Iran's secret weapons-smuggling air routes to Lebanon revealed by intel sources

An Iranian civil aviation company is suspected of smuggling arms into Lebanon, destined for the militant group Hezbollah and Iranian weapons factories – and western intelligence sources said Monday they've uncovered the unexpected routes that Iran apparently took to try avoiding detection. The sources identified two rare and unusual Qeshm Fars Air flights from Tehran to the international airport in Beirut during the past two months. The first flight, on July 9, involved a Boeing 747 that departed from an air force base in Tehran, stopped for a short layover at the international airport in Damascus, Syria, and then continued with a rather “uncharacteristic flight path” to the Beirut international airport, where it landed shortly after 4 p.m. local time.

According to flight data obtained by Fox News, the route passed over northern Lebanon, not following any commonly used flight path. A regional intelligence source who asked to remain anonymous said: “The Iranians are trying to come up with new ways and routes to smuggle weapons from Iran to its allies in the Middle East, testing and defying the West’s abilities to track them down.” Western intelligence sources said the airplane carried components for manufacturing precise weapons in Iranian factories inside Lebanon. The U.S. and Israel, as well as other western intelligence agencies, have supplied evidence that Iran has operated weapons factories in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Last week, citing Iranian, Iraqi and Western sources, the Reuters news agency reported that Iran had transferred short-range ballistic missiles to its Shiite allies inside Iraq in recent months. Tehran and Baghdad formally denied that report.

The second flight was conducted on August 2. Flight number QFZ9960 landed in Beirut at 5:59 pm, after departing Tehran's international airport two and a half hours earlier. This time, the plane did not stop in Damascus, but it followed a slightly irregular route north of Syria. Qeshm Fars Air is considered one of the various pseudo-civilian airlines used for arms-smuggling by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the elite Al-Quds force led by Qassem Soleimani. Back in October 2017, President Trump imposed sanctions on the IRGC and the Al-Quds force. The airline had ceased operations in 2013, citing poor management, but restarted under new management in March 2017. It is said to have two Boeing 747s in its fleet. Among the members of the company’s board are three IRGC representatives: Ali Naghi Gol Parsta, Hamid Reza Pahlvani and Gholamreza Qhasemi. The United States is Lebanon’s primary security partner, according to the State Department. Since 2006, the U.S has provided Lebanon over $1.7 billion in security assistance, in part to counter Hezbollah’s influences. Hezbollah is considered a terror organization by many U.S. officials and other western countries, and is backed and funded by Iran.

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Another Seagram’s heiress sued in Nxivm ‘sex cult’ case

Two former students of accused sex cult leader Keith Raniere are suing an alleged Seagram’s-heiress disciple — and she’s not Clare Bronfman. Bronfman’s sister, Sara Bronfman-Igtet, is instead the target of the Brooklyn Supreme Court class-action suit, which claims that she “ensnared’’ Isabella Martinez, Gabrielle Leal and others in “a fraudulent scheme nationwide” as part of Raniere’s cult, Nxivm. Clare has already been charged with federal conspiracy raps involving Nxivm. The feds allege that Bronfman provided hefty financial backing for Raniere’s alleged sick sex network while conspiring to commit identify fraud, among other things. The sisters are the daughters of late billionaire Seagrams CEO Edgar Bronfman.

The new suit claims Bronfman-Igtet “uniformly misled Plaintiffs and the Class that they would participate in classes that were equivalent to a ‘practical MBA’ to achieve success in business and in life. “Part of the fraud committed to induce the purchase from ESP, was the claim that the program was developed by the ‘one of the World’s Smartest Men’ – Keith Raniere,” the papers say. ESP stands for “Executive Success Program,” the name of the series of workshops offered by Raniere as part of Nxivm’s teachings. Bronfman-Igtet lured in program patsies by touting Raniere’s own repeated proclamations that he “1) was one of the World’s Smartest Men; 2) began talking in complete sentences by age one; 3) was an East Coast Judo Champion at age twelve; 4) tied the New York State record for the 100-yard dash in High School; and 5) had a very rare problem-solving ability that allowed him to create a curriculum to assist others with their business projects,’’ the suit says. Bronfman-Igtet failed to mention that Raniere has been sued by the New York state Attorney General’s Office for a prior business venture, which was deemed an illegal multilevel marketing business and for which he was fined, the suit says. “He is not one of the world’s smartest men, he is not a judo champion,” said the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Omar Rosales. “It’s all a lie, it’s all a scam.” Rosales said he even took an ESP course himself in 2009 “and met Allison Mack, and it was very benign. Talk about the banality of evil.” The lawsuit says the Nxivm courses were simply a scheme meant to “defraud students out of millions of dollars with classes that had no end, no graduation, no certification, and no credential. “Moreover, the student-victims’ tuition was used to fund a criminal enterprise run by Defendant and her indicted co-conspirators,” the suit says. Martinez and Leal say they separately shelled out $2,400 for a five-day intensive set of Nxivm classes in San Francisco in 2016 — but never would have done so had Bronfman-Igtet not lied to them.

Bronfman-Igtet has not been charged in the criminal case involving her sister, Raniere and a host of others, including “Smallville” TV actress Mack, who face charges from money laundering to sex trafficking and kidnapping. Bronfman-Igtet helped secure her sister’s release pending trial on a whopping $100 million bond. Bronfman-Igtet, who lives in France, could not immediately be reached.

https://nypost.com/2018/09/04/another-seagrams-heiress-sued-in-nxivm-sex-cult-case/