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One of al-Qaeda’s founding leaders, Dr Fadl, has begun an ideological revolt against Osama bin Laden, blaming him for “every drop” of blood spilt in Afghanistan and Iraq.

By David Blair in Cairo for www.telegraph.co.uk

Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, who writes: The terrorist attacks on September 11 were both immoral and counterproductive.

Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, who goes by the nom de guerre Dr Fadl, helped bin Laden create al-Qaeda and then led an Islamist insurgency in Egypt in the 1990s.

Twenty years ago, Dr Fadl became al-Qaeda’s intellectual figurehead with a crucial book setting out the rationale for global jihad against the West.

Today, however, he believes the murder of innocent people is both contrary to Islam and a strategic error. “Every drop of blood that was shed or is being shed in Afghanistan and Iraq is the responsibility of bin Laden and Zawahiri and their followers,” writes Dr Fadl.

The terrorist attacks on September 11 were both immoral and counterproductive, he writes. “Ramming America has become the shortest road to fame and leadership among the Arabs and Muslims. But what good is it if you destroy one of your enemy’s buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills a thousand of yours?” asks Dr Fadl. “That, in short, is my evaluation of 9/11.”

He is equally unsparing about Muslims who move to the West and then take up terrorism. “If they gave you permission to enter their homes and live with them, and if they gave you security for yourself and your money, and if they gave you the opportunity to work or study, or they granted you political asylum,” writes Dr Fadl, then it is “not honorable” to “betray them, through killing and destruction”.

In particular, Dr Fadl focuses his attack on Zawahiri, a key figure in al-Qaeda’s core leadership and a fellow Egyptian whom he has known for 40 years. Zawahiri is a “liar” who was paid by Sudan’s intelligence service to organise terrorist attacks in Egypt in the 1990s, he writes.

The criticisms have emerged from Dr Fadl’s cell in Tora prison in southern Cairo, where a sand-colored perimeter wall is lined with watchtowers, each holding a sentry wielding a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Torture inside Egyptian jails is “widespread and systematic,” according to Amnesty International.

Zawahiri has alleged that his former comrade was tortured into recanting. But the al-Qaeda leader still felt the need to compose a detailed, 200-page rebuttal of his antagonist.

The fact that Zawahiri went to this trouble could prove the credibility of Dr Fadl and the fact that his criticisms have stung their target. The central question is whether this attack on al-Qaeda’s ideology will sway a wider audience in the Muslim world.

Fouad Allam, who spent 26 years in the State Security Directorate, Egypt’s equivalent of MI5, said that Dr Fadl’s assault on al-Qaeda’s core leaders had been “very effective, both in prison and outside.”

He added: “Within these secret organizations, leadership is very important. So when someone attacks the leadership from inside, especially personal attacks and character assassinations, this is very bad for them.”

A western diplomat in Cairo agreed with this assessment, saying: “It has upset Zawahiri personally. You don’t write 200 pages about something that doesn’t bother you, especially if you’re under some pressure, which I imagine Zawahiri is at the moment.”

Dr Fadl was a central figure from the very outset of bin Laden’s campaign. He was part of the tight circle which founded al-Qaeda in 1988 in the closing stages of the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. By then, Dr Fadl was already the leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an extremist movement which fought the Cairo regime until its defeat in the 1990s.

Dr Fadl fled to Yemen, where he was arrested after September 11 and transferred to Egypt, where he is serving a life sentence. “He has the credibility of someone who has really gone through the whole system,” said the diplomat. “Nobody’s questioning the fact that he was the mentor of Zawahiri and the ideologue of Egyptian Islamic Jihad.”

Terrorist movements across the world have a history of alienating their popular support by waging campaigns of indiscriminate murder. This process of disintegration often begins with a senior leader publicly denouncing his old colleagues. Dr Fadl’s missives may show that al-Qaeda has entered this vital stage.

But in a book written from inside an Egyptian prison, he has launched a frontal attack on al-Qaeda’s ideology and the personal failings of bin Laden and particularly his Egyptian deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

By Amil Imani www.AmericanThinker.com

As the Islamic Revolution completed its third decade, it would not be too difficult to realize the reality and the fruits of its mismanagement during its imperial and revolutionary eras. Throughout the three decades of its existence, the Islamic Republic has managed, notably, to produce more hunger, extreme frustration and anger, prostitution at a record pace, drug addiction beyond control, child execution without any regard to the international human rights bylaws. There are many reports regarding cases of child sexual abuse and molestation reaching epidemic proportions. Prosecution and imprisonment of the innocent people and systematic and illegal abuse of detainees and hundreds of gruesome acts have been reported.

The genocidal Islamists have been doing all they can to completely wipe out the Baha’is in Iran as well as everywhere else in the world that their blood-drenched hand can reach. The Islamic government condones and promotes every measure of oppression against the Baha’is. The Islamists don’t even spare the dead. They bulldoze and even uproot the trees in Baha’is cemeteries. Harassment of other religious minorities is prevalent and torturing innocent people beyond recognition is part of their modus operandi. They routinely hang dissidents and amputate the limbs of anyone for petty theft. There are responsible for the unmitigated poverty in the oil-rich country, sex slaves in the Persian Gulf region and the raping of children as young as 2 years of age.

The Islamic Republic also has started a nuclear program, not for peaceful purposes, as they claim, but only to prolong their unwanted existence long enough to get their hands on the bomb so that they can feel invincible and continue their control over the armless Iranian people and ultimately export their version of Shi’a Islam and terrorism around the globe.

What is the likelihood that the ruling Mullahs will actually use their new toy? If they remain in power long enough to have it, they are very likely to use it, in one form or another. At the very least, they will use the bomb for blackmail and intimidation in the region. Not even the all-out nuclear exchange can be ruled out. Islam is a religion centered on death with the faithful eyes fixed on the afterlife and its promised eternal pleasures. If the faithful kills, he goes to Allah’s paradise; if he gets killed, he goes to Allah’s paradise. An urgent warning to the people of the world: stop the Islamic Republic nuclear program now, or face eradication from the face of the earth and I am not in any mood to make you laugh.

