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KurdistanObserver.com
How Iran's Revolutionaries Egged On Attacks in
Iraq
BY ELI LAKE - Special to the NY Sun
April 27, 2007
BAGHDAD The commander of the foreign
operations wing of Iran's Revolutionary Guard met with Sunni Kurdish jihadist
leaders in April 2005 to encourage them to launch attacks in Iraq.
News of the meeting was disclosed Tuesday in an
interview with Osman Ali Mustapha, a former Kurdish police officer who was
recruited by Iranian intelligence in 2004 to spy on American bases and
eventually help facilitate the assassination of a Kurdish police chief in
Halabja.
The meeting between the Iranian general, Qassem
Suleimani, and the leaders of Kurdish Sunni jihadist groups was confirmed by two
Kurdish counterterrorism officials and by an American intelligence officer
contacted after the interview.
Mr. Mustapha, whose story appeared in The New
York Sun on Thursday, said the commander of the Quds Force, General Suleimani,
"spoke on behalf of Ali Khamenei," Iran's supreme leader, at a summit in the
Iranian city of Kermanshah. Mr. Mustapha continued, "He said, Ali Khamenei told
us that any group of Islamists, Tawhid and Jihad, Ansar al Sunna, any group can
go across the border to Iraq." (Tawhid and Jihad is the original organization
founded by the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.)
The account of Mr. Mustapha would settle the
question of whether the commander of Iran's Quds Force was acting on his own.
Yesterday in Washington, General Petraeus, the commander of multinational forces
in Iraq, would not answer questions from journalists as to whether the support
from the Quds Force for terrorism in Iraq was the official policy of the regime.
"With respect to how high does it go and, you
know, what do they know and when did they know it, I honestly cannot that is
such a sensitive issue," he said.
The general continued, "At least I do not know
of anything that specifically identifies how high it goes beyond the level of
the Quds Force, Commander Suleimani. Beyond that, it is very difficult to tell
we know where he is in the overall chain of command; he certainly reports to the
very top but again, nothing that would absolutely indicate, again, how high
the knowledge of this actually goes."
In his press conference yesterday, the general,
fresh from briefing the House and Senate and receiving his fourth star, said a
secret terror group known as the Qazali network was "provided substantial
funding, training on Iranian soil, advanced explosive munitions and technologies
as well as run of the mill arms and ammunition, in some cases advice and in some
cases even a degree of direction."
He also said that coalition forces had received
a 22-page memorandum on a computer that disclosed the details of a terror
operation in Karbala that killed five American soldiers in January. He said the
memo was an accounting of the operation to Iranian backers.
The Iranian role in Iraq is still hotly debated
in Washington. As the New York Sun reported in a series of stories in January,
the CIA and State Department have said the Iranian hand is less prevalent in
Iraqi terrorism than the military commanders overseeing the war here.
A former deputy prime minister of Iraq and head
of the country's deba'athification commission, Ahmad Chalabi, in an interview
this month also cast doubt on the Iranian role in Iraq. Mr. Chalabi said that a
good portion of the financing, particularly for al Qaeda, comes from protection
fees local tribal leaders charge Iraqi and Arab contractors supplying American
bases in order to deliver truck loads of equipment and food.
Asked Wednesday about the claim that General
Suleimani met with the Sunni jihadist leaders in Kermanshah, an American
intelligence official said, "We know about this meeting. Our information is
based on second hand accounts."
The timing of the meeting, in April 2005, is
important because less than six months later, in November of that year,
America's ambassador in Iraq at the time, Zalmay Khalilzad invited his Iranian
counterpart to begin open discussions on how to stabilize Iraq. The Iranians
never followed through on the offer.
A similar offer was extended this week by
Secretary of State Rice to the Iranians for meeting in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt,
next week for Iraq's neighbors to discuss ways to support the government led by
Prime Minister Maliki. The Iranians have yet to say whether they will attend the
meeting. | 
