U.S.: Iran, Hezbollah Training Iraqi Militants

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 2, 2007; 9:58 AM

BAGHDAD, July 2-- An American general today said Iraqi militants are being trained and organized by Iranian security forces -- in cooperation with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia -- to carry out bombings, kidnappings and other acts of violence against Americans and Iraqi security forces.

The briefing by U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner laid out what he described as an extensive program coordinated by Iran's elite Quds Force, the militant wing of the Revolutionary Guard, to provide armor-piercing weapons, funnel up to $3 million a month to extremist groups and train Shiite militiamen in three camps near Tehran.

While U.S. officials have repeatedly alleged that sophisticated Iranian-made weapons are killing Americans in Iraq, and that the Quds force is complicit in the violence, today's briefing offered the most specific accusations to date of direct Iranian involvement in specific attacks against U.S. forces.

The general also drew a new link with Hezbollah, saying an operative arrested in March had spent the previous 10 months worked with the Quds force to train Iraqis after years of commanding a Hezbollah special operations group.

"The Iranian Quds force is using Lebanese Hezbollah essentially as a proxy, as a surrogate in Iraq," Bergner said. "Our intelligence reveals that senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity."

Bergner's briefing for reporters in Baghdad emphasized a Jan. 20 attack on a provincial government compound in the southern city of Karbala, where gunmen wearing American-style uniforms and driving sport utility vehicles breached the compound and killed five U.S. soldiers.

Two months later, an American raid in Basra captured Qais Khazali, who admitted to authorizing the attack on the complex, Bergner said. In the process of capturing Khazali, along with his brother, Layith Khazali, U.S. forces found a 22-page document that discussed the preparations for that attack, including "detailed information regarding our soldiers' activities, shift changes, and defenses, and this information was shared with the attackers," Bergner said.

Khazali allegedly worked closely with the Iranian Quds force, in particular Hajji Yusif, deputy commander for the Quds Force Department of External Special Operations, to develop a network of Shiite militants in Iraq to carry out attacks, Bergner said.

During the same March 20 raid that nabbed the Khazali brothers, U.S. forces also captured Ali Musa Daqduq, who initially pretended to be a deaf-mute but later admitted to U.S. forces that he had been working with Hezbollah since 1983, Bergner said.

Daqduq allegedly commanded a Hezbollah special operations group, provided security for the militia's leader, Hasan Nasrallah, and in May 2006 went to Iran to work with the Quds Force to train Iraqi Shiite militiamen, which Bergner described as "special groups."

During his four trips into Iraq before his capture, Daqduq "monitored and reported on the training and arming of special groups in mortars and rockets, manufacturing and employment of improvised explosive devices and kidnapping operations," Bergner said. "Most significantly, he was tasked to organize the special groups in ways that mirrored how Hezbollah was organized in Lebanon.

"Both Ali Musa Daqduq and Qais Khazali state that senior leadership within the Quds force knew of and supported planning for the eventual Karbala attack that killed five coalition soldiers," Bergner added.

Bergner would not identify which senior Iranian leaders he believes are aware of the networks between the Quds force and Iraqi militiamen. But when asked if Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, could be unaware of the activity, he said: "That would be hard to imagine."

"There does not seem to be any follow through on the commitments that Iran has made to work with Iraq in addressing the destabilizing security issues here in Iraq," Bergner said.

Officials at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad could not be immediately reached for comment.

Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in a brief telephone interview that he had not seen the details of the American presentation and could not respond to the specific allegations. But he agreed that senior Iraqi officials have repeatedly "raised these concerns" about Iranian involvement in Iraq at the "highest levels" of the Iranian government.

Bergner said that the Quds force runs three camps "not too far from Tehran" that train between 20 and 60 Iraqis at a time in the use of roadside bombs, rockets, sniping and other violent tactics, with the intent that they will return to Iraq to fight. These militiamen include fighters from the Mahdi Army, the militia run by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, Bergner said. But he sought to distance Sadr -- who has increasingly advocated against violence that could injure Iraqis -- from these fighters.

"We believe that these are operating outside his [Sadr's] control and that he shares the concern and the seriousness that they represent and is trying to find ways to bring an end to it," Bergner said.

Bergner said the U.S. accusations were based upon interviews with Daqduq, Khazali, and other detainees, along with documents and computer files that painted a picture of a network of alliances between Iraqi militants, Iranian security forces, and Hezbollah. Bergner echoed Zebari's assertion that senior Iraqi officials have complained to Iranian leaders about their country's role in the Iraq war in recent months.

"The reality of this is they're not only killing American forces, they're killing Iraqis, they're killing Iraqi security forces, and they're disrupting the stability in Iraq," he said. "And it's a concern for the government of Iraq."