What does the Islamic Republic do to cover up its crimes against humanity? They immediately create chaos and crisis. In other words, they create smoke and mirrors and push the dust under the rug again as they did when the Islamists took the American diplomats as hostages for 444 days and during Iran and Iraq war and recent Israeli war with Hamas. Ironically, the first victims of the chaos and crises doctrine have always been the Iranian people. They are trying to distract the world from their nuclear intention as they did during the Gaza crisis. They took the attention away from their nuclear program.

Since its inception, the regime has stigmatized, victimized and murdered people without any due process of law. They particularly go after the writers, poets and artists to harass. The first Islamic Revolutionary Judge, Sheik Sadegh Khalkhali, an infamous psychopath, did not hesitate to demand the execution of intellectuals such as Ahmad Shamlou, a famous Iranian author who was well-known for his non-adherence to any political party and his non-involvement in any political activity. Khalkhali was responsible for many arbitrary executions. According to Judge Abdolkarim Ardibili, former President of the Supreme Court, many defense lawyers were arrested, imprisoned and in at least one case, executed.

Currently, the regime, on the slightest suspicion will arrest, convict and execute. Few people would deny any longer that Islam and its variants mean, in practice, bloody terrorism, deadly purges, lethal actions, forced ‘hijabs,” show trials and genocide. It is a widespread plague upon humanity. It is disguised as religion and has penetrated our democracies with the aim of replacing civility and liberty with the barbarism of theocracy and Sharia. Islam’s multi-prong attack aims to destroy all that liberty offers.

On September 19, 1981, in an address broadcasted on radio and television, Ayatollah Moussavi, the Revolutionary Procurator General, stated, “to kill the people who stand against this regime and its just Imam (Khomeini) is a prescribed duty according to Islamic laws. If they are captured, our men will not let them eat and sleep for a few months. The trial of these people is in the streets. I also order the city prosecutors to do the same; otherwise they themselves will be punished” reported by Ghiam newspaper, Tehran, June 28, 1981. The flair for hanging has not stopped since then, in fact, it has immensely increased.

The Mullahs presently ruling Iran are faced with monumental threats. Internally, the great majority of the populace is against their misrule. Labor unions, teachers associations, student groups, religious and ethnic minorities, journalists and many others have suffered and continue to suffer inordinate hardship under the heavy-handed Mullahs and their front men. Externally, they are engaged in brinksmanship with the United States and Israel, while trying to wrestle the mantle of Islamic leadership from the Sunni Saudis and their Wahhabi cabal and President Obama intends to negotiate with these criminals rather than the legitimate owners of the country, the Iranian people. He will also fail miserably as did his four predecessors.

The Islamist apologists call me all kinds of unspeakable names. That’s all they can do, since they are unable to hang me from high cranes at public squares as they do to everyone, even teenagers, in Iran. These mullahs — that includes the non-turbaned creatures working as the akhoond’s front men and pawns — are agents of destruction and death. They have a ball plundering Iran and are looking forward to their rewards in Allah’s paradise for their dastardly acts here on earth. As they see it, it is a win-win proposition for them.

Sadly, huge numbers of Iranians are hoodwinked into supporting these leeches and believing in their pie-in-the-sky promises. It is time for Muslims to wake up and toss this ideology of destruction and death out of office before we all ravish away.

Centuries ago, a group of newly converted Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula, ravaged my mother country, the present Iran, a cradle of civilization, the land of Cyrus the Great- the first author of the Human Rights Charter-. The upstanding Iranian people who lived by the Great Zoroaster’s triad of Goodly Thoughts, Goodly Speech, and Goodly Deeds stood no chance against the Muslims who had been promised by Muhammad: if you kill, or you get killed, either way you will be admitted to Allah’s gloriously lush paradise for eternity in compensation. This pie-in-the-sky paradise of Allah, Muhammad intimated, includes among other things, rivers of milk and honey as well as 72 virgins for every male.

The invasion of my country was only the start of the tenacious scourge of Islam. Slaughtering people by hundreds of thousands at the time left the remainder of the Iranians little choice but to convert to the creed of this cult of violence. Choiceless millions converted to Islam and a few hundred thousand brave souls circled the wagon, so to speak, and held firm to their creed of light — the Zoroastrian faith. For centuries, the Zoroastrians paid heavily in all manner of ways under the rule of the converted Muslims; many were forced to leave for other lands such as India, while others were driven out of their habitats to marginal parts of the land.

Yet, all along, many Iranians revered the religion of their ancestors and resented the Arab-imposed creed. Nonetheless, the transplant of Islam had taken deep roots. As a result, a compromise evolved. The overwhelming majority of Iranians, who had become some sort of generic Muslims, parted company with the original line of Sunni-Caliphate and adopted Shiism. The tragic history of Shiism appealed to the Iranians who felt great affinity, consciously or unconsciously, with the tragic suffering of the Imamate line at the hand of the mainstream Sunni Muslims.

Switching allegiance from one sect of the cult of death to another did little more than provide a venting opportunity to the victimized Iranians. They could not find it in themselves to get rid of Shia Islam while it offered them a degree of relief, enabling them to vilify the mainstream Sunnis for inflicting them with the Islamic disease in the first place.

Fourteen hundred years of suffering is far too long for any people, although the Jews hold the record for that misfortune. The Jews have at long last returned to their homeland even though they are still encircled by the vicious Arab Islamists who would like nothing better than to drown every last one of them in the sea, similar to the way the Islamists forced our Zoroastrian people out of the country or the remaining few to the edges of the inhospitable desert.

With the passage of time, blaming the historical foreign invaders for our sorry plight failed as explanation. Re-playing the long-ago tragic drama of the Imams’ sufferings did little more than supply a superficial psychological relief. Real new enemy-making was in order to keep the victimization mentality alive and prevent the people from self-examination and finding the true culprit for their misery.

Sadly, the victimization mentality seems to have become an irreversible disease of our people, the Iranians. We have become a nation of easy answers. We ascribe blame liberally and do very little deep soul-searching. It is heartwarming to see that new flowers are blossoming in Iran. The new generation in Iran wants to distance itself from the Islamic butchers and embrace the ancient creed of Zoroasterism or other religions. They are beginning to feel and accept the fact that blaming others hasn’t done much to address our problems, just creating straw men to knock down.

