Free Republic

As a radical Islamic army marches across Iraq, America is making a deal with the devil. Qassem Suleymani, the head of Iran’s secretive Quds Force, is allied with us in Baghdad — but he’s plotted to kill Americans elsewhere. As Kenneth R. Timmerman reveals in his new book, “Dark Forces,” Suleymani was even the shadowy figure behind the killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, Libya. He’s the Wizard of Oz of Iranian terror, the most dreaded and most effective terrorist alive. He is Qassem Suleymani, the head of the Quds Force, an organization that acts as a combination CIA...

Iraqi forces have seized from Islamic State militants a string of hamlets and villages in the dust-choked desert southeast of Ramadi... But the yellow-and-green flags that line the sides of the newly secured roads and flutter from rooftops leave no doubt as to who is leading the fighting here: Kitaeb Hezbollah, a Shiite militia designated a terrorist organization by the United States. Iraq’s two main allies — Iran and the United States — have vied for influence over Iraq’s battle to retake ground from Islamic State militants in the past year. While Iranian-linked Shiite militias have spearheaded the fight elsewhere,...

The al-Qaeda leader who is thought to have devised the plan for the July 7 suicide bombings in London and an array of terrorist plots against Britain has been captured by the Americans. Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a former major in Saddam Hussein’s army, was apprehended as he tried to enter Iraq from Iran and was transferred this week to the “high-value detainee programme” at Guantanamo Bay. Abd al-Hadi was taken into CIA custody last year, it emerged from US intelligence sources yesterday, in a move which suggests that he was interrogated for months in a “ghost prison” before being transferred...

“My greatest fear,” General Raymond Odierno, the then commanding general of U.S. forces in Iraq, told me in early 2010, “is that we stabilize Iraq, then hand it over to the Iranians in our rush to the exit.” General O (as he is known), had recently watched the 2007 movie Charlie Wilson’s War, which recounts how U.S. interest in Afghanistan ceased once the mujahedeen defeated the Soviet Army in 1989 and drove them out. Now, he had a premonition that the same could happen in Iraq. “I’ve invested too much here,” he said, “to simply walk away and let that...

Iranian-backed Shiite militias have left the northern Iraq city of Tikrit, a key condition the U.S. demanded before it agreed to begin launching airstrikes Wednesday to support Iraqi forces and try to retake the city from the Islamic State group, the top U.S. general for the Middle East said Thursday. Austin said he witnessed brutality by Shiite militias during his extensive experience leading U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. "I will not -- and I hope we will never -- coordinate or cooperate with Shiite militias," he said, adding a blunt explanation for why the Iranian-led offensive failed: The wrong...

US commanders continue to insist that they are supporting Iraqi security forces, and not the Iranian-backed Shiite militias who make up more than two-thirds of the fighting force in the Tikrit offensive. US military officials’ denials that they are serving as the air force for Iranian-backed Shiite militias that are responsible for killing hundreds of American soldiers before US forces withdrew from Iraq in December 2011 becomes even more perplexing once you understand that many of the top leaders of these militias have been designated by the US as terrorists. And one of these militias (Hezbollah Brigades) is listed as...

Iraq, in short, could be experiencing what Lebanon did decades ago as Hezbollah fighters took the Bekaa Valley. In this case, the land in question is Mesopotamia and the forces are PMUs, but the result will be the same: a swath of land in which the government is gradually ceding ground to powerful paramilitary factions with strong terrorist connections.

Iraqi and Shia militia forces have been taking back ground from Islamic State, pushing the jihadist fighters out of much of the town of Tikrit. But in a sign of Tehran’s growing military presence in the Iraq, Iranian weapons were a nearly ubiquitous sight in images and videos coming out of the offensive to take the mostly Sunni city. Ever since Islamic State shocked the region with its capture of Mosul last summer, Iran has opened up its arsenals and flooded clients, proxies and friends in Iraq with arms and vehicles.

Wearing a camouflage uniform with militia patches and a green headband, Nawar Mohammed is the image of an Iraqi Shiite fighter except for one detail: he is Sunni. Mohammed is one of some 250 Sunni residents of Al-Alam who joined Asaib Ahl al-Haq, an Iranian-backed Shiite militia with a fearsome reputation for kidnappings and killings targeting their community, to battle the Islamic State group after it seized their town. It would once have been all but unthinkable for a member of Iraq's Sunni Arab minority to join a Shiite militia, but opposition to ISIS, which overran large areas north and...

The U.S. has failed to live up to its promises to help Iraq fight Islamic State extremists, unlike the “unconditional” assistance being given by Iran, the commander of Iraq’s powerful Shiite militias alleged Friday. In a battlefield interview near Tikrit, where Iraqi forces are fighting to retake Saddam Hussein’s hometown from the militants of the so-called Islamic State, commander Hadi al-Amiri criticized those who “kiss the hands of the Americans and get nothing in return.” […] An Iraqi government official told The Associated Press that Iran has sold Baghdad nearly $10 billion in arms and hardware, mostly weapons for urban...

