Undeniable evidence of Zionist–Iranian collusion in the Iraq War: 40 sources

“What was Iran doing in Iraq from 2003-11?” 💀

Exhibit i: 2002, The Echo of Iran, iss. clvi-clxv, p. 35

‘SCIRI’ is short for Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the umbrella organization for Iranian-sponsored Khomeinist insurrection against Saddam Hussein. Like its military wing—the Badr Corps—it was renamed subsequent to the toppling of Ba’athist Iraq. The Badr Brigade was renamed the Badr ‘Organization’ in 2003, and its parent followed suit four years later, renaming itself the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC). The SCIRI-Badr network was long backed simultaneously by Iran and the United States. —E.G.

‘SCIRI can be used by Washington to send a message to the Shia community in Iraq, to help in a military strike and as a conduit to Tehran,’ one of the sources said.

Exhibit ii: 2003(?), Israfax, vols. XV-XXI, iss. ccxlvi-cclxii, p. 3

Abdul Aziz al-Hakim was the head of the Badr Organization. —E.G.

Following a meeting with US. Secretary of State Condoleeza [sic] Rice, Iraqi Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim ‘asked for the American forces to stay in Iraq.’ Later, following an hour-long session, U.S. President George W. Bush assured Hakim that Iraq will continue to have U.S. support. (National Post, Dec. 5)

Exhibit iii: Sep. 2, 2003, ‘An Unlikely Alliance,’ RANE

Mohammed Bakir al-Hakim was the elder brother of Abdul Aziz and chief progenitor of the SCIRI-Badr network in 1982 under the direction of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, having already fled to Iran some two years prior. Iraqi Shi’ites who preserved nationalist loyalty to their Arab country and underwent the full Saddamist-Ba’athist experience in resilience generally—regardless of their divided personal viewpoints on Saddam Hussein—detest the Iranian-Hakimite SCIRI-Badr-Da’wa nexus. —E.G.

First, though far from being pro-American, [Mohammed Bakir] al-Hakim was engaged in limited cooperation with the United States, including — through SCIRI — participating in the U.S.-sponsored Iraq Governing Council. Second, upon his death, Iran announced a three-day mourning period in his honor. Al-Hakim, who had lived in exile in Iran during much of Saddam Hussein's rule in Baghdad, was an integral part of the Shiite governing apparatus — admired and loved in Iran. We therefore have two facts. First, al-Hakim was engaged in limited but meaningful collaboration with the United States, which appears to be why he was killed. Second, he was intimately connected to Iranian ruling circles, and not just to those circles that Americans like to call ‘reformers.’ If we stop and think about it, these two facts would appear incompatible, but in reality they reveal a growing movement toward alignment between the United States and Iran. [emphasis added]

Exhibit iv: Bob Dreyfuss (2005), Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, ch. xii, pp. 339-40

Robert ‘Bob’ Dreyfuss, an acolyte of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.’s promethean movement spearheading the cause of objective human dignity, has compiled important research and analysis shedding light on the empirical puppetry of pan-Islamism in both their superficially ‘Sunni’ Qutbist-Wahhabi and superficially ‘Shi’a’ Khomeinist faces. —E.G.

The case of Iraq is most startling. President Bush went to war in Iraq after accusing Saddam Hussein of forging an alliance with Al Qaeda. He warned that Saddam might be inclined to give weapons of mass destruction to bin Laden’s cells. But, as became evident in 2003, Saddam’s regime had no ties to Al Qaeda and no weapons of mass destruction to distribute. The regime in Baghdad, dictatorial though it was, was a secular one whose Baath Party leadership was a confirmed enemy of the Islamists—both the Shiite variety and the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.

But Bush, consciously and with deliberation, encouraged Iraq’s Islamists to reach for power. American forces and the CIA brought an ayatollah from London to Najaf, Iraq, and forged a pragmatic alliance with another ayatollah, Ali al-Sistani, an Iranian cleric who became the kingmaker in Iraq after the war. The United States worked with a radical Iraqi cleric, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, who commanded the 20,000-strong paramilitary Badr Brigade, a force that was armed and trained by Iran. And it promoted a terrorist group called the Islamic Call, or Al Dawa, a group that over its forty-year history had conducted bombings, assassinations, and other violent attacks, including an attack against the American embassy in Kuwait in the early 1980s. [emphasis added] On the Sunni front, in central Iraq, the chief political party to emerge after the war in 2003 was the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s official branch in Iraq.

Exhibit v: Bob Dreyfuss (Dec. 13, 2005), ‘Bush’s Shiite Gang in Baghdad,’ Huffington Post

Mr. Dreyfuss refused to cease explaining the gruesome reality as it truly is. —E.G.

