TIME: Inside Iran's Secret
War for Iraq
Monday, August 22, 2005
A TIME investigation reveals the Tehran regime's
strategy to gain influence in Iraq--and why U.S.
troops may now face greater dangers as a
result
By
MICHAEL WARE / BAGHDAD
The U.S. Military's new nemesis in Iraq is named Abu
Mustafa al-Sheibani, and he is not a Baathist or a
member of al-Qaeda. He is working for Iran. According
to a U.S. military-intelligence document obtained by
TIME, al-Sheibani heads a network of insurgents
created by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps with
the express purpose of committing violence against
U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. Over the past
eight months, his group has introduced a new breed of
roadside bomb more lethal than any seen before; based
on a design from the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia
Hizballah, the weapon employs "shaped" explosive
charges that can punch through a battle tank's armor
like a fist through the wall. According to the
document, the U.S. believes al-Sheibani's team
consists of 280 members, divided into 17 bombmaking
teams and death squads. The U.S. believes they train
in Lebanon, in Baghdad's predominantly Shi'ite Sadr
City district and "in another country" and have
detonated at least 37 bombs against U.S. forces this
year in Baghdad alone.
Since the start of the insurgency in Iraq, the most
persistent danger to U.S. troops has come from the
Sunni Arab insurgents and terrorists who roam the
center and west of the country. But some U.S.
officials are worried about a potentially greater
challenge to order in Iraq and U.S. interests there:
the growing influence of Iran. With an elected
Shi'ite-dominated government in place in Baghdad and
the U.S. preoccupied with quelling the Sunni-led
insurgency, the Iranian regime has deepened its
imprint on the political and social fabric of Iraq,
buying influence in the new Iraqi government, running
intelligence-gathering networks and funneling money
and guns to Shi'ite militant groups--all with the aim
of fostering a Shi'ite-run state friendly to Iran. In
parts of southern Iraq, fundamentalist Shi'ite
militias--some of them funded and armed by Iran--have
imposed restrictions on the daily lives of Iraqis,
banning alcohol and curbing the rights of women.
Iraq's Shi'ite leaders, including Prime Minister
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, have tried to forge a strategic
alliance with Tehran, even seeking to have Iranians
recognized as a minority group under Iraq's proposed
constitution. "We have to think anything we tell or
share with the Iraqi government ends up in Tehran,"
says a Western diplomat.
Perhaps most troubling are signs that the rising
influence of Iran--a country with which Iraq waged an
eight-year war and whose brand of theocracy most
Iraqis reject--is exacerbating sectarian tensions
between Sunnis and Shi'ites, pulling Iraq closer to
all-out civil war. And while top intelligence
officials have sought to play down any
state-sponsored role by Tehran's regime in directing
violence against the coalition, the emergence of
al-Sheibani has cast greater suspicion on Iran.
Coalition sources told TIME that it was one of
al-Sheibani's devices that killed three British
soldiers in Amarah last month. "One suspects this
would have to have a higher degree of approval [in
Tehran]," says a senior U.S. military official in
Baghdad. The official says the U.S. believes that
Iran has brokered a partnership between Iraqi Shi'ite
militants and Hizballah and facilitated the import of
sophisticated weapons that are killing and wounding
U.S. and British troops. "It is true that weapons
clearly, unambiguously, from Iran have been found in
Iraq," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last
week.
How real is the threat? A TIME investigation, based
on documents smuggled out of Iran and dozens of
interviews with U.S., British and Iraqi intelligence
officials, as well as an Iranian agent, armed
dissidents and Iraqi militia and political allies,
reveals an Iranian plan for gaining influence in Iraq
that began before the U.S. invaded. In their scope
and ambition, Iran's activities rival those of the
U.S. and its allies, especially in the south. There
is a gnawing worry within some intelligence circles
that the failure to counter Iranian influence may
come back to haunt the U.S. and its allies, if
Shi'ite factions with heavy Iranian backing
eventually come to power and provoke the Sunnis to
revolt. Says a British military intelligence officer,
about the relative inattention paid to Iranian
meddling: "It's as though we are sleepwalking."
The Iranian penetration of Iraq was a long time in
planning. On Sept. 9, 2002, with U.S. bases being
readied in Kuwait, Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali
Khamenei summoned his war council in Tehran.