Most Iranians, whose voices are not allowed to be heard in the West, have strongly condemned the blatant innumerable comments by the selected buffoon, President Ahmadinejad calling for the destruction of the only democratic nation in the Middle East, the State of Israel. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s President’s repeated threat to wipe out Israel from the map is ignored by some as an empty rhetoric of an unhinged fanatic. Yet, Ahmadinejad’s threats are far from the baseless saber-rattling of a zealot.

Ahmadinejad’s government has recently ordered the comprehensive gathering of data regarding the Baha’is and all their activities. This order is deeply troubling, since it is almost a replica of what another fascist, Hitler, did before launching the genocide of six million Jews and some four million other “undesirables”. Ahmadinejad is an Islamofascist whose aim is to have a practice run on the Iranian Baha’is before embarking on destroying the Jews and other “undesirables,” following in the footsteps of the German führer.

Political correctness is the normal tongue of politicians. However, what is coming from the Islamic regime in Iran is an aculeate tongue from a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. Ahmadinejad, the ultra-conservative President of the Islamic Republic, after all, is a known former hostage taker and an assassin, and that is exactly why Ayatollah Khamenei has selected him to his post; because he has eliminated all his opponents and proven his loyalty to the Ayatollah. Ahmadinejad served in the ranks of the Revolutionary Guards during the 1980-1988 war with Iraq. He has also appointed fellow Revolutionary Guards’ members to the most key positions in his cabinet.

Inside the Revolutionary Guards, there exists an elite group called “Qods (Jerusalem) Force”. Its mission is military operations (including terrorism) far beyond the boundaries of Iran. At the time, Ahmadinejad was a senior commander in the Quds Force. According to Al Sharq Al-Awsat, elements of the Qods Force have led operations against coalition forces in Iraq; other sources even contend that the Qods Force provided logistical help to the Zarqawi network of terror in the past.

During the recent Israeli war with terrorist Hamas, the Islamic Republic went through a panic mode again. They could not stand and watch the loss of one of their investments in the Israelis’ backyard, the Hamas terrorist group. What do they do? They create chaos and crises. They declared cyber war on Israel. They instigated a false crisis to bring the Arab world into the conflict and threatened them with retribution if they did not act. They offered a 2 million dollar bounty for President of Egypt, Hussnie Mobarak for not helping the Palestinians in Gaza. They claimed 70,000 Iranian Basijis volunteered to carry out suicide bombings in Israel.

Ironically, a Persian reformist newspaper (Roozonline) accused Ahmadinejad’s government of using the Palestinian problem ‘as weapon’ against reformist bodies after he shut down a newspaper accused of reporting misinformation about Palestinian fighters in Gaza. An Iranian newspaper (Kargozaran), which defended Israel for protecting its citizens against the barrage of mortar attacks by Hamas terrorists, was also banned for portraying the Palestinian resistance as terrorists who cause the deaths of children and civilians by taking up positions in kindergartens and hospitals.

All this acrobatic propaganda by the Islamists in Iran was symbolic and did nothing to help the Hamas thugs, but only caused more anguish and death on the Iranian part. Since coming to power 30 years ago, the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini set the stage for absolute power through creating chaos and crisis. Chaos and crises have emerged as the new policy of the Islamic Republic. Khomeini was able to get the support of the poor and the bazaar merchants opposed to the shah, peasants, riffraff and uneducated mobs who called themselves students.

At the beginning of the revolution, while Iranian opposition forces were getting ready to take on Khomeini and his Islamic gang of terrorists, the American hostage crisis and 444 days captivity took place. This was a much-needed crisis for Khomeini and his gang to suppress the Iranian people’s aspirations for greater freedom, while challenging the “Great Satan”, which helped to solidify their position among the poor and most Muslim countries.

This chaos and crises escalated for eight more years as the Iraqis launched a surprise attack on Iran. As President select Ahmadinejad himself stated, this war was a blessing from God. This crucial eight-year war with Iraq allowed the Islamic Republic to take shape while continuing fabrications, lies, harassment, arrests, murders and intimidation of the Iranian people. If Saddam had not attacked Iran, more than likely, the Islamic regime would have collapsed in its earlier stages. After all, people did not revolt so that they could have a tyrannical Islamic cult to rule over them.

After the war, the Islamic Republic continued its brutal purges, killing anyone perceived as an opponent. The tyrannical and brutal regime imposed and forced millions of Iranians to run away from their homeland. The war left behind hundreds of thousands of Iranians dead or homeless. Now, the Islamic Republic needed another reason for chaos and crises to continue its mission of creating an Islamic nation. What better choice other than diverting the attention to the most detested nation in the heart of the Arab world, the State of Israel which has been involved in a conflict with the Palestinians for half a century.

When the revolution went sour and its children grew up, the Khomeini’s dream of making Iran a pure form of an Islamic nation collapsed. It simply backfired on the Islamists. The crown jewel of Islam simply did not fit the Persians. It never did and it never will. The vast majority of the population had already written them off, but the regime refuses to leave peacefully. Again, anytime they were on the verge of extinction, they created new or renewed chaos and crises.

In exile in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf, Khomeini published a collection of essays called “An Islamic government” (Velayat-e faqhi). This book had gone completely unnoticed by the general population. Ayatollah Khomeini was a harsh and brutal tyrant. His mission was to purge pre-Islamic vestiges and to create a true Islamic nation, something his heir Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his loyal disciple President Ahmadinejad have been dreaming about it.

With the selection of Mohammad Khatami, (the darling of the West), in August 1997 as the Islamic president, the world and especially the European countries immediately turned to appeasement policy, ignoring all the warning signs by the Iranian patriots and opposition groups. This alone gave the Islamic regime eight more precious years to secretly research and develop their Islamic bomb. The regime has emptied out the wealth of the nation in a hurry to develop tthe nuclear bomb and the missiles to deliver them.

Ironically, history is bound to repeat itself. Once again, the West is looking forward to have (their darling) Khatami back as a “moderate” Islamic Republic president and provide more time to develop nuclear bomb. We must not forget that it was during this Smiling Mullah’s Presidency that the rule of law was flouted blatantly from day one. Thousands of dissident students, intellectuals and journalists were systematically arrested, imprisoned and tortured for the sole crime of speaking up against the repressive rule of the mullahs. Many are still languishing in prisons, some have died, and some have simply vanished with no records of what happened to them.

