US believes Iran is aiding Iraqi militias
By Bryan Bender,
Globe Staff, 4/9/2004
WASHINGTON -- US intelligence officials believe that Iran's hard-line and fiercely independent security services are providing support -- either directly or through proxies -- to outlawed Iraqi militia forces loyal to Shi'a Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that have been clashing with the US-led coalition during the past week, current and former US government officials and analysts said yesterday.
We know on the ground that there are many hundreds and probably thousands of Iranian intelligence agents spreading money to their favored forces," said Larry Diamond, who returned from Iraq on Saturday, where he served as a senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority. "There are multiple signs all over. Iran has been funding and arming several radical Islamic militias, not just Sadr's, with different elements of the Iranian power structure aiding different groups."
One defense official who requested anonymity but has access to the latest intelligence reports added that Iran is "not providing official government support, but that doesn't preclude that individuals are coming across the border with government acquiescence."
The new concerns that help and money may be flowing to Sadr's forces directly from Iranian agents -- or the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist group -- cast new light on the complexity of the rebellions that have been sparked this week by militias in a region of Iraq with strong ties to the largely Shi'a Islamic Republic of Iran, considered by Washington to be a sponsor of global terrorism.
Since US-led forces toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein a year ago today, Iranian influence in Iraq has grown steadily, say US officials who have repeatedly warned Tehran not to further destabilize its neighbor.
"We know the Iranians have been meddling, and it's unhelpful to have neighboring countries meddling in the affairs of Iraq," Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday.
But intelligence officials and specialists said yesterday that there is little the United States can do to rein in Iranian aid to anti-US Shi'a groups such as Sadr's banned Mahdi Army. Washington, in the midst on ongoing negotiations to persuade Tehran to end its suspected nuclear weapons program, has little leverage with Iranian security elements that operate independently of President Mohammed Khatami of Iran.
"The government does not control a great many things that are done by the Iranian state machinery," said Edward Luttwak, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and a Pentagon adviser. "One of these parts is the Revolutionary Guard organization."
Sadr, the 31-year old cleric who has called for a Muslim theocracy in Iraq, has traveled extensively to Iran in recent years, including finding temporary refuge in 1999 after his father and two brothers were assassinated, many believe by Hussein's forces. According to news reports, he has met with senior Iranian clerics who control secret security forces.
"Sadr has been to Iran many times and has been supported by the Iranian regime," said Ali Parsa, a professor of Islamic history at California State University at Fullerton and an Iranian exile in contact with opposition forces inside Iran. "One reason that other Shi'a leaders are opposed to him is his dependency on the Iranians."
Diamond said yesterday that Iran is also supporting the militias of other Shi'ite groups such as the Dawa Party and the Badr Organization. He said sources in Iraq have told him that the main entry point for Iranian agents and supplies is near Basra in the south.
Iran backed groups opposed to Hussein, against whom it fought an eight-year war in the 1980s.
The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is represented on the US-backed Iraqi Governing Council, is supported financially by Iranian government sources, according to American and Iraqi officials. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shi'a cleric, is also believed to have links to Iran, though he is considered resistant to outside influence. Iranian organizations have also provided humanitarian assistance to Iraq's Shi'a population in an attempt to win hearts and minds.
US intelligence officials said they are also looking at possible links between the Shi'ite militias and Hezbollah, which has attacked Israeli forces from southern Lebanon. Photos of Said Hasan Nasrallah, secretary general of the Lebanese Hezbollah, are now sold outside Sadr's office in Sadr City, the Baghdad slum named after his father.
CIA Director George A. Tenet testified to Congress last month about Iranian activities in Iraq.
"The social and political interplay is further complicated by Iran, especially in the south, where Tehran pursues its own interests and hopes to maximize its influence among Iraqi Shi'a," Tenet said.
But Luttwak and Diamond said there is little recourse for the United States other than tracking down Sadr and destroying anti-US militias while pressing ahead with Iraqi democracy, he said.
"We are not willing to put sufficient pressure to achieve that," Luttwak said. "We are entering a season not of more [US] intervention but less."
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