Tag: Massacre

US faces 'inevitable' ISIS attacks at home following Moscow massacre: retired general

The former head of U.S. Central Command warned Sunday that the Islamic terror group ISIS has a “strong desire” to attack the U.S. and other foreign powers, a threat he suspects is growing.

Retired Gen. Frank McKenzie told ABC News’ “This Week” that U.S. officials should “believe them when they say that.”

“I think the threat is growing,” McKenzie said, noting threats from ISIS-K after the group took responsibility for a deadly attack in Moscow, Russia, last month that killed more than 140 people. The terror group also claimed responsibility for a mass bombing in Iran in January.

“It began to grow as soon as we left Afghanistan, it took pressure off ISIS-K,” McKenzie said, referring to the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from the country in 2021. “So I think we should expect further attempts of this nature against the United States as well as our partners and other nations abroad. I think this is inevitable.”

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McKenzie, who commanded U.S. forces in the Middle East, including the withdrawal from Afghanistan, said the U.S. holds a large enough military presence in Iraq and Syria to combat extremists in the region.

The retired general maintains that the U.S. should have kept a small troop presence in Afghanistan amid the exit instead of completely pulling out and ending the longest war in U.S. history.

President Biden previously claimed there would be an “over-the-horizon capability” to “act quickly and decisively” in Afghanistan, even with troops no longer stationed in the region.

McKenzie said the U.S. now has “almost no ability to see into that country and almost no ability to strike into that country,” which he says benefits ISIS and other terror groups.

“If you can keep pressure on them … in their homeland and their base, it makes it hard for them to conduct these types of attacks,” he said. “Unfortunately, we no longer place that pressure on them, so they’re free to gain strength, they’re free to plan, they’re free to coordinate.”

McKenzie said he believes “things would be different” and “we might actually be safer than we are” if the U.S. and its allies kept a small presence in Afghanistan, prolonging military involvement in the region.

The deadly attack in Moscow on March 22 highlights the threat of terror groups being able to regroup and plan large-scale operations, McKenzie said.

Despite the dangers, these efforts by the terror groups are more easily detectable, McKenzie said. The U.S. said it alerted the Kremlin to a possible terror plot weeks before that attack happened.

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“I think there was probably good opportunity for the Russians to have averted this attack had they actually listened to the material that was presented to them,” McKenzie said.

The suspects in the Moscow attack opened fire in one of the largest shopping and entertainment complexes in Russia before a fire broke out in the complex, according to the Russian Foreign Security Service.

A U.S. counter-terrorism official told the New York Post that ISIS-K terrorists could cross through the U.S. borders and carry out an attack similar to the one in Moscow. The official said ISIS is growing “bolder” and that its members may attempt to take advantage of the chaos at the southern border and seek out a “bigger” target.

“An attack on US soil is definitely a possibility,” the official said. “It would certainly send a message.”

McKenzie’s comments on Sunday also come after European leaders warned about the prospect of war.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called on European nations to step up investment in their defense, arguing that the continent is not ready for the current “prewar era.”

“I don’t want to scare anyone, but war is no longer a concept from the past,” he said in a recent interview with European newspapers before pointing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “It’s real, and it started over two years ago.”

And in January, Swedish defense officials warned about potential war as the nation was close to joining NATO, which has officially happened.

“For a nation for whom peace has been a pleasant companion for almost 210 years, the idea that it is an immovable constant is conveniently close at hand,” Swedish Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said at the time at Folk och Försvars, or “Society and Defense,” annual national conference in Sälen.

“But taking comfort in this conclusion has become more dangerous than it has been for a very long time,” he said. “Many have said it before me, but let me do so in an official capacity, more plainly and with naked clarity: There could be war in Sweden.”

Iran's arch-terrorist was architect of Hamas massacre of 1,300 people: report

The Iranian’s regime organized plan to aid Hamas in its massacre of 1,300 people, including 27 Americans, was front-and-center in the thinking of the dictator who rules over Iran, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to claims in a new think tank report.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) recently published a shocking report, noting the Islamic Republic leader “Khamenei Hinted In August 2022, August 2023 At ‘The Complete Conquest’ Of Israel.” 