During this turbaned fascist’s watch, many students’ lives were extinguished for daring to express their opposition to the stone-age regime. Shamelessly, during the July 9, 1999 students’ demonstration, for instance, this man called the Tehran University students “A bunch of hooligans,” while his storm-trooper hooligans, with police support, brutally attacked students in their dormitories throwing some students out of the windows of the dorm’s third floor. Later, he is welcomed at Harvard University to lecture its “hooligans” and faculty on practicing tolerance.

Prisoners of conscience were routinely tortured to extract confessions about the crimes they did not commit. Some of the victims were permanently incapacitated while others died under the brutal torture. Women prisoners were often subjected to even greater indignities than men by being raped before being executed, under the cover of marriage. A prison mullah performed the forced marriage ceremony to make it conform to the Islamic ethos.

Support for terrorism constituted a high priority. It extended not only to the neighboring countries, but also as far away as Latin America. Hezbollah in Lebanon was nurtured with funds, weapons and training. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad were assisted in numerous ways, and a professional army of Shiite Iraqis was trained and armed to be used in the present Iraqi theatre. Separately, Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia thugs — the Mahdi Army — is directly funded, armed and controlled by the present Islamic regime, a gift of the Smiling Mullah to his successor — the rabid Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In his devious attempt to lull the world into a false sense of security, the smiling Mullah floated the notion of “Dialogue of Civilization,” to appear as a man of reason who is willing to reconcile the differences between and among various civilizations through dialogue. This clever ploy was exposed as nothing more than an Islamofascist propaganda tool. In actuality, his side’s dialogue proved to be a diatribe against civilization.

“…to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you.” – President Bush, in the State of the Union Address

For 8 years, President Bush promised the Iranian people that America would support them in their struggle for freedom, but did he? The Iranian people stood up firmly only to be hanged by the Islamic Republic executioners. Can President Obama outdo President Bush’s rhetoric, or does he really believe in his motto “Change – Yes We Can?”

It would be wise and expedient for the community of nations and the newly elected President of the United States to show solidarity with the Iranian people and to implement maximum pressure against the illegitimate body of government calling itself the Islamic Republic of Iran to listen to the will of its citizens. The Islamic Republic hijackers must be forced to bow to the will of the Iranian people or there must be some sort of consequences.

There must not be, however, any compromise, any negotiation or any deals with the Islamists in Iran before making sure that the Iranian people are part of the equation. The era of mass politics, propaganda, nebulous sloganeering and magical solutions are over. It’s a do or die scenario for the Iranian people or perhaps for the people of the world. The Iranian people want nothing less than a complete regime change through the democratic process of a free referendum. We believe it is the surest, safest and the fastest way to achieve a democratic Iran and end the world’s nightmare of nuclear holocaust that is currently facing us all.

By Yaakov Katz , www.JPOST.com

Syria has been conducting extensive construction work on a chemical weapons facility in the country’s northwest, satellite images obtained by the defense analyst group Jane’s reveal.

The images of a chemical weapons facility identified as al-Safir were taken by several commercial sources from 2005 to 2008, the analyst group said.

Imagery obtained by DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-1 satellite shows that extensive construction has taken place at the facility, as well as at an adjacent missile base, the group wrote. In addition, the images showed that the site contained a number of the “defining features of a chemical weapons facility.”

Al-Safir is home to a chemical weapons production facility and a missile base that holds a significant part of Syria’s long-range Scud D ballistic missiles, according to foreign reports. The Scud D has a range of 700 kilometers and al-Safir is reported to have several dozen underground fortified bunkers where the launchers and the missiles are stored.

By David Horovitz, The Jerusalem Post

For all the confusion prompted by the near parity of Kadima and the Likud in Tuesday’s election, and even before final adjustments necessitated by Thursday’s release of soldiers’ votes and the complex surplus-vote distribution, one of the most critical pieces of arithmetic is straightforward.

And it shows that, notwithstanding Kadima’s victory claims and its leader Tzipi Livni’s insistence that the people of Israel have given her their backing, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu can reasonably hope to build a narrow coalition majority with “natural” allies, and she cannot.

This puts Netanyahu firmly in the driving seat on the road to becoming prime minister. And it places Livni — even though she led her party to far greater success than some of its own optimists had anticipated, and thus cemented her leadership hold — in the back seat. He can probably block her; she probably can’t block him.

That is not to say that Netanyahu has a smooth ride ahead. It may yet be eased a little when those last votes are calculated. Precedent suggests that the soldiers’ votes are unlikely to boost the center-left; they might well lift the right, and perhaps Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beiteinu, with its emphasis on a shared burden of national service. And Kadima foolishly signed a surplus-vote agreement with the Green Party, which failed to clear the Knesset threshold, so it has nothing to gain there.

But Netanyahu was speaking from the heart during the election campaign when he said he wanted to head a wide government, with a range of Zionist parties from across the political spectrum. He doesn’t want to have to rely on a narrow coalition, vulnerable to internal pressures and perceived both domestically and abroad as intransigent as regards progress with the Palestinians.

Even forging that narrow coalition will be fraught with complications. As the first meetings of potential coalition allies began on Wednesday, the difficulties of finessing the conflicting demands were manifest.

Chiefly, a narrow Likud-led coalition requires the fierce secularist Lieberman and the Torah-driven Shas to put aside fundamental differences that go to the root of Jewish nationhood.

At the same time, Livni is showing absolutely no sign of being receptive to the notion of a unity partnership with Netanyahu in which Kadima is the junior player; after all, she is claiming to have won the elections. And Ehud Barak — outflanked by the Kadima election strategists who persuaded much of Labor’s voting base to switch to Livni in order to thwart Netanyahu — has already announced that Labor is headed for the opposition.

Despite having lifted the Likud from a dismal 12-seat showing in the 2006 elections, therefore, Netanyahu has good cause to lament the votes lost, especially to Lieberman, in the final stages of this campaign.

The advantage is still with him, but building the framework for a viable coalition will be immensely complicated.