According to Iranian sources, the Supreme National
Security Council concluded, "It is necessary to adopt
an active policy in order to prevent long-term and
short-term dangers to Iran." Iran's security services
had supported the armed wings of several Iraqi groups
they had sheltered in Iran from Saddam. Iranian
intelligence sources say that the various groups were
organized under the command of Brigadier General
Qassim Sullaimani, an adviser to Khamenei on both
Afghanistan and Iraq and a top officer in the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Before the March 2003 invasion, military sources say,
elements of up to 46 Iranian infantry and missile
brigades moved to buttress the border. Positioned
among them were units of the Badr Corps, formed in
the 1980s as the armed wing of the Iraqi Shi'ite
group known by its acronym SCIRI, now the most
powerful party in Iraq. Divided into northern,
central and southern axes, Badr's mission was to pour
into Iraq in the chaos of the invasion to seize towns
and government offices, filling the vacuum left by
the collapse of Saddam's regime. As many as 12,000
armed men, along with Iranian intelligence officers,
swarmed into Iraq. TIME has obtained copies of what
U.S. and British military intelligence say appears to
be Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence
reports sent in April 2003. One, dated April 10 and
marked CONFIDENTIAL, logs U.S. troops backed by armor
moving through the city of Kut. But, it asserts, "we
are in control of the city." Another, with the same
date, from a unit code-named 1546, claims "forces
attached to us" had control of the city of Amarah and
had occupied Baath Party properties. A 2004 British
army inquiry noted that the Badr organization and
another militia were so powerful in Amarah, "it
quickly became clear that the coalition needed to
work with them to ensure a secure environment in the
province."
For many Iraqis in the south, the exile militia
groups brought with them forbidding religious
strictures. "These guys with beards and Kalashnikovs
showed up saying they'd come to protect the campus,"
says a student leader at a Basra university. "The
problem is, they never left." Militants frequently
"investigate" youths accused of un-Islamic behavior,
such as couples holding hands or girls wearing
makeup. "They're watching us, and they're the ones
who control the streets, while the police, who are
with them, stand by," says a student leader who did
not wish to be identified. "From the beginning, the
Islamic parties filled the void," says a police
lieutenant colonel working closely with British
forces. "They still hold the real power. The rank and
file all belong to the parties. Everyone does. You
can't do anything without them."
Military officials say they believe Iranian-funded
militias helped organize a mob attack in the southern
township of Majarr al-Kabir on June 24, 2003, that
resulted in the execution of six British
military-police officers. According to a classified
British military-intelligence document, a local
militia leader is "implicated in the murder of the 6
RMP [Royal Military Police]." The man heads a cell of
the Mujahedin for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (MIRI),
a paramilitary outfit coordinated out of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard's base in Ahvaz, Iran. Although
U.S. and British officers think it unlikely the
soldiers were killed on orders from Revolutionary
Guard officers, they agree that the slayings fit
within the Iranian generals' broad guidelines to bog
coalition forces down in sporadic hit-and-run
attacks.
The Iranian program is as impressive as it is
comprehensive, competing with and sometimes bettering
the coalition's endeavors. Businesses, front
companies, religious groups, NGOs and aid for schools
and universities are all part of the mix. Just as
Washington backs Iraqi news outlets like al-Hurra
television station, Tehran has funded broadcast and
print outlets in Iraq. A 2003 Supreme National
Security Council memo, smuggled out of Iran, suggests
even the Iranian Red Crescent society, akin to the
Red Cross, has coordinated its activities through the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The memo instructs
officials that "the immediate needs of the Iraqi
people should be determined" by the Guard's al-Quds
Force.
More sinister are signs of death squads charged with
eliminating potential opponents and former Baathists.
U.S. intelligence sources confirm that early targets
included former members of the Iran section of
Saddam's intelligence services. In southern cities,
Thar-Allah (Vengeance of God) is one of a number of
militant groups suspected of assassinations. U.S.
commanders in Baghdad and in eastern provinces say
similar cells operate in their sectors. The chief of
the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, General
Mohammed Abdullah al-Shahwani, has publicly accused
Iranian-backed cells of hunting down and killing his
officers. In October he blamed agents in Iran's
Baghdad embassy of coordinating assassinations of up
to 18 of his people, claiming that raids on three
safe houses uncovered a trove of documents linking
the agents to funds funneled to the Badr Corps for
the purposes of "physical liquidation."
