
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to flee Lebanon days before he was killed in an Israeli strike and is now deeply worried about Israeli infiltration of senior government ranks in Tehran, according to the Reuters news agency. The report cited three Iranian sources.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Hezbollah’s booby-trapped pagers on September 17, it is understood that Khamenei sent a message with an envoy to beseech the Hezbollah secretary general to leave for Iran, citing intelligence reports that suggested Israel had operatives within Hezbollah and was planning to kill him.
The messenger, the official says, was a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan, who was with Nasrallah in his bunker when it was hit by Israeli bombs and shared his fate.
Khamenei, who’s been in hiding since Saturday, personally ordered a barrage of around 200 missiles to be fired at Israel on Tuesday, a senior Iranian official says.
Nasrallah’s death has prompted Iranian authorities to thoroughly investigate possible infiltrations within Iran’s own ranks, from the powerful Revolutionary Guards to senior security officials, the report cites another senior Iranian official as saying. They are especially focused on those who travel abroad or have relatives living outside Iran, the first official said.
Tehran grew suspicious of certain members of the Guards who had been traveling to Lebanon, he says. Concerns were raised when one of these individuals began asking about Nasrallah’s whereabouts, particularly inquiring about how long he would remain in specific locations. The individual has been arrested along with several others after alarm was raised in Iran’s intelligence circles.
It appears that the assassination has spread mistrust between Tehran and Hezbollah, and within Hezbollah.
“The trust that held everything together has disappeared,” the official says.
The Supreme Leader “no longer trusts anyone,” says a third source who is close to Iran’s establishment.
Nikolay Remizov and Alessandro Mattina, students at Saint Louis University, are facing disciplinary action from their school for displaying a 9/11 memorial on campus that happened to mention Israel.
Remizov, a senior originally from Russia, set up the display with permission from the administration. It involved an array of American flags, and a banner showing the 9/11 Memorial in New York, as well as the 9/11 Memorial in Israel.
“Everything was approved,” Remizov told Breitbart News.
“We got 3,000 flags to demonstrate respect to each lost life … We had a banner, and this banner had an American flag and it had an Israeli flag, and it showed the 9/11 Memorial in New York, and the only 9/11 memorial outside the United States is in Israel, so we showed it.”
The 9/11 Memorial in Israel, the only such memorial outside the United States. (US Embassy Jerusalem)
There was no other political intent, he said.
“There was nothing about Israel and the Palestinians. It was just about the 9/11 Memorial, and an American and Israeli flag. … Nothing about Palestine, and Gaza, et cetera.”
Nonetheless, anti-Israel students apparently reported the 9/11 memorial to the administration. The student newspaper also published an anti-Israel op-ed that put the word “Israel” in quotes, as if to deny the legitimacy of the state, and used profanity in the course of accusing Israel of “genocide” in Gaza.
The op-ed author objected to a phrase on the 9/11 banner: “Tolerance over Terrorism.”
Remizov and Mattina decided to remove the banner, but started receiving warnings from the Saint Louis University administration.
An email landed in Remizov’s inbox accusing him of having violated the university’s rules, without explanation.
On calling the author of the email, Remizov was told that the display violated a rule against touching the physical infrastructure of the university. He approached a lawyer, who found there was no such rule.
As discussions with the administration continued, the explanation about what rules the display had violated kept changing.
He and Mattina ended up receiving a warning that will, he says, be reflected in their permanent academic records.
“You want to cry, but at the same moment, you want to laugh,” he says.
“People are starting to forget what terrorism is, that our nation was under attack and that 3,000 people died that day.”
“Everybody is shocked that the university decided to punish us for a 9/11 Memorial.
“It’s just crazy.”