More and more evidence is mounting that Iran’s ayatollahs have their hands deep into the Shiite-led government of Iraq. Astonishingly though, the Bush administration – and its allied phalanx of neoconservatives – have turned a blind eye to Iran’s influence in Iraq. That’s because the Iraqi Shiites, who run the regime in Baghdad, are supposed to be the ‘good guys,’ i.e., the ones we are defending in Iraq. As I’ve written before, the United States has 160,000 troops in Iraq serving as the Praetorian guard for that Shiite regime. We’re killing hundreds of Sunnis all over western Iraq on their behalf. [emphasis added]

Exhibit vi: Tom Englehardt (Nov. 29, 2005), ‘Dreyfuss on Bush’s Deadly Dance with Islamic Theocrats,’ TomDispatch

The old guard of the traditional anti-imperialist Left understood the truth about Iran forgotten by their modern-day jenius counterparts. —E.G.

For well over a year now, Human Rights Watch has been cataloguing Interior Ministry abuses and warning about a human rights catastrophe unraveling in ‘our’ Iraq. Last July, Peter Beaumont of the British Observer revealed that the Shiite religious/political powers-that-be had set up not one detention-and-torture center but a whole ‘ghost network’ of them — in some cases, he gave locations — in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, partly financed by British and American funds originally intended for the rebuilding of the police force. In these centers, torture methods ‘resurrected from the time of Saddam’ were being used; and the centers, in turn, were connected to paramilitary commando units (and police units) — basically kidnapping and death squads — being run by the Interior Ministry as well as by the Shiite religious parties. Such units are increasingly engaged in a war of revenge with Sunni insurgents and in an ever growing campaign of assassinations, summary executions, and disappearances in Sunni neighborhoods which months ago reached ‘epidemic levels.’ Human rights organizations in the country have hundreds of cases of disappearances on their lists — as well as assassinations, torture of every sort, and an endless raft of human rights violations.

When asked about these practices by the Washington Post’s Ellen Knickmeyer, Abdul Aziz Hakim, head of SCIRI, responded with complaints that the Bush administration wasn’t letting his men act aggressively enough. The United States, he insisted, ‘is tying Iraq’s hands in the fight against insurgents’ — oddly enough the very (tortured) image Vice President Dick Cheney recently used in opposing Senator John McCain’s anti-torture amendment in the Senate. (The amendment, he said, ‘would bind the president’s hands in wartime.’) [emphasis added]

Exhibit vii: Dec. 4, 2006, ‘President Bush Meets with His Eminence Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim, Leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq,’ The Oval Office

We have here a confession flaunted into the public record by none other than the war criminal administration of Dubya, who met personally with Iranian agent Abdul Aziz al-Hakim for a discussion on countering ‘terrorism.’ After all, ignorance is strength. —E.G.

SCIRI LEADER HAKIM: My meeting with President Bush today emerges from our shared commitment to continue dialogue and consultation among us and also on the basis of our conviction that the Iraqi issue is a mutual interest. It’s an issue that requires coordination between the two sides in a way that concerns both of us politically and from a security point of view and economic point of view, as well.

…

The U.S. interests, the Iraqi interests, the regional interests, they are all linked. Therefore, it is very important when we deal with this issue, we look at the interests of the Iraqi people. If we don't, this whole issue could backfire and could harm the interests of the region, the United States, and Iraq, as well.

Exhibit viii: Abdel Bari Atwan (2006), The Secret History of al Qaeda, ch. vi, pp. 218-19

Any sober geopolitical observer understoof full well who would fill a rapidly emptied post-Saddam power vacuum in Iraq. —E.G.

Ironically it is Iran, the long-term strategic enemy of the US, that has benefited most from US foreign policy and its military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the latter, the US put an end to the rule of Shi’ite Iran’s theological enemy, the (Sunni) Taliban. In Iraq they disposed of Iran’s secular enemy, Saddam Hussein. Furthermore, the Iranians took advantage of the US military engagement in Iraq to develop their own military and nuclear capabilities while nobody was looking, suddenly emerging as regional superpower. Iran achieved these two major victories without shooting a single bullet or losing a single soldier. [emphasis added]

The US has effectively presented Iraq on a golden plate to Iran. Iraqi President Talabani was a trusted ally of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war; the prime minister and many ministers in the new Iraqi government were trained and financed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and SCIRI leader al-Hakim, whose Badr Brigades were based in Iran prior to the US invasion.

Exhibit ix: Sheryl Gay Stolberg (Dec. 4, 2006), ‘Bush Meets With Rival of Iraqi Leader,’ The New York Times

Once Abdul Aziz al-Hakim fled to Iran for exile, he permanently relinquished any hitherto possible credentials as a patriotic Iraqi. As the head of the Badr Organization, he orchestrated and oversaw—on behalf of the U.S., Israel, and Iran—mass-murderous death squads who ethnically cleansed the Sunni Arab minority in Iraq under the auspices of ‘de-Ba’athification,’ providing terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) the fuel it needed to co-opt the Sunni resistance against occupation. Zarqawi’s terrorism ‘conveniently’ in turn amplified U.S.-Iranian raison d’être for continued occupational crimes. —E.G.

[Abdul Aziz al-Hakim] remarked last week that if Iraq deteriorated into civil war, Sunni Arabs would be the ‘biggest losers’ — a comment that was widely interpreted as a veiled threat to Sunnis.

