly involved in big-picture planning supporting such operations. He laundered substantial amounts of money through a front company called Dalamper, an import-export service that Rasouli also uses for his own legitimate business needs. The money was funneled from the Iranian government, funneled through the labyrinth of
Dalamper’s commercial activities, and then used to secure logistical needs of Iranian agents – travel, accommodations, etc. The information obtained from Rasouli was used to uncover the details of what his colleagues were up to in Istanbul. Luckily, this information was able to be put to good use – and not a minute too soon. Earlier this month, Israeli public broadcaster Kan radio reported that security officials foiled an Iranian attack targeting Israelis in Turkey. Israeli officials coordinated with their Turkish security counterparts to thwart the attack planned by an “Iranian network” in Turkey. According to Israeli news reports, the Israeli couple being targeted was allegedly “minutes” away from being attacked by an Iranian hit squad when they were contacted by a senior official, warning them of the danger. They were met by a caravan of some ten security vehicles which rushed them to the airport where they were flown back to Israel. Over the past week, it was revealed that additional attacks have been attempted targeting Israeli nationals in the country, all of which have been thwarted. Recently, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid posted an unprecedented warning advising all Israelis to leave Turkey immediately. “Following developments in Turkey in recent weeks and after a series of Iranian terror attack attempts against Israeli tourists in Istanbul, we call on Israelis: Do not fly to Istanbul,” Lapid tweeted on his official account, adding that there are ongoing cooperative efforts with Turkish authorities and “we hope and believe that this warning will not be long-term.”
