Iran used the cover of the Iranian Red Crescent to smuggle intelligence agents
and missiles into Lebanon during the Second Lebanon War, according to a leaked
US Embassy cable published on Sunday by WikiLeaks.
Dated October 2008,
the cable, which originated in Dubai, was based on a meeting between a US
diplomat and an unnamed source. According to the cable, the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards Corps smuggled officers into Lebanon during the 2006 war
with Hizbullah under the guise of Red Crescent officials.
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said, according to the cable, that medical supplies had been used to facilitate
weapons shipments.
“He [the source] said that [the] Iranian Red Crescent
had seen missiles in the planes destined for Lebanon when delivering medical
supplies to the plane. The plane was allegedly ‘half full’ prior to the arrival
of any medical supplies,” the cable read.
According to the cable, after
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in 2005, Iranian Red Crescent
workers had to undergo a counterintelligence course before being accepted to the
agency.
Ahmadinejad also switched the agency’s leadership with officials
from the Revolutionary Guards, with the cable claiming that as a result the
Iranian Red Crescent was now considered an agency of the Guards.