Al-Qaeda Planning To Blow Up 5 European Bound Passenger Planes Over Christmas

The U.K. is bracing for terror strikes, and has strong intel that Al-Qaeda is planning to blow up five passenger planes headed to Europe over Christmastime:

The warning comes as Whitehall officials admit that a terror strike on the UK is now "almost inevitable" particularly with British jihadis returning from fighting alongside the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

An airport security source told the Sunday Express: "We've been told that five planes are being targeted in a high profile hit before Christmas. They've been waiting for the big one.

"We have many scares but this one nearly got hand baggage pulled from all airlines. The threat is still alive and real."

The plot, which has been known about for the past two months, is thought to involve Islamists smuggling bombs on to planes bound for major European destinations before Christmas.

They may ban electronics, including cellphones, from carry-on baggage, if the baggage itself is not outright banned.

And there is talk about sleeper cells, many of whom could be white, blue-eyed, blond-haired converts, and middle-class females.

Dr. Leivesley, a former Home Office risk adviser, said that terrorists are now more likely to be "white, blond and blue eyed" who are radicalized in as little as five weeks.

She also claimed that female terrorists were becoming a significant risk, adding: "Crime profiling shows that white, middle class women, who are better than averagely educated, are susceptible to the terrorist narrative.

"They see themselves at the forefront of attempts to change the world and are represent a very dangerous tool for the terrorists.

Britain should really do something about people like hate-preachers and ISIS sympathizers like Anjem Choudary, or that country is headed for major disasters.

Scary times

The rest of the story here.

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.