BAGHDAD — One of the most powerful men in Iraq isn't an Iraqi government official, a militia leader, a senior cleric or a top U.S. military commander or diplomat,
He's an Iranian general, and at times he's more influential than all of them.
Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani commands the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, an elite paramilitary and espionage organization whose mission is to expand Iran’s influence in the Middle East.
As Tehran’s point man on Iraq, he funnels military and financial support to various Iraqi factions, frustrating U.S. attempts to build a pro-Western democracy on the rubble of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.
According to Iraqi and American officials, Suleimani has ensured the elections of pro-Iranian politicians, met frequently with senior Iraqi leaders and backed Shiite elements in the Iraqi security forces that are accused of torturing and killing minority Sunni Muslims.
“Whether we like him (Suleimani) or not, whether Americans like him or not, whether Iraqis like him or not, he is the focal point of Iranian policy in Iraq,” said a senior Iraqi official who asked not to be identified so he could speak freely. “The Quds Force have played it all, political, military, intelligence, economic. They are Iranian foreign policy in Iraq.”
McClatchy reported on March 30 that Suleimani intervened to halt the fighting between mostly Shiite Iraqi security forces and radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in the southern city of Basra. Iraqi officials now confirm that in addition to that meeting, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani personally met Suleimani at a border crossing to make a direct appeal for help.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/04/28/35146/iranian-outmaneuvers-us-in-iraq.html
Now here’s part of a post from another thread on Iraq. If somebody had told you before we invaded that the US army would end up fighting and dying to keep a coalition of Iranian-backed terrorist groups in power in Iraq would you have believed them?
The main Shiite groups that won the 2005 and 2007 elections and went on to run the government with the Kurds were all formed into a single ticket by the Iranian Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani and are:
The Al-Dawa (Islamic Mission) party.
This is Maliki’s party. The Dawa party have a fine democratic tradition of car bombings, airplane hijackings and blowing up buildings, most notably the US Embassy in Kuwait in 1983. Saddam’s regime for some reason called them an Iranian-backed terrorist group, probably due to all the bombings they carried out in Iraq. They operated from Iranian territory where Maliki spent most of his time apart from a few years in the Dawa Damascus office helping the forerunners of Hezbollah start their operations during the Lebanese civil war.
The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Now called the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, having got their Islamic revolution in Iraq. These guys fought for Iran against Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, their Badr military wing was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and lots of its current members, now officers in the Iraqi security forces, were Iranian Revolutionary Guard members and still receive pensions from the IRG. Here’s what Donald Rumsfeld had to say about these guys back when we invaded :
Asked more about the Badr Corps, Rumsfeld said there are reports of
numbers in the hundreds operating in Iraq and more on the other side
of the border. He described the corps as “the military wing of the
Supreme Council on Islamic Revolution in Iraq” and said it is
“trained, equipped and directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary
Guard.” As yet, he said, the corps has not done anything that would be
perceived by the coalition as hostile. But “the entrance into Iraq by
military forces, intelligence personnel or proxies not under the
direct operational control of [U.S. Central Command Commander] General
[Tommy] Franks will be taken as a potential threat to coalition
forces,” he said.
Rumsfeld said the coalition would hold the Iranian government
responsible for the corps’ actions, and armed Badr corps members found
in Iraq “will have to be treated as combatants.”
http://www.usembassy-israel.org.il/p…ch/032901.html
And the third group, who need no introduction, are the Sadrists, peace be upon them.
Mookie’s people are currently allied with the Supreme Islamic dudes, that’s the second
faction in the former single coalition.
That’s the end of the excerpt from the other thread.
But let’s go back to those Badr people. That’s the military wing of the former Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. ( Just as a matter of interest, if you were writing a satire about a dumb American president who started a war against Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East and ended up getting his ass handed to him by the Islamic fundamentalists to the extent that he had to militarily back their takeover of an oil-rich state, what would you call the Islamic group who outfoxed him? Can you think of a name more perfect than the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq? I can’t. Let me know if you can.) Here’s some more information on those Badr guys :
BAGHDAD, Iraq—The Iranian-backed militia the Badr Organization has taken over many of the Iraqi Interior Ministry’s intelligence activities and infiltrated its elite commando units, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
That’s enabled the Shiite Muslim militia to use Interior Ministry vehicles and equipment—much of it bought with American money—to carry out revenge attacks against the minority Sunni Muslims, who persecuted the Shiites under Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein, current and former Ministry of Interior employees told Knight Ridder.
The officials, some of whom agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity for fear of violent reprisals, said the Interior Ministry had become what amounted to an Iranian fifth column inside the U.S.-backed Iraqi government, running death squads and operating a network of secret prisons.
The militia’s secret activities threaten to derail U.S.-backed efforts to persuade Sunnis to abandon the violent insurgency and join Shiites and Kurds in Iraq’s fledgling political process. And by supporting Badr and other Shiite groups, Iran—a member of President Bush’s “axis of evil” that sponsors international terrorism, is thought to be seeking nuclear weapons and calls for the destruction of Israel—has used the American-led invasion to gain influence in Iraq.
“They’re putting millions of dollars into the south to influence the elections … it’s funded primarily through their charity organizations and also Badr and some of these political parties,” said Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. general in Iraq. “A lot of their guys (Badr) are going into the police and military.”…
After Iraq’s national elections last January, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a political party that’s tied to Badr, took power and installed an official with strong ties to Badr, Bayan Jabr, as the head of the Interior Ministry. The ministry’s ranks, particularly intelligence and commando units, were quickly stocked with Badr militia members, according to interviews with current and former ministry officials.
“Everybody says you have a Badr guy in the MOI. Well … he was elected,” said the senior U.S. military official in Baghdad. “And they say he’s appointed a bunch of Badr guys. We have a Republican administration in America, and guess what? They’ve appointed a lot of Republicans. You elected SCIRI, and SCIRI is Badr.”
The American officer said it would be up to the Iraqi government to deal with the Badr organization and other militias…
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2005/12/12/v-print/13157/iran-gaining-influence-power-in.html
These guys, a lot of whom are being paid Iranian Revolutionary Guard pensions, are holding most of the top jobs in the Iraqi intelligence and security forces. The Badr people actually had their own party represented in the 2005/7 winning ticket and still have their own guys sitting in the Iraqi government. The leader of the government and his party are an Iranian-backed terrorist group who blew up the US embassy in Kuwait in 1983 among numerous other terroist attacks. So my question to you is just how much explicit Iranian influence in Iraq do you need to see before you’ll admit that Iran has a lot of control in Iraq?