Iran has been subverting the Baghdad government as part of a plan to gain total control over neighboring Iraq.
A new report by the Jamestown Foundation said Iran has expanded its subversion efforts and intends to fragment Iraq. Authored by U.S. Army analyst Mounir Elkhamri, the report said Teheran plans to annex the Iraq's Shi'ite areas and oil fields.
"Iran has now moved covertly and overtly onto Iraq to subvert Iraqi institutions and eventually to assume total control," the report said. "Iran has now entered a wider and more dangerous game by subverting the Iraqi police and armed forces into a 'greater Shia' cause, which Iran hopes will lead to the fragmentation of Iraq and the incorporation of oil-rich Shia lands into Iran."
Elkhamri is a Middle East military analyst at the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. A sergeant in the Army Reserve, he recently returned from an 18-month tour in Iraq where he worked with a logistics brigade, a maneuver battalion and a Special Forces team.
The report, "Iran's Contribution to the Civil War in Iraq," (that's the link to the pdf...read it) said Iran had anticipated a U.S. invasion of Iraq since 2001. After the invasion Iran infiltrated the new Iraqi government and security forces and assassinated former Iraqi officers and scientists.
"Today, Iran considers Iraq as its frontline state against the United States and its allies especially if the United States decides to attack Iran's nuclear installations," the report said.
U.S. officials agreed with much of the Jamestown assessment. They said Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps maintains at least 150 intelligence operatives in Iraq, many of them embedded with Shi'ite militias.
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