Iran continues to fund, arm terror groups on Israel’s borders
Iranian hornet’s nest of terror groups surround Israel amid calls for new US sanctions
New report says Iran continues to fund, arm terror groups on Israel’s borders
A new think tank report reveals the U.S. has declined to designate a number of Iranian-backed entities as terrorist organizations, despite President Biden’s pledge to Israel President Isaac Herzog on Tuesday that America is “ironclad” about maintaining the security of the Jewish state.
In recent weeks, Israel deployed nearly 2,000 troops to root out Palestinian terrorists backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, according to Brig. Gen. (ret.) Amir Avivi, former deputy commander of the Israel Defense Forces’ Gaza Division.
As Avivi told Fox News Digital, “Iran has made clear for the last year and a half that its main objective is to make Samaria another Gaza.” Samaria is biblical Hebrew for a part of the West Bank. In Israel, the entire West Bank is also known as Judea and Samaria.
As CEO of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, Avivi said that Iran “is pouring money and smuggling weapons into the region. They are supporting Hamas and PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] and other factions within the Palestinian Authority.”
Israel has been repeatedly obliterated by Iran’s clerical state. Under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the U.S. government classified Iran as the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism.
According to the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), there are 19 Iranian regime-supported entities targeting Israel and U.S. interests that have not been outlawed.
Iranian regimes have built a network of armed groups on Israel’s borders to foment terrorism and create instability for over four decades, according to the FDD report. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Quds Force (IRGC-QF) provides funding, training, and weapons to Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations.”
Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the IRGC are classified as terrorist entities by the U.S. government, but the following Iranian regime-backed groups are not included in the FTO list: Abd Al-Qadir Al-Husseini Brigades, Badr Organization, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Lions’ Den, Liwa Al-Quds, and Popular Resistance Committees.
“We do not comment on deliberations or potential deliberations related to terrorist designations,” a State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital. There is destabilization in the Middle East due to Iran’s support and partnership with terrorist groups throughout the region. In order to counter Iran’s destabilizing influence in the region and around the world, the United States is committed.”
According to FDD’s report titled “Iran and its Network of Nineteen Terrorist Organizations on Israel’s Borders,” all of these groups meet U.S. terrorist designation criteria, so “we are trying to shed light on that so that they can be sanctioned.”
It has been “monitoring the buildup of Iranian-backed terrorist groups in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria,” according to FDD’s Long War Journal, run by the military expert Bill Roggio. According to the report, Israel has attempted to limit the growth of these terrorist organizations, but they continue to pose a significant threat on multiple fronts.
Truzman, who presented the report as a visual with the symbols of the jihadi and terrorist organizations and their commanders, said, “Hezbollah is the most dangerous one” because it is the “big one” and Hamas follows, which controls the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah bombed U.S. military barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 243 Marines and 58 French paratroopers. Hezbollah operative Ali Musa Daqduq played a key role in killing five American soldiers in Karbala, Iraq, in 2007.