According to a MEMRI translation from Khamenei’s propaganda outlet, Kayhan, the plan of mass murder was engineered by the late Iranian global terrorist Qassem Soleimani in 2020. The U.S. military assassinated Soleimani in early January 2020 for his overseeing the killing of over 600 American military personnel.

Kayhan wrote, according to the translation, that in August 2023 “The significance is that, last year, the Leader [Khamenei] gave ‘the promise of the imminent conquest,’ and this year he gave ‘the announcement of the complete conquest,’ and Operation Al-Aqsa Flood is part of this imminent conquest. This promise and announcement, along with the clarity and power of [Khamenei’s] statements and positions in his meeting [with leaders and ambassadors of Islamic countries] on the occasion of the Prophet [Muhammad’s] birthday, have profound significance and content.”

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When asked about the MEMRI report, a U.S. State Department spokesperson referred Fox News Digital to a media interview with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

America’s top diplomat said, “Iran has had a long relationship with Hamas, and Hamas wouldn’t be Hamas without the support that it’s gotten over many years from Iran. Having said that, when it comes to this specific attack, right now, as we speak, we haven’t seen direct evidence that Iran participated in or helped plan the attack. That doesn’t mean that it didn’t; we just don’t have the evidence to show it. And as I said, there’s a long relationship between the two.”

Hamas’ statements conform to the MEMRI Iran report that the planning of the massacre goes back several years. “In the past couple of years, Hamas has adopted a ‘rational’ approach. It did not go into any war and did not join the Islamic Jihad in its recent battle,” senior Hamas official Ali Baraka said in an interview that aired on Russia Today TV on Oct. 8. MEMRI located and translated the Baraka report.

The U.S. has designated Hamas a foreign terrorist organization. Iran’s theocratic state has been designated the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism, according to the U.S. State Department.

Lior Haiat, the spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, told Fox News Digital on the first day of the war last week, “Those terror organizations [Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad] are working as proxies of the Ayatollah regime,” in Iran. Haiat added that Tehran is “without a doubt… behind the scenes” of this war against Israel. 

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MEMRI’s staff of Persian and Arabic language experts scour the media in the Muslim world for trends and indications of possible terrorist attacks. The president and founder of MEMRI, Yigal Carmon, is a retired Israel Defense Forces colonel who served as a counterterrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers. Fox News Digital reported last week that Carmon predicted the outbreak of the war in an Aug. 31 article titled “Signs of Possible War in September-October.”

In the preamble to its infamous 1998 Hamas Covenant, the Islamist terrorist movement laid out its principal goal: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

Hamas declares in article 7 of its manifesto, “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’”

A prescient MEMRI article from May, 2018, headlined its article: “The ‘Great Return March’ Campaign: An Initiative Sponsored By Hamas, Whose Goal Was To Breach The Border Fence, Penetrate Israeli Territory.” 

MEMRI wrote at the time, “An examination of statements coming out of Gaza about the ‘Great Return March’ campaign, by Hamas officials, by campaign organizers, and by participants and supporters of the campaign, reveal that it was not merely a popular civilian campaign but was fully supported by Hamas, and that its goal was to breach the border fence in order to penetrate Israeli territory and march on Israeli communities.”

The MEMRI investigation added “Reports mentioned that special units had been established for the purpose of penetrating Israeli territory, such as the Fence-Cutting Unit and the Border-Storming Unit. Although the campaign organizers stressed that the marches would be peaceful, some Gazan social media users called to fight the ‘infidels’ in these communities and to murder them.”

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A deadly Act 2 of the Hamas’s so-called “Great Return March” to conquer Israel would unfold five years later in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Numerous Fox News Digital press queries to Iran’s Foreign Ministry and U.N. mission were not answered.