Senior Hamas leader Khaled Mashal told The New York Times in an interview released on Tuesday that the Biden administration is “practically recognizing Hamas,” the Palestinian terrorist group that rules Gaza.

Mashal was the chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau from 1996 until 2017, when he was replaced by Ismail Haniyeh. He sat down with the Times for an interview in Qatar, where he spoke about how the terrorist organization sees itself as its war with Israel enters its 11th month.

His message was clear: Winning for Hamas means surviving. And it increasingly looks like that will happen.

The post ‘They’re Practically Recognizing Hamas,’ Top Terror Group Official Says of Biden Administration first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Last month, Germany announced that it would deport Mohammed Mofatteh, the former director of Hamburg’s Shi’a Islamic Center, which local authorities had ordered shut down five weeks earlier for propagating extremism, and for its financial links to Hezbollah.

Mofatteh, according to German authorities, was getting direct orders from the Iranian Supreme Leader’s office about radical public messaging on the current war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

Since it banned Hezbollah as a terrorist organization four years ago, Germany has closed six Iranian-linked Islamic Centers and deported some of their officials. In November 2022, Germany expelled the deputy director of the Hamburg Shi’a Islamic Center. In June 2024, the German government ordered the deportation of the director of a Berlin-based center.

Other countries should follow Germany’s approach.

After nearly four decades of virtually unhindered activity, Iranian-backed cultural centers and mosques have proliferated outside the Middle East. They have indoctrinated, radicalized, converted, and mobilized thousands of locals, who, unlike Mofatteh and his colleagues, cannot be deported.

Cases in point: Pro-Iranian centers exist in Italy, Spain, and South Africa. Their directors are, respectively, Italian-born, Spanish-born, and South African-born graduates of Al Mustafa. They peddle pro-Iran and pro-Hezbollah narratives through their centers’ activities.

The main bastions of Iran’s ideological influence beyond its borders are mosques and cultural centers, directly controlled by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, or linked to Al Mustafa International University, an ostensibly academic institution also under Khamenei’s direct control.

The US Department of the Treasury sanctioned Al Mustafa in 2020 for its role in Iran’s propaganda efforts, including support for the training and indoctrination of Shiite militias.

With a budget of more than $100 million a year, directly provided by the Office of the Supreme Leader, Al Mustafa has been able to train tens of thousands of emissaries, who are now deployed overseas to spread the word of Iran’s sponsored Axis of Resistance and recruit locals to the cause of Khomeini’s revolution. Establishing mosques and cultural centers is central to this elaborate, global effort to spread Iran’s revolutionary brand. These institutions pose as places of worship and cultural inquiry. In fact, they are propaganda tools in the ayatollahs’ war against the West.

Beyond Europe, the problem is even more acute. European governments can and should follow Germany’s example, since they rely on robust counter-terrorism legislation and designations of organizations like Hezbollah — albeit, in most cases, just the so-called military wing.

Countries in Latin America and Africa, on the other hand, do not have as strong a legal framework to take similar actions. But Iran’s propaganda networks are very active there.

According to the 2015 annual posture statement of the then-US Southern Command’s leader, General John F. Kelly, Iran had by then established more than 80 centers in the Western Hemisphere. That number has since grown. Moreover, a Middle East Forum 2018 report identified 17 Al Mustafa branches in Africa, alongside dozens of schools and other institutions affiliated with it, and thousands of students and graduates.

Al Mustafa’s propagation model relies on its graduates as force multipliers. Many return to their home countries to open and run new centers, while their alma mater supports their work from regional headquarters headed by Iranian officials. Al Mustafa, for example, has a regional headquarter, headed by its permanent representative, Seyed Mojtaba Hosseini Nejad, in Venezuela and a campus in Johannesburg, run by a South African cleric trained in Iran. Clergy from the various centers routinely meet and coordinate propaganda activities, while emissaries travel to and from Iran regularly.

There are sparse but notable exceptions to the laissez-faire approach of governments that host Iranian centers.

Last April, Brazilian immigration authorities detained Sheikh Ruben Edgardo (aka Suheil) Assaad, a key Iranian propaganda emissary, as he arrived in São Paulo, Brazil, from Doha, Qatar, to attend a Western Hemisphere gathering of Iran and Hezbollah clergy. Brazil’s federal authorities believe Assaad is linked to Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. On that basis, they put Assaad on the next plane to Doha and will no longer grant him entry into the country.

Yet, while Assaad may no longer visit Brazil, there remains a robust cohort of Al Mustafa-trained Shi’a clerics with local citizenship running centers across the region.

Assaad trained many of them, alongside his boss, sheikh Mohsen Rabbani, who is wanted by Argentina’s authorities and Interpol due to his role in the bombing of the AMIA Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires that was destroyed by a suicide car bomb in 1994, leaving 85 people dead and more than 200 wounded.

The problem is even more acute now.

Since October 7, 2023 — when Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis, triggering a new conflict in the region on behalf of its proxy, Iran — Tehran and its proxies have been leveraging their networks overseas, including their cultural and religious centers, to carry out terror attacks, while whipping up a frenzy of anti-Israel hatred in the public sphere.

Last November, Brazilian authorities foiled a Hezbollah plot to target Jewish institutions in Brasilia, the country’s capital. The point man in the plot, a Hezbollah member with both Syrian and Brazilian citizenships who sought to recruit Brazilian nationals with a criminal background, was instrumental in the recent establishment of an Iranian cultural center in Brasilia and was closely connected to both a prominent Shi’a Brazilian convert and key Iran propagandist, and to a Shi’a cleric who works in a São Paulo Shi’a mosque affiliated with Hezbollah.