Hence, for a start, the selection of the wise, experienced former justice minister Ya’akov Ne’eman to coordinate his coalition negotiations. Ne’eman, it will be recalled, has particular expertise in seeking common ground amid conflicting approaches to the interface between religion and state — precisely the fraught territory where Shas and Israel Beiteinu will have to be reconciled if Netanyahu is to construct his “blocking” coalition.

By Karin Laub Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — Inconclusive election results sent Israel into political limbo Wednesday with both Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and hard-line leader Benjamin Netanyahu claiming victory and leaving the kingmaker role to a rising political hawk with an anti-Arab platform.

Livni’s Kadima Party won 28 seats, just one more than Netanyahu’s Likud, in Tuesday’s election for the 120-member parliament, according to nearly complete results. With neither party winning a clear majority, neither can govern alone.

The results set the stage for what could be weeks of coalition negotiations. The first began Wednesday, with Netanyahu meeting the head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas faction.

Two of the more likely options would see a hardline government led by Netanyahu, leaving Livni in the opposition, or some form of accommodation between the two in the form of a centrist coalition in which they would share power.

Whatever government is forged, it is unlikely to move quickly toward peace talks with the Palestinians and instead could find itself on a collision course with President Barack Obama, who has said he’s making a Mideast peace deal a priority.

Paralysis could dampen prospects for Egyptian-led attempts to broker a truce between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers after Israel’s devastating offensive in Gaza last month. Hamas might be reluctant to sign a deal at the risk of having it overturned by the incoming coalition.

It’s up to Israeli President Shimon Peres to decide whether Livni or Netanyahu should have the first shot at forming a government. Peres will meet next week with party leaders to hear their recommendations and he expects to assign the task around Feb. 20, presidential spokeswoman Ayelet Frisch said.

However, the final word may be up to ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman, a former Netanyahu protégé and perhaps Israel’s most divisive politician, whose rightist Yisrael Beiteinu gained four seats in the election to hold 15.

Lieberman says he wants to redraw Israel’s borders in order to push out heavily Arab areas and require those who remain to sign a loyalty oath or lose the right to vote or run for office. Some 20 percent of Israel’s 7 million citizens are Arabs, and about a dozen serve in parliament.

Lieberman kept his options open. “We want a right-wing government,” Lieberman told party activists, but added that “we do not rule out anyone.” Livni and Netanyahu staged rival victory rallies early Wednesday.

“With God’s help, I will lead the next government,” Netanyahu told cheering Likud activists.

An hour later, Livni told her supporters that “the people have spoken, and they have chosen Kadima.”

Nearly everyone seemed to agree on one thing after Israel’s fifth election in a decade — that the nation’s fractious election system isn’t working. Livni, Lieberman, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of the Labor Party said in post-election speeches that the system, in which votes are splintered among a proliferation of parties, must be changed to allow more stability.

With all of the civilian votes counted, Kadima won 28 seats, Likud 27, and Yisrael Beiteinu 15. Labor, for decades Israel’s ruling party, won just 13 seats. Overall, right-wing and religious parties won a total of 65 seats, compared to 55 for center-left and Arab parties.

The tally did not include thousands of votes by soldiers, to be counted by Thursday evening. They could shift the final results by a seat or two.

During Netanyahu’s three-year term as prime minister a decade ago, he largely froze the interim peace deals his predecessors negotiated with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu has derided the past year of peace talks under Kadima as a waste of time, and said he wants to focus on reviving the Palestinian economy. He has also called to crush Hamas, the Islamic militant movement that seized the Gaza Strip by force in June 2007, and remove it from power.

Livni has said she would continue peace talks with moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who governs the West Bank. But she also advocates a tough line against Hamas and was one of the architects of Israel’s three-week Gaza war, which ended with a temporary ceasefire on Jan. 18.

Abbas will restart talks only if Israel commits to a settlement freeze, his aides said Tuesday, posing such a condition for the first time.

Netanyahu wants to expand settlements, and even under the outgoing Kadima-led government, in which Livni served as chief negotiator, construction accelerated.

The Palestinians want all of the West Bank for a future state, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem. They say the West Bank settlements, home to nearly 300,000 Jews, will make that impossible.

It was not immediately clear whether the prospect of weeks of political paralysis would lessen chances for a long-term Gaza truce and a prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas.

Under the proposed exchange, Israel would free hundreds of Palestinians for an Israeli soldier held since June 2006 by Hamas-allied militants.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, freed from concerns about political fallout, could approve a deal before the new government is sworn in. A swap is linked to efforts to reach a permanent truce on the Gaza-Israel border. Hamas wants Israel and Egypt to lift their blockades of Gaza, while Israel wants a halt to arms-smuggling into Gaza.

Reuters

An umbrella group of Jewish groups sought assurances recently from French President Nicolas Sarkozy that authorities would do more to stem a rise in anti-Jewish crime, which has increased following the war in the Gaza strip.

Some 100 acts targeting Jews were reported in France since Israel launched Operation Cast Lead against Gaza’s Hamas Islamist rulers in late December, said the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France. “We expressed our worries to the president,” Richard Prasquier, who heads the body, told reporters. “The president assured us of the attention he was giving to these acts. He told us that he would do more to find a solution to this problem.”

The group said aggression against Jews had picked up markedly over the past month compared with 2007, when some 250 acts targeting Jews were recorded.

“These acts are the manifestation of very deeply engrained anti-Semitism in a portion of the population and particularly among the youth in our country,” said Prasquier.

Photo (AP): French synagogue attacked

Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie recently met leaders of France’s Jewish and Muslim communities and security chiefs to deliver a message that the Gaza conflict – which ended in a shaky ceasefire – should not lead to violent acts in France.

In recent years, flare-ups between Israel and the Palestinians have been followed by acts of violence against Jewish people or buildings in France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities.

Earlier in January, attackers launched two cars packed with petrol bombs at a synagogue in France’s southwestern city of Toulouse, causing damage but no casualties.

Zero Hour Approaches

We’ve been counting down to the year that Iran will finally become a nuclear power ever since Iranian dissidents exposed the Iranian nuclear program in 2002. European intelligence estimated it would take Iran until 2012 to achieve this. Israeli intelligence figured late 2007.

