Apostle Michael Olowookere has listed the key acts of terrorism and state-sponsored violence in what he termed the Middle East proxy attacks post-2000.
Amid the current war in the Middle East, the fiery cleric noted that the “Amid the current war in the Middle East, the fiery cleric noted that the.”
On Iran, the founder of Corban Christian Assembly (CCA) underscored “Iran-backed militias have conducted hundreds of attacks on U.S. forces, including a 2023 drone attack that killed an American contractor and the 2024 killing of three U.S. service members at Tower 22 in Jordan.”
He claimed that in Yemen, “The Houthis have received advanced weapons from Iran to launch attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea,” while stating that the “foiled International Plots: In recent years, Iran-backed plots were disrupted in Denmark, Albania, and the Netherlands. In 2021, the U.S. disrupted a plot to kidnap an Iranian-American journalist in Brooklyn.
The Christian minister indicated that “Hezbollah, with direct support from the IRGC, conducted suicide attacks against the U.S. Marine barracks and French military headquarters in Lebanon, killing 241 U.S. service members, [in the] 1983 Beirut Barracks Bombings.”
On the assassination of dissidents abroad, the cleric noted that “the regime has a long history of killing opponents in exile, including the 1979 assassination of Shahriar Shafiq in Paris, the 1989 killing of Kurdish leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou in Vienna, and the 1990 murder of Kazem Rajavi in Switzerland.
He recalled that while in the 1990s “A pro-Iranian network linked to Hezbollah conducted a series of bombings in France between 1985-1987” in the European Bombings, in the 1994 AMIA bombings, “Iran was implicated in the bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people.”
As regards the kidnapping of foreign nationals between 1982 and 1989, the Nigerian pastor, who is known for his apostolic work, narrated that Hezbollah kidnapped 96 foreign nationals in Lebanon, using them as bargaining tools to achieve Iran’s political and military objectives.
He shared how the Iranian regime utilised severe violence against its own citizens to maintain power, citing the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988, violent suppression of uprisings, including the 2009 Green Movement, 2022 ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ protests, which led to mass casualties during the 2026 unrest, in which over 50,000 were killed by the government.
“I stand on my words, any country that finances terrorism, encourages jihad, has an Islamisation of the world agenda, must never be allowed to own a nuclear weapon,”
He criticised the ” death to America, death to Israel” mantra while listing acts of terrorism under the Ayatollah Islamic regime in Iran.
Apostle Olowookere underlined that, “Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran, under the guidance of Supreme Leaders Ayatollah Khomeini and subsequently Ali Khamenei, has been widely designated as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
“The regime utilises the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and various proxy groups to export its ideology, destabilise regional neighbours, and target dissidents worldwide.”
The Port Harcourt-based cleric highlighted key entities involved in terrorism, such as IRGC-Quds Force (IRGC-QF), the primary unit responsible for unconventional warfare, supporting proxies, and training foreign fighters, Hezbollah (Lebanon), the most prominent proxy group, which acts as a primary instrument of Iranian foreign policy and Axis of Resistance, a network of militias in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen (Houthis) directed by Tehran to expand its regional influence.
