Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Hezbollah Founder Dies of Coronavirus

Thursday, June 10, 2021

Categories: ASCF News Emerging Threats

Comments: 0

Source: https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2021/06/08/hezbollah-founder-dies-of-coronavirus/

Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, a former interior minister of Iran and a founder of the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, died in Tehran on Monday from complications caused by the Chinese coronavirus, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

Mohtashamipour died at Khatam-ul-Anbia hospital in northern Tehran on June 6 at the age of 75, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), though the Iranian state-run outlet did not state the cause of Mohtashamipour’s death. The AP reported that the Shiite cleric died Monday at the age of 74 from the Chinese coronavirus.

“In a message on Monday, [Iran’s Supreme Leader] Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei condoled the demise of Hojatoleslam Seyyed Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour to his honorable family,” Iran’s state-run Mehr News Agency reported on June 7.

“Ayatollah Khamenei also pointed to Mohtashamipour’s revolutionary services and important responsibilities during the Islamic Republic era and prayed to God to bestow divine forgiveness and blessings on him,” according to Mehr.

Mohtashamipour served as Iran’s interior minister from 1985-1989 and also worked as a key adviser to Iranian President Sayyid Mohammad Khatami from 1997-1999.

“A close ally of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Mohtashamipour in the 1970s formed alliances with Muslim militant groups across the Mideast,” according to the AP. “After the Islamic Revolution [of Iran, 1978-1979], he helped found the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Iran and as ambassador to Syria brought the force into the region to help form Hezbollah.”

The U.S. officially designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization in 2019. Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy terrorist group based in Lebanon but active worldwide.

“Born in Tehran in 1947, Mohtashamipour met Khomeini as the cleric remained in exile in Najaf [in central Iraq] after being expelled from Iran by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,” the AP further recalled Monday. “In the 1970s, he crisscrossed the Mideast speaking to militants groups at the time, helping form an alliance between the future Islamic Republic and the Palestinian Liberation Organization as it battled Israel.”

Mohtashamipour joins a number of other high-ranking Iranian government and military officials who have reportedly contracted the Chinese coronavirus and died from the disease over the past year and a half. Observers accuse Iran of underreporting its official coronavirus caseload and downplaying the severity of the Islamic Republic’s domestic coronavirus outbreak. A dissident group called the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran estimated in late May that about 300,000 people had died in Iran from the Chinese coronavirus since the pandemic began. Tehran’s official death count from the disease stands at 81,183.

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