Last year’s National Intelligence Estimate completely undercut the Bush administration’s Iran foreign policy when it estimated Iran was still “many years” from being able to build a bomb.

The NIE predicted: “… with moderate confidence that the earliest possible date Iran would be technically capable of producing enough HEU [highly enriched uranium] for a weapon is late 2009, but that is very unlikely.”

Unlikely though it may have been, the International Atomic Energy Agency found that Iran had enriched enough uranium to make its first atomic bomb on Nov. 21, 2008. By now, as it brings new centrifuges online, Tehran may well have enough for a second.

The head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Sergei Kiriyenko, was quoted from the Kremlin on Wednesday confirming the launch of the Bushehr reactor later this year. Iran’s nuclear ambitions are no longer even remotely unclear.

Yet, knowing this, Moscow fully intends to supply Iran with all the nuclear material it needs.

In Gaza, Hamas is claiming victory on the same ground as did Hezbollah in 2006. It survived, and Israel pulled out without meeting all its objectives. Rockets continue to rain down on Israel from Gaza, and Hamas continues to hold Israeli solider Gilad Shalit hostage.

To the north, either out of nervous tension or tactical plan, Hezbollah launched several rockets into Israel. Syrian troops opened fire with small arms on Israeli troops on their side of the border near Sheba Farms. In a couple of days, Israeli voters are likely to return Benjamin Netanyahu to power, which changes the whole equation in the region.

WorldNetDaily reported yesterday of a secret message sent by Netanyahu to Hamas’ top leadership saying that if they don’t stop the rocket attacks against Israel, he will order the IDF to “wipe them out.”

Netanyahu makes three specific promises to voters upon the strength of which he is expected to win. The first is the destruction of Hamas.

The Jerusalem Post quoted Netanyahu speaking from the site of a Grad missile strike in Ashkelon on Monday, saying: “A government under my leadership will overthrow the Hamas rule in Gaza and bring about a cessation of rocket fire,” he said. “The policy of blindness followed in the past years has brought us to this situation.”

The second is the destruction of Hezbollah and Syrian influence over Lebanon. The third promise is left deliberately vague: “Iran will not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons.” Netanyahu doesn’t elaborate on exactly how Israel will prevent it. But notice something curious about that. Not many Israelis want him to.

Taking a step back and looking at the Big Picture, it is hard to miss the fact that events are developing in concert with the ancient prophecies of Scripture.

The Prophet Isaiah foretold the “burden of Damascus” (Isaiah 17:1) in which the prophet predicts the overnight destruction of that great city in the last days: “At evening time, behold there is terror! Before morning they are no more. Such will be the portion of those who plunder us, and the lot of those who pillage us.” (Isaiah 17:14)

The Prophet Ezekiel predicts an alliance between Russia and an Islamic confederacy headed by Iran, or Persia.

Hamas continues to attack Israel with rocket attacks for the sheer joy of the violence of it all. Related to this, the Prophet Obadiah pronounced this verdict against Edom, who is one of the forefathers of the people of Hamas, saying, “Because of violence to your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame, and you will be cut off forever.” Interestingly, the word translated as “violence” in this Scripture is the Hebrew word, chamac, pronounced “hamas.”

Of all the generations in history, it is to this generation that the prophecies of the last days are addressed. Previous generations looked for the signs given by Scripture, but only this generation can truly see them all come together at one time – which is itself a key fulfillment of prophecy.

The Prophet Daniel predicted these conditions: “And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? And he said, ‘Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.’” (Daniel 12:8-9) We are witnessing the “unsealing” of the end-times prophecies.

The same Spirit that inspired the incredible accuracy of the prophets to this point is not likely to suddenly have a misstep. So what does that mean? The Lord of the Universe is getting ready to judge the world. But before that, He will come for His own. Make sure you are one of them.

By Josef Federman, Associated Press

JERUSALEM – The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees suspended aid to the Gaza Strip on Friday, accusing the territory’s Hamas rulers of stealing a delivery of humanitarian supplies for the second time this week.

The announcement by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency deepened tensions between the international body that assists the majority of Gaza’s 1.4 million people and the Islamic group that controls the coastal strip.

The crisis comes at a sensitive time. U.N. officials say Gaza’s needs are especially dire in the wake of Israel‘s military offensive against Hamas, which killed nearly 1,300 people, displaced thousands and caused widespread destruction.

Israel holds parliamentary elections Tuesday. New opinion polls published Friday showed a close race, but predicted the nationalist Likud Party, which advocates an even tougher line against Hamas, would head the next coalition government.

In a statement, UNRWA said it had suspended aid deliveries to Gaza after the Hamas-run Ministry of Social Affairs stole 10 truckloads of flour and rice delivered to Gaza on Thursday. Earlier this week, Hamas police took thousands of blankets and food parcels meant for needy residents.

“Hamas has got to hand back all the aid that they have taken and they have to give credible assurances that this will not happen again. Until this happens, our imports into Gaza will be suspended,” said UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness.

He said the agency, which maintains “working level contacts” with Hamas, had filed a protest with the government. Gunness said UNRWA would continue to distribute aid from its existing supplies in Gaza, but that stocks were running thin.

“There is enough aid for days, not weeks,” he said.

Some 80 percent of Gaza’s 1.4 million people rely on the U.N. agency for food or other support.

In Gaza, Hamas Social Affairs Minister Ahmed al-Kurd dismissed Thursday’s incident as a “misunderstanding” and expressed hope the dispute would soon be resolved.

“We welcome all aid, whether from UNRWA or international organizations,” he said. “Any international organization that wants to help or build in Gaza, we have no conditions, come to Gaza, and we will provide security, safety and calm,” he said.

The spat with Hamas created a challenge for UNRWA, which already has been pressuring Israel to ease its blockade of Gaza’s borders to allow more aid into the area.

Most cargo into Gaza comes through Israeli-controlled crossings. Israel has largely closed the crossings since Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007. Israel fears supplies will reach Hamas, which it considers a terrorist group.

Israel unilaterally halted its devastating Gaza operation, meant to halt years of Hamas rocket attacks, on Jan. 18, and Hamas followed with its own separate announcement that it too would cease fire.