A source in the Salahuddin Operations Command said Iraqi forces would not move forward until reinforcements reached Tikrit, of which Islamic State still holds around half. Using guerrilla warfare tactics, the militants have turned the city into a labyrinth of home-made bombs and booby-trapped buildings, and are using snipers to halt their progress... A victory in Tikrit would give Iraqi forces momentum for the next stage of the campaign to retake Mosul, the largest city under control of Islamic State, which now rules a self-proclaimed caliphate in Sunni regions in Syria and Iraq. But the involvement of Iran, which backs...

The following are excerpts from the televised confessions of Muayed Al-Nasseri, who commanded Saddam Hussein's "the Army of Muhammad" throughout 2004. The confessions were aired by the Iraqi TV channel that operated from the UAE, Al-Fayhaa TV, on January 14, 2005. Interrogator: What is your name? Muayed Al-Nasseri: Colonel Muayed Yassin 'Aziz 'Abd Al-Razaq Al-Nasseri, commander of the Army of Muhammad, one of the resistance factions in Iraq. The Army of Muhammad was founded by Saddam Hussein after the fall of the regime, on April 9, 2003. At first, Yasser Al-Shab'awi was put in charge, until his captured in July...

In an announcement that could complicate the cornerstone of America’s mission in Iraq—training Iraq’s military to fight ISIS—an Iranian general said Monday that he also is prepared to begin training Iraqi military officers. The message comes after Baghdad and Tehran reached a security agreement in December, which has not been made public but will reportedly increase military cooperation between the two countries. Washington and Tehran have quietly cooperated in the fight against ISIS largely by avoiding direct contact and keeping to separate spheres of influence. If Iran begins training Iraqi officers at the same time the U.S. carries out its...

Despite the loss of a close ally in outgoing prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) appears ready to move on by offering substantial military support to his successor in Baghdad. As incoming Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi goes about the business of forming a new government, Iran seems intent on expanding direct military assistance to its neighbor. Tehran made a major military commitment to Baghdad while Maliki was still clinging to power, and the political and military steps it has reportedly taken since then indicate determined support for a nascent government that remains dominated by Maliki's...

A PUBLIC relations stumble between Tehran and Baghdad has intensified speculation that one of Iran’s most senior clerics is about to extend his power—and Iran’s theocratic system—into Iraq.On his return from a visit to Tehran, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s office released statements on his meetings with several senior Iranian officials—but it was silent on Mr. Maliki’s encounter with 63-year-old Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi. Despite a Baghdad blackout on what is understood to have been their third meeting in recent months, Iran’s government-run news agency IRNA released a photograph of Mr. Maliki and Ayatollah Shahroudi—who is Iraqi by birth—greeting each...

A few years back, Iran formulated a scenario for "the day after" Hezbollah leaves the scene in Lebanon, either if a new civil war breaks out or if the Syrians signed a peace treaty with Israel. Iran wanted to make sure that a Plan B was ready, automatically switching to a military group that would do the job Hezbollah had been doing, in terms of promoting and defending Iranian influence in the Arab world while "protecting" Arab Shiites... The conditions in Iraq, after all, were similar to those in Lebanon when Hezbollah was founded in the early 1980s. There was...

Iran is ready to expand its military and security ties with Iraq, its armed forces chief of staff has said, a week after the exit of US forces from their neighbour. General Hassan Firouzabadi hailed the "forced departure" of the US and allied forces that he said "was due to the resistance and determination of the Iraqi people and government," the state Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The statements were made in messages Gen Firouzabadi sent to his Iraqi counterpart, Lieutenant General Babaker Zebari, and to Iraq's acting defence minister, Saadun al-Dulaimi, IRNA said. The departure of the US troops...

Consistency is irrelevant to progressives. Monday, November 13, 2006 12:01 a.m. On Dec. 20, 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, then Ronald Reagan's Middle East envoy, met Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. According to declassified documents, the Reagan administration sought to re-establish long-severed relations with Baghdad amid concern about growing Iranian influence. While U.S. intelligence had earlier confirmed Saddam's use of chemical weapons, Mr. Rumsfeld did not broach the subject. His handshake with Saddam, caught on film by Iraqi television, represented a triumph for diplomatic realism.

London, May 13 – Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) had provided the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq heavy weapons including anti-aircraft missiles, it emerged on Friday. The Iraqi daily az-Zaman which is published in London and Baghdad quoted credible Iraqi sources as revealing that the IRGC had given al-Qaeda in Iraq, Strela-type SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles, modern explosives, and a large number of personnel arms including Kalashnikovs and BKC machineguns. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is believed to be led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is on the United States’ wanted list. The report said that representatives of al-Zarqawi’s group met in...

FORT TARIK, Iraq, May 7, 2006 – Flying to this fort illustrates the challenges the Iraqi border police face in securing the frontier. After leaving Baghdad and its rivers, the groves of palm trees give way to irrigated fields. These give way to a large swamp covered with reeds and crisscrossed by a myriad of trails. At the edge of the swamp, the green disappears and miles of open desert lay ahead. For miles in any direction there is no trace of life. Where water once stood, there are large pans of salt that reflect the sun and drive the...