Iranian Ex-CIA- Sleeper Cells In The U.S.

According to "Reza Khalili", Iranian ex-spy for the CIA, there are sleeper cells living in the U.S., ready for jihad and dying to kill him and his family.

Did anyone really doubt that possibility?

Nonetheless it's an interesting story.

His disguise consists of a blue surgeon's mask, sunglasses and a baseball cap that reads "Free Iran." A small modulator distorts his voice. He uses a pseudonym, Reza Kahlili.

He lives in fear, he says, because his years as a paid spy for the CIA inside Iran have made him an assassination target of Iran's government. He worries about his wife and children, who live with him in California.

At the same time, implausibly, he has become one of the most influential and outspoken voices in the U.S. advocating the overthrow of the Iranian government.

For the last two years, Kahlili has gone semipublic with a memoir, a blog, op-ed pieces and invitation-only speeches at think tanks. He warns that Iran operates terrorist sleeper cells inside the United States and is determined to build nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. The U.S. should respond, he argues, by supporting the opposition inside Iran.

[snip]

Kahlili says Iranian terrorist cells inside the U.S. have weapons, explosives, money and safe houses; they use contacts with Mexican and Latin American drug cartels to smuggle explosives and weapons into the U.S.

"They have very detailed information about sensitive sites such as bridges, railroads, airports, military bases, power plants, nuclear sites, water plants, railway stations," he says.

If the U.S. or Israel attacked Iran, he says, sleeper cells inside the U.S. would launch suicide bombings and sabotage. Iran would attack Israel, and U.S. bases in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, he warns.

Kahlili says Iran has intelligence agents inside American universities, Islamic cultural centers and charitable institutions, posing as academics, policy experts and officers of nonprofits. They try to influence policymakers to encourage negotiations in order to give Iran time to develop nuclear weapons.

Kahlili says the Iranian leadership is motivated by Mahdism, the messianic belief that the 12th imam of Shiism, the Mahdi, will one day reappear to establish universal Islam. The trigger is the destruction of Israel.

Sanctions against Iran won't work, Kahlili argues. "It's not about the economy. It's about ideology," he says.

Read the whole L.A. Times story here.