Egypt has been trying to broker a long-term truce. Hamas is demanding that Israel open Gaza’s border crossings as part of any agreement. Israel, in turn, wants a halt to arms smuggling into Gaza, and is seeking the release of a captured soldier held by Hamas for more than two years.

The attempts to negotiate a cease-fire are unfolding in the shadow of Israel’s national election, and the candidates have all been competing over who can take the toughest stand against Hamas.

The final opinion polls before the election predicted a close race, but showed voters clearly prefer hard-line parties.

In a TV interview Friday night, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu said he would seek a broad coalition if he wins, but would turn to “the nationalist camp” — a reference to more hawkish parties — in building a government. “We need a different way,” he told Israel TV.

Netanyahu says no peace agreement with Hamas’ srival, the moderate Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, is possible in the foreseeable future. Instead, he says he will try to jump-start the West Bank economy while continuing Israel’s military occupation indefinitely. He also advocates a tough line against the rival Hamas government in Gaza.

By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Ryan Mauro, the founder of WorldThreats.com. He is currently a national security researcher for the Christian Action Network and a researcher for the Reform Party of Syria. A frequent guest on radio and TV programs, he is the author of Death to America: The Unreported Battle of Iraq. He can be contacted at TDCAnalyst@aol.com.

FP: Ryan Mauro, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Mauro: Thank you Jamie.

FP: We’re here today to discuss “Homegrown Jihad: Terrorist Camps Around U.S.,” the new documentary being released by the Christian Action Network. Tell us about it.

Mauro: This documentary is premiering at Washington D.C.’s Landmark Theater on February 11, at 7:30 PM. It is free to attend and I strongly encourage everyone in the area to come, and those out of the area to go to ChristianAction.org and order a copy. The Christian Action Network (CAN) is a non-profit organization and I personally will not see a penny from the sales. This documentary is simply too important; the threat too severe; and the public too unaware for me to not promote this is any way possible and call myself a patriotic American.

“Homegrown Jihad” documents the networks of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, a terrorist group run by a radical Muslim leader in Lahore, Pakistan named Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, an individual who, as I said in my last interview, does us the favor of not hiding his true colors. While he casts himself as a peace-loving Muslim, his actions and the actions of his network are anything but. In the documentary, we show a secret videotape, one which Gilani strictly instructs his followers to keep hidden, where he personally engages in terrorist training, from killing guards to hijacking vehicles to setting off explosives. On this tape, he says that those seeking to “join one of the most advanced training courses in Islamic military warfare” can contact any of his “Muslims of America” compounds in the United States, almost all of which still operate today.

“Muslims of America” is a group set up by Gilani to act as a thinly-veiled front for Jamaat ul-Fuqra. There are at least 35 “Muslims of America” compounds in the U.S. alone, along with at least 3,000 members, many of which have criminal backgrounds. The websites of these compounds do not hide the fact that they are devoted to, and are led by, Sheikh Gilani. The compound at Red House, Virginia, even has a street named after him. With Gilani saying things like “We are fighting to destroy the enemy. We are dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are in America”, “Jews are an example of human Satans,” and “Act like you are a friend, then kill him”, we need to question the motives and beliefs of those who live in and are educated in his communities and take action to stop them from acting upon these beliefs.

Members of this group continue to be arrested and convicted for involvement in terrorism and all sorts of criminal activity. Members are also required to make a pledge: “I shall always hear and obey, and whenever given the command, I shall readily fight for Allah’s sake.” They continue to recruit members, build and expand compounds, and operate in isolation, away from the eyes of the public.

Perhaps the most riveting part of the documentary is when CAN travels to several of these compounds in an attempt to get members of the group to view the terrorist training videotape and get a reaction. Before joining CAN, I personally visited the 70-acre large headquarters in Hancock, New York. Although the residents were friendly, almost immediately after greeting the man who I spoke to, he said with a disarming smile, “Are you Jewish? It’s clear that the anti-Semitism and overall beliefs of Sheikh Gilani are present at these compounds.

FP: What sort of terrorism has Jamaat ul-Fuqra been involved in?

Mauro: Members of the group have carried out at least 17 firebombings and 10 assassinations, including stabbing a moderate Muslim cleric to death, bombing a power station, killing police officers, and attacks on Hindus. In 1991, five members were involved in a plot to bomb a Hindu temple and an Indian-owned cinema near Toronto; in 1993, one member was involved in the World Trade Center bombing; and five were involved in the massive “Day of Terror” plot aimed at bombing various buildings in New York in 1993.

There have also been various suspected links between Jamaat ul-Fuqra members and terrorist plots since then. It was reported that the Beltway Snipers of 2002 took shelter in one of Gilani’s compounds in Georgia, and it was also reported that the Pakistani government thought that Shiekh Gilani may have funded a plot in 2006 to hijack airliners leaving Great Britain on the way to the U.S. so they could be blown up in mid-air using funds supposedly raised to help earthquake victims in Kashmir.

Let us not also forget that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped on the way to meeting with Sheikh Gilani in Pakistan. Although the government has not charged Gilani with involvement in the murder, Gilani’s website says that Pearl was part of an assassination team sent to kill him, and Gilani maintains that Pearl is still alive, despite the fact that his beheading was videotaped. That’s just one of the various conspiracy theories Gilani espouses, from 9/11 and Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories, to New World Order and Illuminati forces aimed at destroying him and controlling the world, to secret Zionist control of the government media.

The State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism Report has described Jamaat al-Fuqra as a terrorist group that “seeks to purify Islam through violence,” and a 2006 Regional Organized Crime Information Center report limited to law enforcement said that the group’s compounds are similar to “classically structured terrorist cells” and are led by Sheikh Gilani who is “now known as an international terrorist.”

FP: What sort of activity are the groups’ members involved in now? Is there terrorist training still going on?

Mauro: These are closed communities so few people know what really is going on. In 2001, ATF Special Agent Thomas Gallagher said at a bond hearing for an al-Fuqra member that illegally purchased weapons that “individuals from the organization are trained in Hancock, NY, and if they pass the training in Hancock, they are then sent to Pakistan for training in paramilitary and survivalist training by Mr. Gilani. We have information from an informant that one individual did further his training by going to Afghanistan.”

