Italy crossroads of arms trafficking of the Iranian regime, Tehran’s “gateway” to Europe
It was 2013 when, meeting Emma Bonino in Tehran, Iranian President Rouhani said he saw Italy as Iran's "gateway" to Europe. That sentence went almost unnoticed, albeit years later, and putting the pieces together, you can easily verify how it was to be taken very seriously.
In fact, in recent years, if it is true that on the one hand the Iranian regime has failed to develop official economic-political relations with Italy (thanks to US sanctions), on the other hand it has made our country a crossroads for its illegal trafficking. Only in recent months, a series of facts, also reported in the press, have revealed all the danger of the regime in Tehran for Italy and Europe.
The first, a complaint by the US State Department's anti-terrorism officer, Ambassador Nathan Sales. As will be recalled – after the Beirut explosions – Sales denounced the presence of ammonium nitrate deposits and Hezbollah weapons also in Europe. Among the countries mentioned, also Italy.
Responding to a parliamentary question on the subject, presented by the deputy Giorgo Mulè (Forza Italia), the Deputy Foreign Minister Marina Sereni not only put on paper the Italian unwillingness to include all Hezbollah in the list of terrorist organizations, but also declared vaguely that with regard to the complaints made by Ambassador Sales, "the work of Hezbollah remains carefully and constantly monitored". A vague answer, but above all it does not deny the use by Hezbollah of the Italian territory for subversive and terrorist purposes.
Let's go ahead: to date, no one in the Italian government has deigned to provide explanations regarding the news published on Forbes of the presence of an Italian mini submarine in a port of Venezuela. The issue directly concerns the Iranian regime, because Tehran and Caracas are the same when it comes to arms and drug trafficking. For the record, the submarine sighted in Puerto Cabello was a Vas 525 , designed by the GSE of Trieste and used in the past also by the special department of the Comsubin navy.
Finally, we come to these last days: in two very precise articles, Il Messaggero reported the news of the killing in Formello – near Rome – of an Iranian named Said Ansary Firouz, 68, the son of a former Iranian ambassador to Italy at times of the Shah.
Firouz was officially a vintage car salesman, but at the same time he was an Iranian intelligence agent, engaged in arms trafficking between Rome and Tehran. According to an article published in Il Messaggero by Giuseppe Scarpa, on 23 October, Firouz should have exported drones and war material worth 300 million euros to Tehran. To this end, it had organized meetings with Iranian and Italian representatives between London and Rome, using in particular the Hotel degli Aranci ai Parioli as a meeting place. For Italy, the company that had found Firouz for his illegal trade was the Flytop Santiccioli of Joseph, who was his willingness to send drones in Iran, probably by passing war material from Armenia. Drones, for the record, capable of dropping GBU-44 / Viber Strike bombs. Fortunately, congratulations to them, the ROS of the Carabinieri intervened immediately, blocking the illegal traffic at its root and putting Firouz and 9 other people under investigation.
It should not be forgotten that, in 2010, Hamid Masoumi Nejad, a correspondent of the State TV of the Islamic Republic, was arrested on charges of illegal arms trafficking with Iran, accused of having tried to export dual-use material to his country for war purposes. The investigation was called "Operation Sniper" and was led by the prosecutor Armando Spataro. The news of Masoumi Nejad's arrest was not taken well by Tehran, which decided to officially protest by summoning the then Italian ambassador Bradanini. In 2018, several of the defendants (two Italians and one Iranian) for Operation Sniper were sentenced to 4 years in prison . Evidently the arrests made by the Guardia di Finanza in 2010 were well founded …
In conclusion, these facts show once again how the Iranian regime is a real and concrete danger for Italian national security – and beyond. They also demonstrate how Rouhani's statement – "Italy is Iran's gateway to Europe" – should have been received by Italian political representatives more than as a compliment, as a threat … The appeasement of recent governments towards Tehran has been used by the ayatollahs not to promote peace, but to use (and if it is necessary to strike) the West directly, exploiting the complacency of those in good or bad faith – on this we do not enter – seriously thought that it was possible to establish a "normal diplomatic relationship "With a regime that is the first in the world for financing international terrorism.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/italia-crocevia-dei-traffici-di-armi-del-regime-iraniano-la-porta-di-ingresso-di-teheran-in-europa/ on Mon, 26 Oct 2020 03:44:00 +0000.