The Secret War with Iran by Ronen Bergman

Author:Ronen Bergman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2007-02-19T05:00:00+00:00

Iran may also have engaged in some “counterfeiting proliferation.” According to information gathered by the Secret Service and the CIA between 1999 and 2007, Tehran shared its secrets with Kim Jong II’s regime, and apparently even sent to North Korea one of the intaglio printing presses which the United States had given to the Shah. The North Koreans have been in dire need of cash due to international sanctions. Joint research by both Iran and North Korea has apparently enabled them to come up with a new super-bill, very like the new hundred-dollar bill that the Americans had begun to distribute. The similarity was not as close as that of PN-14342 but could nevertheless pass the scrutiny of most of the banks in the world. Counterfeiters and law enforcement engage in a constant arms race. The counterfeiting is improving constantly. Iran’s benefit from the alliance with North Korea is threefold: Iran needs Pyongyang’s missile technology very badly; Iran received some of the counterfeit bills of the new manufacturing line; and it was able to make use of an enormous distribution network for its own bills through the gambling industry and drug traffic at the disposal of North Korea.

For Hizballah, counterfeit bills are a lifeline. On August 17, 2006, three days after the end of Israel’s Second Lebanon War, Hizballah started working at full steam to reconstruct its status in Lebanon. As part of the war for public opinion, the organization handed out packages of $12,000 to every family whose home had been destroyed by the Israeli military’s bombardments of South Beirut and the villages of southern Lebanon. In Beirut alone, some 15,000 homes were destroyed. Hizballah made sure that its generosity received wide media coverage. But there was one question unanswered: Where did they get the $200 million to finance the operation? Israeli intelligence and the National Security Agency are convinced that the source was the intaglio printing presses where the super-bills are manufactured.

As 2007 was drawing to a close, the United States seemed to be taking a tougher line against Hizballah and Iran. There was talk of officially designating the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group. By contrast, the European Union still had not listed even Hizballah as such. Some European states with contingents serving with the UN forces in Lebanon were apprehensive about retaliatory attacks on their troops if Hizballah were added to the black list. (France seems to have undergone a certain change of heart since the 2007 election of Nicolas Sarkozy, who has called Hizballah “a terrorist organization,” while his foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, also expressed a more militant stance against the Lebanese militia’s patrons when he said, “We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war,” in remarks about dealing with Iran’s nuclear program.)

Furthermore, Germany’s intelligence services estimated in February 2007 that there were over a thousand Hizballah supporters living in Germany. Many of them were inactive, or active only in fund-raising—yet there may be many who could be called upon for more sinister purposes.

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