US opens up new front in Iraq war - 25 January 2007

US President George W Bush has opened a new front in the Iraq war, this time against Iran. The immediate objective is to curb Tehran’s covert campaign to destabilise Iraq, but the long-term strategic aim is to thwart Iran’s drive for dominance in the Middle East. An SIR correspondent reports from the Middle East on why it has taken the US administration so long to tackle Iran’s clandestine operations which began at the time US-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003.

Iraq has long been a prime target for Iran’s intelligence services, whether during the reign of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi or under the Islamic regime that toppled the monarchy in 1979. Iranian penetration has been extensive and deep, particularly since Saddam Hussein was overthrown in April 2003 and security along the 1,200km border between the two states collapsed.

Surprisingly, the Iranian campaign to destabilise Iraq has received little attention outside the region, apart from occasional allegations of infiltration, gun-running, and mischief-making by the Bush administration. There have been occasional arrests, but Iranian agents have hitherto operated with virtual impunity, presumably because the US authorities did not want to antagonise Tehran further at the same time as the West is seeking to persuade the regime to abandon its nuclear weapons programme.

Getting tough with Iran became necessary when Bush decided, as part of his new "surge doctrine", to go all-out against the Shia militias slaughtering Iraq’s Sunnis and undermining US efforts to stabilise the country. These forces are backed, funded and armed by the government in Tehran - or at least the ultra-hardline faction within it - and crossing swords with Iran thus became inevitable.

Some critics in the US Congress fear the new policy has the potential to trigger a war with Iran. Just how far the US administration is prepared to go – including hot pursuit of suspects across the border and into the Islamic republic itself – remains unclear, but there is no doubt that the risks of such a conflict escalating have now increased significantly.

"It’s going to have some serious consequences," warned former US Assistant Secretary of State Martyn Indyk, a Middle East specialist. "Since the president has taken the gloves off, I would expect that they [Iran’s leaders] would respond by taking the gloves off too."

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has stated that Bush authorised a wide-ranging US offensive against Iranian intelligence agents in Iraq "several months ago" because they were aiding attacks on US troops. According to the US military, nearly 200 US and British soldiers have been killed, and more than 600 wounded, by advanced explosive devices made in Iran and smuggled into Iraq through the southern marshes and along the Tigris.

The first US swoops were not announced until late December, although US military sources said other covert operations against the Iranians had been carried out earlier. The US authorities have confirmed that five Iranians were arrested in two raids in the capital on 24 December. Two more raids took place in the northern Kurdish-controlled city of Irbil on 4 January, with six arrests.

According to the ad-Dawa Party, a Shia faction with strong links to Iran, the Iranians arrested in Baghdad were liaising between Iran’s National Security Council and the Badr Organization, the military wing of the Tehran-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the most powerful of the Iraqi Shia groups.

Two of the five were arrested with the Badr commander, Hadi al-Ameri, at his home in a compound owned by the SCIRI head, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, on the east bank of the River Tigris. Before 2003, Ameri served with Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Hakim, who held talks with Bush in Washington in early December, ensured that Ameri - who is also chairman of the Iraqi parliament’s security committee - was quickly released.

The two Iranians in question are believed to be Brig-Gen Mohsen Chirazi, ranked No 3 in the IRGC’s highly secretive Quds Force, which deals with foreign militants and handles covert operations abroad, and one of his aides, Colonel Abu Ahmad Davari. If Chirazi has been detained, he would be the highest-ranking Iranian officer ever seized by the US.

US intelligence also reportedly seized plans for attacks from the other Iranians arrested, along with contact numbers for key members of Ansar al-Sunnah, a Sunni jihadist group that emerged from the Iraqi Kurdish Ansar al-Islam organization, a movement that had operational links with Tehran before the US-led invasion in March 2003. Ansar al-Sunnah operates in the Kurdish zone.

