Albania: Police foil Tehran-backed jihad terror plot at Sufi ceremony
Albanian police have announced that they “thwarted an attack allegedly planned by a Tehran-backed ‘terrorist cell’ against opponents of the Iranian regime in the Balkan country last year. The cell belonged to the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) responsible for foreign operations.”
The target was a Sufi ceremony attended by members of the anti-IRGC group, the MEK (People’s Mujahedin of Iran). Since its exile from Iran in the early 1980s, the US-supported MEK has been committed to overthrowing the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Obama administration that removed the MEK from the US terror list in 2012, and helped negotiate its relocation to Albania. This decision followed a massive lobbying campaign by the MEK to end its designation as a terrorist group “despite reports that implicated the group ‘in assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists as recently as 2012, along with its anti-Shah and anti-American activities during the Iranian revolution.'”
Iran targets anyone or any group anywhere that it deems to be an enemy or an obstacle to its expansion. Its proxies are global. The EU has accused it of plots to assassinate regime opponents in Europe. Its proxies have infiltrated Canada, with calls for attacks on the U.S. Its proxy Hizballahhas also been expanding operations in Canada. Iran has “sought to export its revolution and empower Shiite groups in the Middle East.” At any time, Iran is in a position to “rally regional proxies” such as Hizballah if needed.
“Albanian Police Say Iranian ‘Terrorist’ Plot Foiled,” Radio Free Europe, October 23, 2019:
Albanian police thwarted an attack allegedly planned by a Tehran-backed “terrorist cell” against opponents of the Iranian regime in the Balkan country last year, police said on October 23.The cell belonged to the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) responsible for foreign operations, police said in a statement.This cell “had planned, among other things, a terrorist act foiled in March 2018” targeting a religious ceremony of the Bektashi, a Sufi group, in Tirana, the statement said.The ceremony was attended by members of the exiled Iranian opposition group, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), according to police.Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam, is not illegal in Iran but rights groups accuse the Iranian government of harassment and discrimination against their followers.In 2013, Albania agreed to take in some 3,000 members of the MEK at the request of Washington and the United Nations.They currently live in a compound in northwestern Albania.Police on October 23 published photos of three Iranians and one Turkish national allegedly involved in the “terrorist cell.”The leader of the alleged cell “resides in Turkey” and another “has an Austrian passport,” the statement said.Police declined to say whether international arrest warrants had been issued….
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