- In his prepared statement to the U.S. House Foreign
Affairs and Armed Services committees last week, Gen. David Petraeus claimed
that Iran is using the Quds Force to turn Shi'ite militias into a "Hezbollah-like
force" to "fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition
forces in Iraq."
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- But Petraeus then shattered that carefully constructed
argument by volunteering in answering a question that the Quds Force, an
elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, had essentially left
Iraq. "The Quds force itself, we believe, by and large those individuals
have been pulled out of the country as have the Lebanese Hezbollah trainers
that were being used to augment that activity."
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- Petraeus' contradictory statements on the Quds force
are emblematic of an administration propaganda line that has essentially
fallen apart because it was so obviously out of line with reality. Nine
months after the George W. Bush administration declared that it was going
to go after Iranian agents in Iraq who were threatening U.S. troops, the
U.S. military still has not produced any evidence that the Quds Force operatives
in Iraq were engaged in assisting the militias fighting against U.S. troops.
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- The U.S. military command in Iraq has failed to capture
a single Quds Force member whom it could link to the Shi'ite militias.
And the evidence that has emerged over the past nine months about Shi'ite
militias and their relationship to Iran suggests that Quds force personnel
in Iraq never had the mission of assisting Shi'ite militias, as claimed
by the Bush administration.
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- It appears that an increasing number of military intelligence
officers in Iraq have concluded that the Quds force has been steering clear
of working directly with Shi'ite militias attacking U.S. troops, in order
to avoid giving the Bush administration a pretext for aggression against
Iranian territory.
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- In a military briefing presented in Baghdad on Feb. 11,
an unnamed U.S. official stated flatly that weapons were being smuggled
into the country by the Quds Force, but the briefers failed to present
any specific evidence to back up the assertion.
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- Since that briefing, the U.S. military command has captured
the alleged deputy head and key logistical officer of the main Iraqi EFP,
or armor-penetrating explosives, network and a Hezbollah operative who
was a liaison with the network, as well as a number of what it called "suspected
members" or "suspected leaders" of a "secret cell terrorist
network known for facilitating the transport of and EFPs from Iran to Iraq."
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- But the interrogations of these detainees have not led
to the capture of a single Iranian official. Nor has the military been
able to identify a link between any Iraqi militia member and any Iranian
official. On July 6, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. operations
south of Baghdad, told reporters his troops had not captured "anybody
that we can tie to Iran."
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- Even more devastating to the "proxy war" line,
Lynch's spokesperson, Alayne Conway, acknowledged on Aug. 19 that they
had not caught anyone supplying arms from Iran to the Iraqi Shi'ite militias.
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- There has long been some evidence, however, of a link
between Shi'ite networks for procuring EFPs and other arms and Lebanese
Hezbollah. The leader of a Madhi Army group that was carrying out attacks
against British forces, Ahmad Jawwad al-Fartusi, who was arrested in September
2005, had lived in Lebanon for several years and was known to have personal
contact with Hezbollah, according to a March 27 New York Times report.
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- Along with evidence of a growing relationship between
Hezbollah and Moqtada al-Sadr's army, which has now culminated in a Sadr
office in Beirut, such past links between the two Shi'ite groups suggest
that Hezbollah's assistance to the Shi'ites need not have been ordered
by Tehran.
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- U.S. and British officials have acknowledged in the past
that the EFP technology being used in Iraq might have entered Iraq from
Hezbollah in Lebanon rather than from Iran.
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- The premise that the Quds Force agents in Iraq were involved
in training Shi'ites to carry out operations against U.S. troops was shattered
when Lynch told reporters Aug. 19 that the Iranians were "facilitating
the training of Shi'ite extremists" militiamen in Iraq. That clearly
implied that the training was being done by Hezbollah.
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- The Washington Post and other news outlets quoted Lynch's
statement but nevertheless reported that Lynch had charged that Iranians
were doing the training. A spokesperson for Lynch confirmed to IPS that
Lynch had not made any allegation about Iranians training Shi'ites in Iraq.
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- Petraeus dealt the final blow to the notion of a Quds
Force training role when he noted that the Hezbollah trainers had also
been withdrawn from the country.
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- The briefing by U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin
Bergner on July 2 was aimed primarily at advancing the theme that Hezbollah
acts in Iraq as a "proxy" for Iran. But the real significance
of the briefing unreported in the news media was the first
suggestion by a U.S. official that the Quds Force personnel in Iraq might
have avoided direct contacts with Shi'ite militias altogether. Asked by
a journalist why the Quds Force would "subcontract" the training
of Shi'ite militias to Hezbollah, Bergner answered that Hezbollah could
"do things that perhaps they didn't want to have to do themselves
in terms of interacting directly with special groups."
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- Without mentioning any pullout of Quds force personnel,
spokesperson Conway said on Aug. 19 that Gen. Lynch estimated that there
were 50 Quds Force agents in his entire area of responsibility in southern
Iraq. Four days later Lynch clarified that estimate, telling reporters
that 30 of those estimated 50 agents were "surrogates"
presumably referring to Hezbollah operatives engaged in training Shi'ites
in southern Iraq.
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- Although it was buried in the Aug. 19 story inaccurately
reporting Lynch's statement about training in Iraq, Megan Greenwell of
the Washington Post reported the much more significant fact that "some
military intelligence analysts have concluded there is no concrete evidence"
linking the Quds Force in Iraq with the Shi'ite militias.
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- The charge that Iran was using the Quds Force to fight
a proxy war was an effort to raise tension with Iran by suggesting a potential
reason for U.S. attack against Iran. Similarly, the pressure for targeting
the Quds Force in Iraq late last year came from senior officials in the
Bush administration who wished to demonstrate U.S. resolve to confront
Iran, according to an in-depth account of the origins of the plan by the
Washington Post's Dafna Linzer published Feb. 26.
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- That policy was regarded with "skepticism"
by the intelligence community, the State Department, and the Defense Department
when it was proposed, Linzer wrote, because of the fear it would contribute
to an escalation conflict with Iran.
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- "This has little to do with Iraq," a senior
intelligence officer told Linzer. "It's all about pushing Iran's buttons.
It's purely political."
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- (Inter Press Service)
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