WND Claims Iranian Missiles “Aimed at Tel Aviv… With Biological Warheads”

From Reza Kahlili at WND :

Iran has 170 ballistic missiles aimed at Tel Aviv, many with biological warheads, WND has learned.

According to a source who served in Iran’s Intelligence Ministry and who recently defected, the Islamic regime has 170 missiles targeted at Tel Aviv from underground silos, some of which are armed with biological warheads.

…As reported in the Washington Times in August, a commentary in Mashregh, the media outlet of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, confirmed that the Islamic regime not only has weapons of mass destruction but has armed its terrorist proxies with them, including Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. The commentary warned Israel that if the fighting in Syria does not stop, an all-out attack on the Jewish state will be launched and that at zero hour, Tel Aviv will be the first city to be destroyed.

Note that “as reported in the Washington Times” is actually a self-citation. I discussed Kahlili in July: apparently he worked as some kind of informant for the CIA in Iran in 1980s, although his claim to have infiltrated the Revolutionary Guards is regarded with scepticism by security experts.

Kahlili purports to have continuing access to privileged information about Iran that no-one else can verify or even assess, and this has provided the basis for a stream of highly dramatic claims over the past few months, all published at WND.  In April, a “source in the Revolutionary Guards” told him about Iranian “terror cells” in the USA; the following month, a former officer “who defected to a country in Europe” warned that “the Guards’ intelligence office also runs operations out of mosques and Islamic centers around the world”; in July “a former Revolutionary Guards official who has now defected to a country in Europe said that Iran has other secret nuclear sites not known by the West where scientists are working on the nuclear bomb project.”

On one occasion in he provided a link to an external site in Persian which contained an interview with a “former Iranian official”, but other than that we just have to take his word for it all (that article, also from July, was entitled “40,000 Iran Agents in Western Hemisphere”, although the url suggests it was originally called “Army of Iranian Sadists Poised for US Invasion”).

So, does Kahlili have access to stream of defectors with new intelligence information? That seems highly unlikely – but if all his information is coming from someone who defected in April or May (at the very latest), why is it all coming out piecemeal, month after month? And why is the supposed source publishing his revelations via a fringe-right website known primary for promoting conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s birth and citizenship?

Kahlili’s August Washington Times piece was at least based on a published source:

Israel will be obliterated by chemical, microbial and nuclear bombs, Iran is warning, but those weapons of mass destruction will be used first on Tel Aviv by Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad at the start of a decades-old Muslim dream of destroying the Jewish state.

An alarming commentary last week in Mashregh, the media outlet of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, confirmed that the Islamic regime not only has WMDs but has armed its terrorist proxies with them. Mashregh speaks for the regime.

No reference is given, although I was able to trace the source back to here. The article is tricky to interpret for those of us confined to Google Translate, but it’s clearly belligerent and sanguinary. Here’s the automatic translation for the relevant passages (I’ve avoided tidying it up, in case I accidentally introduce distortions):

…Armed groups armed with weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological and nuclear) that have been able to get them through the black market, and certainly will be aimed at Tel Aviv.

…However, although the stated goals of Zionist alliance, allied forces quickly sought to dominate Syria’s chemical arsenal will claim. But who can guarantee that this group of countries listed above have not already equipped with weapons., Or weapons of mass destruction have been traded on the Tel Aviv after the Soviet collapse in a failed.

Certainly, the screed is hateful, and, given official censorship in Iran, it also reflects on the country’s government. But it hardly amounts to being an intelligence source.

Mashregh News also came to wider attention in September, when it published a piece claiming that homosexuality is a Jewish conspiracy. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, who, although a polemicist, has scholarly expertise on Iran, describes the agency as having “close ties to the Revolutionary Guard”.