In August, a Tajikistan national and graduate of Al Mustafa was arrested in Central Asia, where he was allegedly plotting terror attacks. Other plots have also just emerged in France and Germany, where local Iranian proxies followed a similar modus operandi and sought to recruit criminals to carry out terror attacks.

At this critical juncture, governments must do more: Minimizing the risk of terror attacks requires not only foiling active plots but also nipping in the bud efforts to radicalize and incite captive audiences.

Closing these centers, as Germany did; denying entry to Iranian clerical emissaries, as Brazil did; and monitoring the content of sermons and the dissemination of literature and proselytizing material by Iran-affiliated centers, are all urgently required steps that must be undertaken elsewhere by governments to protect their citizens from Iranian-backed terror.

Western governments have routinely undertaken similar actions in the past, when the threat from Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State was most acute. There is no reason they should not do the same with Iran, its proxies, and the elaborate web of cultural and religious institutions they use to spread Iran’s radical extremism.

Wouldn’t it be better to preempt the next attack, rather than have a government’s leaders commit themselves to renewed vigilance while standing in the smoldering ruins of an Iranian-backed strike?

Emanuele Ottolenghi is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington DC-based non-partisan research institution focusing on national security and foreign policy. Follow him on X @eottolenghi

The post Iran Is Using Foreign Islamic Centers to Spread Terror and Hatred; the World Must Close Them first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

More communications devices used by the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah exploded on Wednesday afternoon across the group’s main stronghold in Beirut and in southern Lebanon.

Lebanon’s health ministry said at least nine people were killed and 300 were wounded in the latest series of device explosions as Hezbollah, which wields significant political and military influence across Lebanon, was thrown into disarray for the second day in a row.

The attack began on Tuesday, when thousands of Hezbollah members were seriously wounded when the pagers they use to communicate exploded. At least 12 people were killed, and more than 2,800 were wounded in the initial round of blasts.

Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani was among those injured by the pager explosions and reportedly lost an eye.

Then on Wednesday, hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated. According to eyewitness reports, at least one of the blasts took place during the funerals for some of the terrorists killed the prior day in the first wave of explosions.

Videos shared on social media showed scenes of chaos across Lebanon on both days, with hospitals overflowing with victims and some explosions reportedly taking place in apartments and houses.

A source close to Hezbollah, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that the pagers from Tuesday’s detonations were “sabotaged at the source” before being imported by Hezbollah. Meanwhile, one Hezbollah official told Reuters that the explosions marked the “biggest security breach” in the terrorist group’s history.

The hand-held radios were reportedly purchased by Hezbollah five months ago, around the same time that the pagers were bought.

Hezbollah members in the southern suburbs of Beirut were seen on Wednesday “frantically taking out the batteries of any walkie-talkies on them that had not exploded, tossing the parts in metal barrels around them,” Reuters reported.

The walkie-talkies were said to be part of Hezbollah’s emergency communications systems for use during a conflict with Israel, which borders southern Lebanon.

A Hezbollah official told Reuters that as the attack began, the terrorist group raised its level of military readiness in case it was the beginning of a bigger Israeli offensive by Israel. Meanwhile, Hezbollah leaders, who did not carry the devices, turned to the group’s internal phone network to find out what was happening.

Experts and several media outlets have said that Israeli intelligence was behind the explosions with a sophisticated, long planned operation, although Israel has neither publicly confirmed nor denied responsibility.

“The goal was to convince Hezbollah that it is in its interest to disconnect itself from Hamas and cut a separate deal for ending the fighting with Israel regardless of a ceasefire in Gaza,” an anonymous source told Axios.

Dr. Eyal Pinko, an Israeli cyber and national security expert, similarly said the operation served as a message to Hezbollah, showcasing vulnerabilities in its security apparatus and serving as a form of deterrence.

“It’s saying that, ‘you’re already being penetrated. We know where you are and what you do. Now look what we can do: In one single shot, in less than a second, we can eliminate almost 3,000 terror operatives,’” Pinko said during a briefing with reporters on Tuesday evening.

Despite Israel’s silence on the explosions, senior Lebanese officials have blame the Jewish state. So too has Hezbollah, which said Israel would receive “its fair punishment.”

The Iran-backed terrorist group, which seeks Israel’s destruction, said on Wednesday it had attacked Israeli artillery positions with rockets.

Hezbollah has fired barrages of rockets, missiles, and drones at northern Israel almost daily following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists on the Jewish state’s southern region. Since then, both sides have been exchanging fire constantly while avoiding a major escalation as war rages in Gaza to the south.

About 80,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate their homes in northern Israel and flee to other parts of the country amid the unrelenting attacks from Hezbollah.

Israeli leaders have said they seek a diplomatic resolution to the conflict with Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon but are prepared to use large-scale military force if needed to ensure all citizens can safely return to their homes.

On Monday night, Israel’s security cabinet expanded its war goals to include returning the displaced Israelis from the north.

According to some reports, the explosions occurred this week because Israel feared Hezbollah was becoming suspicious and would discover the secret operation.

The post More Hezbollah Communications Devices Detonate Across Lebanon as Terror Group Thrown Into Disarray first appeared on Algemeiner.com.