On April 3, 2024, a group of mujahideen from the Caucasus affiliated with Syrian jihadi group Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), released a nine-and-a-half-minute video in Russian.
Abu Maria Al-Qahtani was the founder of Al-Nusra Front, one of the key groups in Syria’s war, and was killed in bombing on Thursday.
As a leading military commander in the revolt against the Syrian regime and Islamic State group, Abu Maria Al-Qahtani, who was killed on Thursday, was a divisive figure within the Islamist wing of the insurgency.
The Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow claimed by the Islamic State (IS) was the deadliest in Russia in two decades, leaving at least 143 dead and almost 200 injured. In its immediate aftermath, several analysts and commentators questioned if the Islamic State had made a bloody comeback.
At the peak of the group’s power, the Islamic State held large swathes of captured territory in Syria and Iraq equal in size to the United Kingdom under its control. It declared its self-styled caliphate in June 2014 and held territory until March 2019.
Since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 terror attack, and against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, which has been ongoing for six months, Jordan has seen a surge in popular support for Hamas and hostility towards Israel, which are expressed in many anti-Israel demonstrations and in explicit calls to confront it and wage jihad against it.[1]
Terror organization: Houthis
Status: Financier
Role: He is running a network (companies in the Middle East, Asia and Africa) generates tens of millions of dollars in revenue from the sale of Iranian commodities, Iranian petroleum, a significant portion of which is then directed through a complex network of intermediaries and exchange houses in multiple countries to the Houthis in Yemen.
Introduction
In recent days, the grand Iranian plan is emerging – the plan with which the Islamic revolutionary regime is continuing despite the killing, in Israeli air strikes, the senior command of its IRGC Qods Force in Syria and Lebanon. The upcoming stage of this plan involves bringing down the regime in Jordan, attacking Israel from the east while Israel is kept busy by Iran-backed resistance forces in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza. The political aim of this plan is to thwart the Saudi-American project of normalization with Israel.
Terror organization: Hezbollah
Status: Commander of the Foreign Relations unit in Latin America (He is in Brazil, Khalil Rizk is now in Lebanon).
Role: Known as the highest representative of Hezbollah in South America, a role he allegedly undertook at the request of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. Wehbe relays information and instructions between Hezbollah’s leadership in Lebanon and Hezbollah operatives in South America. Additionally, Wehbe has also fundraised for Hezbollah and conveyed funds from Brazil to the terrorist group in Lebanon. He has also overseen Hezbollah’s counterintelligence activities in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. He is designated by the US.
Operation Trapiche revealed the shadow of Iran behind the failed Hezbollah plot in Brazil. According to Brazilian Federal Police documents exclusively obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), the two masterminds wanted by Interpol, Mohamad Khir Abdulmajid, a naturalized Syrian-Brazilian, and Haissam Houssim Diab, a Lebanese national, had strong connections to the Islamic Beneficent Cultural Center of Brasilia (CCBIB). This Shiite center has been funded by Iran since 2019.
The “February deadline” set by Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for the Syrian regime forces’ withdrawal from the territory that Turkey says is part of the Idlib de-escalation zone (meaning behind Turkey’s observation posts) in north-western Syria has timed out. Thus, the end-of-February deadline has opened doors to new possible scenarios and questions in the area.
The Iranian presence in Syria has always been a source of concern at a regional level, for Arab countries on the one hand, and for Israel on the other. If the partial Arab severance of relations with al-Assad has pushed the issue of Iranian presence off the negotiation table, this does not reflect a resignation to Tehran’s influence in Damascus, contrary to the vision presented by the Syrian regime president, Bashar al-Assad, in March 2023 (before returning to the Arab League).