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two main Kurdish groups, is headed by Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s first non-Arab president, who has links with Tehran that date back to the Kurds’ decades-long rebellion against the Baathist regime. Two of the five Iranians held in Baghdad in December had been personally invited to Iraq by Talabani, who was incensed by their arrest.

Tehran has vehemently rejected the US allegations and it remains unclear whether Iranian activity in Iraq has diminished in the wake of the US raids. Most analsysts suggest that it is unlikely that that the Iranian leadership will allow itself to be drawn into a war with the US at this time, despite Washington’s military overstretch. This view has been reinforced by evidence of mounting domestic pressure on Iran’s hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his provocative stance towards the West.

The Islamic Republic clearly believes that time is on its side when it comes to bleeding the Americans in Iraq. However, stepping up covert activities in Iraq, where intelligence reports suggest that Iran has established an elaborate, deeply entrenched covert infrastructure, in order to maintain pressure on Washington, is an option that Tehran may find attractive.

The presence of Iranian militants in Iraq goes right to the top. Iran’s current ambassador in Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, also served with the IRGC throughout the 1980-88 war with Iraq. In 1988-90, he was deputy chief of the IRGC unit that trained the almost entirely Shia Iraqi opposition forces based in Iran.

According to an April 2004 interview with an Iranian described as a former intelligence officer involved in Iraq by the Saudi-owned As-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper, Tehran has established a vast network of agents throughout Iran over the last two decades. This Iranian source, who was not identified, alleged that the Quds Force was responsible for the assassination of Ayatollah Mohammad Baqr al-Hakim in August 2003. Al-Hakim founded SCIRI in Iran early in the 1980-88 war. However, he co-operated with US forces after they invaded Iraq in March 2003. SCIRI was politically aligned with Iran’s hardliners during that war and maintains close links with the IRGC.

The ayatollah, Abdul Aziz’s older brother, perished in a massive bombing at the Imam Ali Mosque in the holy city of Najaf along with more 80 others, an attack widely attributed to the Sunni jihadists allied to Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The source interviewed by As-Sharq al-Awsat also indicated that hardliners in Tehran considered that at the time it was prudent to weaken the politically moderate and nationalistic Shia leadership in Iraq in order to bolster Iranian influence over the soon-to-be empowered Shia majority, with the aim of steering Iraq’s political future towards Tehran’s advantage.

Moreover, the Iranian informer claimed that the Quds Force uses at least 18 charitable organizations as cover in major Iraq cities, including Baghdad, Basra, Najaf, Kufra, and Nasiriyah. He also alleged that there are around 2,700 safe-houses in Baghdad alone, while up to 300 Iranian media representatives are also used as agents or intelligence assets.

More recently, the Baghdad daily newspaper Iraq al-Ghad claimed that Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) now controls the levers of power in Karbala, a Shia holy city south of Baghdad. The paper asserted that during the time of the interim government Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shia and former CIA operative, more than 420 Iranian agents were arrested in Karbala.

Iraq al-Ghad also suggested that a tactic used by MOIS agents to secure support for Iran in Karbala – and presumably in other Iraqi cities – is the cutting off of electricity supplies. Its agents then step in to distribute portable generators and food provided by Tehran.

Once a Shia alliance, dominated by Iranian protégés SCIRI and ad-Dawa, was in power in Iraq following the January 2005 elections, the Badr Organisation, with some 20,000-25,000 Iranian-trained fighters, took over many of the interior ministry’s intelligence and security functions. Its elite units were infiltrated en masse into the ministry.

According to both US and Iraqi officials, these and other Shia militias such as the Mahdi Army led by firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, have been responsible for slaughtering Sunnis. The notorious Wolf Brigade, blamed for the killing of hundreds if not thousands of Sunnis, is a Badr offshoot formally under the ministry’s control and commanded by senior Badr officers.

If this intelligence estimate is accurate, the Iraqi interior ministry has effectively become an Iranian fifth column within the US-backed government, and US forces are in the invidious position of fighting to defend a Shia-dominated regime in thrall to Iran, a member of Bush’s "axis of evil".