THE militant Islamist group Isis is urging its members to plan for a “coming” war with Iran and wants to get hold of the secrets of the country’s clandestine nuclear programme, according to a manifesto believed to have been written by one of its most senior members.
The document, a part of which is entitled “The Challenges of War”, details how Isis leaders plan to unleash a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing, Nazi-style eugenics and Stasi-like intelligence gathering operations in order to consolidate and then expand their self-declared Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East.
Its list of 70 ways of defeating Iran also include more bizarre proposals such as destroying the country’s caviar industry “because it is a national treasure” and “exterminating” its carpet industry by encouraging Afghan carpet makers to flood the Middle Eastern market with their products.
Another proposal is to build a canal across the United Arab Emirates, allowing oil freighters to bypass the Straits of Hormuz, which Tehran occasionally threatens to close.
The purported manifesto, typed on perforated sheets, was picked by a unit of Iraqi Special Forces during a raid on the home of an Isis commander in March, a few months before ISIS declared the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate. It is being examined by western security officials, according to well-placed sources.
The document’s author, Abdullah Ahmed al-Meshedani, a member of Isis’s highly secretive six-man war cabinet, urges followers to focus on what he calls “the coming war with Iran” and calls for the assassination of Iranian diplomats, businessmen and teachers.
It also appears to confirm Isis’s desire to get hold of nuclear weapons. Al-Meshedani says the terror group plans to offer Russia access to gas fields it controls in Iraq’s Anbar province provided the Kremlin gives up “Iran and its nuclear programme and hands over its secrets”. Moscow would also have to abandon support for Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, and back the Gulf States against Iran.
Although the group raises millions of pounds every month, Al-Meshedani warns Isis fighters to avoid relying on the caliphate for financial hand-outs.
Instead, he urges fighters to find jobs in pasta factories, desalination plants and bottling factories.
Isis followers, who are referred to as the “knights of jihad” in the manifesto, are also urged to buy shares in Facebook, Twitter and Google “to advance the aim” of the caliphate.
“They (Isis) are not focused on merely supporting themselves with ransom activities and oil theft, they know that in order to survive they have to generate income in legitimate ways,” said Veryan Khan the director of the terrorism monitoring group TRAC.
“I am convinced this was passed out among senior personnel of the Islamic State. To fully explain a 100 year plan is completely unique — they are proving that they are visionaries to the rest of the senior staff,” she said.
Looking further ahead, Isis wants Pakistani, Iraqi and Syrian Sunnis to move to the Gulf. The men will be encouraged to “marry early and have many children”, who will be trained to become “special forces” that will target Shi’ite neighbourhoods in the Gulf.
In a portent of the violence many believe is yet to come, much of the manifesto is spent explaining why Shi’ite Muslims should be singled out for extermination.
The Sunni Islamists of Isis view Shi’ite Muslims as apostates, accusing them in the manifesto of “perverting” Islam by holding idolatrous beliefs.
“We [the Sunnis] possess keener reason than the Shi’ite, and are better in terms of thinking and in terms of their souls than the Shi’ite,” says Al-Meshedani.
Al-Meshedani also suggests buying Islands from Yemen and the Comoros “to establish a military base on the flank of the Arab lands”.
In an indication of Isis’ unwavering determination to expand its caliphate, Al- Meshedani writes that ISIS intelligence operatives will “eliminate” its own leaders if they deviate from the organisation’s “desired goal”.
“The leadership of the political wing must know that it is being watched and listened to by the intelligence apparatuses which pass on everything, small or large,” states Meshedani, who is also in charge of transporting suicide bombers and housing them in Isis-controlled territory.
In an sign of where Isis believes its support in the Arab world lies, Meshedani urges Isis’ ideological leaders to find safe haven in Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
The document calls Isis followers “the new Umayyads”, a reference to the family that ruled the second Islamic Caliphate from 661 AD. The Umayyad Caliphate became the largest empire the world had ever seen – and the fifth largest in history.
Meshedani writes that, until the arrival of the Umayyad Caliphate, Europe was “covered in darkness”.
“It was they [the Umayyads] who conquered the sea and went into unknown territory … they brought the worldly sciences and the writings of the Greeks and they who dismantled the symbols of Roman and Byzantine architecture and added an Islamic tint,” Meshedani writes.
Miles Amoore 