Iran's global terror network: from Iraq to Afghanistan to South America to the United States, Iran's global terror network is rapidly expanding.

In June 1985, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism, chaired by Sen. Jeremiah Denton (R-Ala.), issued an important report entitled State-Sponsored Terrorism. One of the documents reproduced in that report was an Iranian document that had been stamped "TOP SECRET" by the government of Iran. A photo reproduction of the document in the original Farsi was included, along with an English translation. It was the official memorandum of a meeting held in Tehran in May 1984, presided over by Ayatollah Mohammed Khatami, who was then Iran's Minister of Guidance, but would later become Iran's president. In the words of the document, the purpose of the meeting was for the "creation of an independent brigade for carrying out unconventional warfare in enemy territory."

Ayatollah Khatami explained to the exclusive invitees--which included Iran's top cabinet officials and the chiefs of its military, clergy, and intelligence agencies--that the meeting was being held in obedience "to the orders of His Eminence ... Ayatollah Imam Khomeini ... the great leader of the revolution, and the founder of the Islamic Republic." He further explained that "it has been decided that the strikeforce, which at present is composed of a few groups of 10-20 people each, who are currently serving in the Lebanon, should be increased to the size of a brigade."

Khatami then introduced a "Brother Mirhashem," who explained details of the plan to create a brigade-strength (1,500-2,000 men) terror group to carry out operations throughout the Middle East. Mirhashem told the assembled leaders that "we have at present a number of dedicated groups who are ready for action and who have, to the outside world become known as suicide groups." These groups had already distinguished themselves in Lebanon, most notably in the attack on the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in which 241 military personnel were killed (the largest single-day death toll for the Marine Corps since Iwo Jima). But these small suicide groups were inadequate, said Mirhashem, for the task envisioned.

Since "the personnel of this brigade must from the point of view of military combat experience be of a very high echelon," said Mirhashem, it had been decided "to select dedicated religious and fully committed candidates from all combat 'nahad' organizations." The new brigade launched Iran to a higher level of performance in the terror business, as demonstrated, for instance, in Lebanon.

Exporting the Revolution

In the more than two decades since that meeting, Tehran has been the site for many additional meetings and "summits" for world terrorism. One very important one was held there in June 1996, for the creation of Hezbollah (also HizbAllah) International, to transform Iran's Hezbollah terror units into "the vanguard of the revolution" around the globe and more carefully integrate and coordinate their activities with other terror groups. Attending the summit were senior commanders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda. Also attending were leaders of openly Marxist-Leninist terror groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Kurdish People's Party, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

Out of this Tehran terror summit came the new HizbAllah International, headed by the Committee of Three. The committee members were Osama bin Laden, Imad Mughaniyah, and Ahmad Salah. But, exercising top power above the Committee of Three was Dr. Mahdi Chamran Savehi, Iran's chief of External Intelligence and supervisor of its global terror operations. The U.S.-educated Dr. Chamran, a nuclear physicist, and his brother Mustafa were both active student radicals in the 1960s in California, where they established a violent Marxist front known as the Muslim Students' Association of America and an Iranian terrorist organization called Red Shiism.

Working hand-in-hand with Syria, Iran has turned Lebanon, a once beautiful and prosperous Christian nation, into a Hezbollah-controlled thugocracy headed by the fanatical Sheikh Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Following the Lebanese example are Afghanistan and Iraq, where civic and clerical leaders of the U.S.-installed regimes are rapidly falling under Tehran's sway.

In February 2002, Hamid Karzai (then Afghanistan's "interim chairman," now its president) went to Iran to visit President Khatami, who, recall from above, presided over the founding of Iran's terror brigade. "Our presence here is like going to your brother's house," Karzai gushed, "because Iran is our brother country. Iran is not only a neighbor, but also a friend." A few months later, Khatami repaid the honor, visiting Karzai in Kabul. But the Afghanistan-Iran ties have gone far beyond mere exchanging of pleasantries; the two countries have been developing strong ties, with Iran's money and Iran's mullahs gaining alarming influence.

Tehran's influence may be even more advanced and alarming in Iraq. Vali Nasr, the Council on Foreign Relations' chief expert on Iran, notes Tehran's growing influence in the council's journal, Foreign Affairs, for July-August 2006. Nasr writes that Iran "was the first country in the region to send an official delegation to Baghdad for talks with the Iraqi Governing Council.... After former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's Shiite-led interim government assumed office in Baghdad in April 2005, high-level Iraqi delegations visited Tehran, reached agreements over security cooperation with Iran, and negotiated a $1 billion aid package for Iraq and several trade deals, including one for the export of electricity to Iraq and another for the exchange of Iraqi crude oil for refined oil products."

Western Hemisphere Network

Incredibly, Dr. Nasr sees these and other signs of Iran's growing influence in the region as a good thing. But will it be a good thing for Iraq's Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to exercise the same kind of murderous control as we have seen exercised in Iran by Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei? That is the direction that Iraq is headed, under the U.S.-installed government in Baghdad. Iraq's political and religious leaders openly praise Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini and his "glorious" revolution. Official government exchanges between Tehran and Baghdad have multiplied alarmingly. Iran is also the key player behind much of the ongoing civil war in Iraq. The Badr Brigades (the militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq), which are killing U.S. servicemen, are trained and equipped by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Ditto for the notorious Muqtada al-Sadr's Madhi Army, which has been killing U.S. soldiers in Najaf.

But Iran has also expanded its operations into our hemisphere, principally with the help of Marxist dictators Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, both of whom have visited Tehran and have had long-standing relations with the terror regime. An especially large Iranian-Hezbollah community has developed over the past decade in the tri-border area of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil, where the Iranians are involved in the cocaine narco-terror trade with Colombia's FARC terrorist group.

Even more troubling, from the standpoint of U.S. national security, is the question of how many Hezbollah sleeper cells Iran has already planted in the United States, among the many legal and illegal Muslim immigrants that have come here in recent years.