Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has long been sponsoring attacks on western allies in places like Iraq and Yemen. So it came as shock earlier this month to discover that America was considering removing it from the Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTO) list, as negotiators inch closer to a nuclear deal in Vienna.
On Wednesday, there were indications that President Biden might be changing his mind. If so, the timing would be apt, for evidence is emerging that the IRGC is now deeply implicated in terrorism inside Israel – through a well-funded effort to train Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad in recruiting and motivating lone wolf attackers using social media.
This, say Israeli security experts, is now central to a new terror wave expected to peak during Ramadan next month. If their fears are realised, the Be’er Sheva knifings that killed four people on Tuesday may turn out to be just the start of a dark new phase.
“Hamas is trying to mobilise for the next wave of conflict,” Dr Michael Barak, of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, told the JC. “It is portraying itself as the guardian of al-Aqsa and the holy places in Jerusalem, delivering social media messages designed to recruit Arab Israeli citizens with false claims and conspiracy theories claiming Israel is going to build a new, third temple on Temple Mount.
“It’s trying to amplify social ills in Israeli society to intensify hate towards Israelis, using platforms such as TikTok for incitement.”
Telegram, he said, is another terrorist favourite. Here too there has been a recent upsurge of postings, some aimed at Palestinians in the West Bank, urging them to attack Israeli soldiers at borders and checkpoints.
According to terrorism expert Dan Diker, from the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, Hamas and its allies have been “learning at the feet of their paymasters, Iran”.
Israel, he said, had until recently failed to take onboard just how significant social media has become in encouraging terror. “Even now, there is no special unit devoted to monitoring social media postings, and their likely consequences,” he said. “We need one urgently.”
While Israel’s national police has confirmed that the Be’er Sheva knifeman’s social media activity will now figure prominently in their investigation, security sources suggested he was not being closely watched following his release from a four-year jail sentence imposed in 2016 for recruiting for ISIS.
“You must monitor ISIS supporters constantly, not let them go under the radar,” Dr Barak said.
He added that in an upcoming report, he will lay the blame for the terrorists’ sophisticated exploitation of social media firmly on a shadowy Iranian group. Reporting directly to the IRGC and funded by it, it operates in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq – all areas where Iran sponsors proxy terror.
He said that the group – whose Gaza branch was opened by former Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh in 2014 – trains terrorist leaders in social media, both in person and using Zoom.
The group’s website boasts that it “presents a uniform propaganda front among Resistance Axis media outlets members in connection with promoting the Palestinian issue, Jerusalem and the holiness of the al-Aqsa mosque.”
According to Dr Barak, the Iranian group has also trained the Syrian Ba’ath Party and Yemen’s Houthis.
Of course, its effectiveness would be reduced if social media platforms removed inflammatory posts. But of this there is no sign. Dr Barak said that Israel has tried to persuade TikTok to remove content that amounted to incitement – but the Chinese-owned company failed to act.