The most recent incident involving a Jamaat al-Fuqra member is the assassination of a police officer by Ramadan Abdullah in 2001, who plead insanity but got a life sentence in 2008. It is important to note that the prosecutor said “This was a very well-aimed and well-timed shot that was fatal to Deputy Erik Telen hitting him directly in the head.” Where did Abdullah receive his training?

Gilani’s compounds have also been extensively engaged in criminal activity, a trend that began when they were founded and continues today. For example, a compound in California was abandoned in 2002 after the leader was arrested after being caught stealing $1.3 million from the government through a charter school. Al-Fuqra members also own security companies, which likely gives them access to weapons. The head of one such company recently had his offices raided for not paying his taxes. Three people from the site at Red House were arrested for making illegal arms purchases as well.

A September 2004 report by the National White Collar Crime Center said that “Members of the Fuqra group have raised money by taking advantage of a variey of social services programs, including worker’s compensation, public health care, welfare, and food stamps programs. Other crimes committed by Fuqra members include the creation and use of false identification cards, birth certificates, and other forged documents…” The report also confirms that Fuqra is recruiting criminals and describes them as “one of the most elusive terrorist groups resident in the U.S.”

One theory is that Gilani is having his followers lay low because the compounds here are now mainly used for recruiting followers, picking out the best to send to Pakistan, and to raise lots of money. Members of these compounds are said to donate stunning amounts of their paychecks or welfare checks to him. This doesn’t change the nature of the threat if this is true; it would still mean that the compounds are part of a radical Islamic network that seeks to use crime and violence to achieve its objectives.

Put the pieces together: A terrorist training video, a radical Islamic leader, many incidents of members engaging in terrorism and an even larger amount engaging in criminal activity, and a clear pattern emerges that this is not a group that should be allowed to operate in the U.S., much less have isolated communities closed off to the outside world.

FP: Does Jamaat ul-Fuqra have any links to Al-Qaeda?

Mauro: This is unknown, but we do know members of the group have associated with Al-Qaeda. The most important evidence is a reported videotape of Sheikh Gilani in Sudan in December 1993 for the Popular Arab Islamic Conference. There have been differing reports as to whether Osama Bin Laden himself attended (which is what most reports indicated) or if representatives of Al-Qaeda were present, but the truth is that Gilani attended a major terrorist conference where Al-Qaeda members were present, as were members of other groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

We also know that Khalid Khawaja, a former pilot for Osama Bin Laden whom he was close friends with, is also extremely close friends with Sheikh Gilani. Having been exposed to both leaders’ followers, Khawaja had this to say: “I am telling you, Osama does not have even one of his followers as committed as Sheik Mubarak Gilani” and “If you push him [Gilani] to that stage, that he has no option but to declare jihad on America, it will blow like a volcano.”

The Asia Times reported that a high-level Al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan, Ghulam Mustafa, had become a part of Gilani’s inner circle and that he had been arrested in Lahore, which is also where Gilani lives. Another common associate is Wadih El-Hage, who worked as a secretary for Bin Laden and was given a life sentence for his involvement in Al-Qaeda’s bombings of embassies in Africa in 1998.

Credible experts certainly have not ruled out the possibility that Al-Qaeda, or a similar group, could team up with Jamaat ul-Fuqra for an attack on the United States. The Center for Policing Terrorism says that ul-Fuqra “may be the best positioned group to launch an attack on the United States, or more likely, help al-Qaeda to do so.”

FP: Why doesn’t the government shut down these compounds?

Mauro: There are a few reasons. The first is that Jamaat ul-Fuqra is not designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the State Department, and the second is that the law enforcement authorities do not have the tools they need to search these compounds yet. Right now, members involved in terrorist and criminal activity are being treated as if they are isolated incidents; rogue followers of an otherwise innocent cult.

Legislation on the state level also needs to be passed to permit the authorities to search these compounds. There is an example of such legislation at CAN’s website here.

Hopefully, this documentary educates the government that purpose behind this group’s very creation is to conduct criminal activity and violence, even if individual members of the ul-Fuqra compounds remain unaware of the network’s purpose as a whole.

FP: Ryan Mauro, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Mauro: My pleasure Jamie.

FP: I’ll reiterate for the readers that this documentary is premiering at Washington D.C.’s Landmark Theater on February 11, at 7:30 PM. It’s free to attend.

By Dudi Cohen and Agence France-Presse

Iran celebrated the 30th anniversary of its Islamic Revolution at a ceremony on January 31, 2009. Various Iranian leaders visited the grave of Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, the leader of the revolution and usurper of the U.S.-backed Shah.

“The revolution is lively and alive after 30 years,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at a ceremony marking the event. “We are still at the beginning of the path and greater changes are ahead. This thunderous revolution will continue until justice is implemented.

Ahmadinejad at famous grave site (Photo: AFP)

“Although the Islamic revolution happened in Iran it is not limited to Iranian borders,” he added. Crowds chanted “Death to America! Death to Israel!” at the ceremony at Khomeini’s mausoleum in southern Tehran also attended by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, government ministers and military commanders.

The ceremony was once again rife with anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment, and various speakers stressed Iran’s support for the Palestinian people. Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said the “Gazans and Hizbullah were able to defeat the army of the Zionist regime because of the effective influence of Iran.”

The revolutionary leader’s grandson Hassan Khomeini said, “Because of Islam we saw victory in Gaza and Lebanon. Iranians are proud because Khomeini was the flag bearer of this Islamic awakening worldwide.”

Hundreds of military personnel, policemen and civilians gathered at the shrine to pay their homage as poets recited Khomeini’s poems and a military police band played traditional songs.

A group from the hardline Basij militia on Friday washed Khomeini’s tomb with rose water – an Iranian custom to honor the dead – and the grave was later strewn with flowers.

Each year, to mark Khomeini’s triumphant return after 15 years in exile, all schools, trains and boats ring their bells at precisely 9:33 am, the moment his plane touched down on February 1, 1979.

The country is holding 10 days of celebrations marking the anniversary of the overthrow of the shah, who ruled Iran for almost four decades but fled just two weeks before Khomeini’s return.