Iran's covert operations in Iraq

Janes Defense Weekly:

Jane's Intelligence Digest reports on the mounting evidence of Iranian intelligence activity in Iraq.

According to information provided by several US officials, Iranian intelligence agents have been extremely active in Iraq since the collapse of Saddam's regime in April 2003. Much of this activity has taken place in the Shia-dominated south. READ MORE

Understandably, the Islamic Republic vehemently denies it is involved in such intelligence operations. However, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has claimed repeatedly that operatives belonging to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are infiltrating Iraq.

There is mounting evidence of Iranian activity in Iraq. In August 2004, 30 Iranians were captured fighting for Moqtada Al-Sadr, an anti-US Shia cleric, in southern Iraq. Earlier two truckloads on weapons supposedly destined for Sadr's Mahdi militia were seized at the Iranian border. In September 2003, Iraqi security forces arrested 12 Iranian agents in Baghdad, allegedly as they were planning bomb attacks.

In October 2004, GSD chief Mohammed Abdullah Al-Shahwani, a former army brigadier general who served under Saddam but broke with him to become a CIA asset, accused Iran's embassy in Baghdad of masterminding an assassination campaign in which 18 of his agents were killed. He claimed that raids on three Iranian safehouses in Baghdad had uncovered a treasure trove of documents linking Tehran to the campaign and to recruiting operatives from within the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) as part of a US$45 million destabilisation plan. ...