A former Iraqi official and member of Saddam's
armored corps, who identifies himself as Abu Hassan,
told TIME last summer that he was recruited by an
Iranian intelligence agent in 2004 to compile the
names and addresses of Ministry of Interior officials
in close contact with American military officers and
liaisons. Abu Hassan's Iranian handler wanted to know
"who the Americans trusted and where they were" and
pestered him to find out if Abu Hassan, using his
membership in the Iraqi National Accord political
party, could get someone inside the office of then
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi without being searched.
(Allawi has told TIME he believes Iranian agents
plotted to assassinate him.) And the handler also
demanded information on U.S. troop concentrations in
a particular area of Baghdad and details of U.S.
weaponry, armor, routes and reaction times. After
revealing his conversations to U.S. and Iraqi
authorities, Abu Hassan disappeared; earlier this
year, one of his Iraqi superiors was convicted of
espionage.
Intelligence agencies say Tehran still funds various
political parties in Iraq. Documents from Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps files obtained by TIME
include voluminous pay records from August 2004 that
appear to indicate that Iran was paying the salaries
of at least 11,740 members of the Badr Corps. British
and U.S. military intelligence suspect those salaries
are still being paid, although Badr leader Hadi
al-Amri denies that. "I've told the American officers
to bring us the evidence that we have a deal with
Iran, and we will be ready, but they say they don't
have any," he says.
What remains murky is the extent to which Iran is
encouraging its proxies to stage attacks against the
U.S.-led coalition. Military intelligence officers
describe their Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps
counterparts' strategy as one of using
"nonattributable attacks" by proxy forces to maximize
deniability. What's uncertain, says a senior U.S.
officer, is what factions within Tehran's splintered
security apparatus are behind the strategy and how
much the top leaders have endorsed it. Intelligence
sources claim that Brigadier General Sullaimani
ordained in a meeting of his militia proxies in the
spring of last year that "any move that would wear
out the U.S. forces in Iraq should be done. Every
possible means should be used to keep the U.S. forces
engaged in Iraq." Secret British
military-intelligence documents show that British
forces are tracking several paramilitary outfits in
Southern Iraq that are backed by the Revolutionary
Guard. Coalition and Iraqi intelligence agencies
track Iranian officers' visits to Iraq on inspection
tours akin to those of their American counterparts.
"We know they come, but often not until after they've
left," says a British intelligence officer.
Shi'ite political parties do not dispute that the
visits occur. And a steady flow of weapons continues
to arrive from Iran through the porous southern
border. "They use the legal checkpoints to move
personnel, and the weapons travel through the marshes
and areas to our north," says a British officer in
Basra. Top diplomats and intelligence officials know
that some Iranian officers are providing assistance
to Shi'ite insurgents, but it's dwarfed by the amount
of money and materiel flowing in from Iraq's Arab
neighbors to Sunni insurgents.
Western diplomats say that so far, the ayatullahs
appear to be acting defensively rather than
offensively. An encouraging sign is that even Shi'ite
beneficiaries of Tehran exhibit strains of Iraqi and
Arab nationalism; and many have strong familial and
tribal ties with the Sunnis. "We are sons of Iraq.
The circumstances that forced me to leave did not
change my identity," says Badr leader al-Amri. He's
proud of his cooperation with the Revolutionary Guard
to battle Saddam but says it extended only "to the
limit of our interests." An informed Western observer
thinks that while those groups maintain a "shared
world view" with Tehran, much as Brits and Americans
share each other's, they are now trying to balance
their interests with those of their backers and are
eager to wield power in Baghdad in their own right.
"I think you'll never break a lifelong relationship,"
says the senior U.S. military officer, "but as time
goes by, as they become politicians fighting local
issues, they will change."
That may be true. But Iran shows every sign of upping
the ante in Iraq, which may ultimately force the U.S.
to search out new allies in Iraq--including some of
the same elements it has been trying to subdue for
almost 20 years--who can counter the mullahs'
encroachment. The Western diplomat acknowledges that
Iran's seemingly manageable activities could still
escalate into a bigger crisis. "We've dealt with
governments allied to our enemies many times in the
past," he says. "The rub, however, is, Could it
affect [counterinsurgency efforts]? To that I say,
'It hasn't happened yet, but it could.'" The war in
Iraq could get a whole lot messier if it does.