Exhibit x: Bob Dreyfuss (Dec. 4, 2006), ‘Bush’s Meeting With A Murderer,’ TomPaine.com

Journalist Dreyfuss was not fooled by the illustrious façade, and neither were Iraqis. Hakim advanced the prospect of Zionist-favorable balkanization by another name. —E.G.

President George W. Bush meets today with Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the turbaned leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a Shiite fundamentalist party that is strongly tied to Iran. In so doing, the president is meeting with someone who, perhaps more than anyone else in Iraq, is responsible for trying to destroy Iraqi national unity, prevent national reconciliation among Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian mix, and push Iraq into civil war. Al-Hakim, who was virtually Fed-Ex’d into Iraq by the Pentagon in March 2003, was a mainstay of the Iraqi National Congress, led by neoconservative darling Ahmed Chalabi throughout the 1990s. And today al-Hakim controls the SCIRI militia, the Badr Brigade, the Iraqi interior ministry and many of Iraq’s feared death squads. Not to put too fine a point on it, Hakim is a mass murderer.

What’s stunning about Bush’s encounter with al-Hakim is that it occurs precisely at the moment when critically important bridges are being built across Iraq’s Sunni-Shiite divide—bridges that al-Hakim is trying to blow up.

During a stop in Amman, Jordan, on his way to the United States, al-Hakim point blank tried to torpedo the idea of an international conference that might bring together Iraq’s various factions. Such a conference was explicitly proposed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week, who offered to host it. A similar conference, or one like it, is likely to be part of the recommendations that will be issued on Wednesday by the Iraq Study Group, the panel co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Indiana Representative Lee Hamilton. But al-Hakim trashes the idea. ‘It is unreasonable or incorrect to discuss issues related to the Iraqi people at international conferences,’ said the Shiite radical. ‘The proposal is unrealistic, incorrect and illegal.’ (It is, of course, perfectly legal.)

It is not the first time that al-Hakim has tried to undermine reconciliation efforts. During repeated attempts by the Arab League to organize a conference that would bring Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders together with representatives of the armed resistance in search of an accord, al-Hakim almost single-handedly destroyed the idea. And it is al-Hakim, whose SCIRI controls much of Iraq’s south, who is the driving force behind efforts to create a separatist Shiite-run state in Iraq’s south.

Exhibit xi: Bob Dreyfuss (Mar. 1, 2007), ‘Iraq 101: Players, Haters – Iraqi Politics at a Glance,’ Mother Jones, vol. XXXII, iss. i-v, p. 59

Perhaps due to the ‘Patriot’ Act’s implemented repression of civil liberties in the United States for the purpose of covering up the ever-exposed reality behind the Iraq War, Dreyfuss could not refer to the criminal administration in a description too overtly scathing. In any case, he summarizes the distinction between the Khomeinist SCIRI-Badr sewer and Sadrist movement very well: the SCIRI is a rabidly sectarian Iranian offshoot torturing Iraqi civilians under institutional collaboration with the U.S. government, while the Mahdi Army was directed under the ineffective leadership of the committed nationalist Muqtada al-Sadr, who proved unable to contain his umbrella movement’s extremist factions. —E.G.

Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. sciri [sic] and its armed
wing, the Badr Brigade, were founded as a fundamentalist Shiite party
in 1982, under the tutelage of Ayatollah Khomeini’s Revolutionary Guard;
they have been supported by Iran ever since.

Party leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, a cleric and former commander of the
Badr Brigade who favors autonomy for the Shiite south, was invited to
the White House last year. sciri is blamed for torture and assassinations,
and its members have infiltrated the Iraqi army and police.

Mahdi Army. A cluster of militias led by the controversial and
charismatic (in a grim-faced sort of way) thirtysomething cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr, scion of the Sadr family that helped found Dawa. Its tens of
thousands of armed men are only loosely under Sadr’s control. Like sciri,
the Mahdi Army has spawned death squads, including a possibly rogue unit
in Baghdad led by Abu Deraa, ‘the Zarqawi of the Shiites.’ Sadr, who also
has ties to Iran, is more of an Iraqi nationalist than other Iran-allied
Shiites.

Exhibit xii: Bob Dreyfuss (Jul. 1, 2007), ‘U.S.-Iran alliance in Iraq?’ Huffington Post

It would do our contemporaneous ‘leftist’ friends some good to cease reading Caitlin Johnstone and start reading Bob Dreyfuss. —E.G.

Some scattered items in the news today shed yet more light on the oft-overlooked U.S.-Iranian alliance in Iraq. Yes, that would be the same U.S-Iran alliance that many Sunnis in Iraq, including Baathists and resistance leaders, keep talking about.

Here’s the problem: Most of the key forces in Iraq that are closest to the United States, namely, the Kurds and the Shia party that used to call itself the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, actually want to partition Iraq, not preserve it. The Kurds want to split off the north, and SCIRI wants to carve out a pro-Iranian Shia fiefdom in the south. The vast majority of Iraqis oppose these ideas. But the Bush administration, flailing about, seems to be getting caught up in the idea. And now it’s an official plan from the Brookings Institution, which has proposed ‘soft partition.’

So the United States and Iran are increasingly aligned in Iraq. [emphasis added]

In an interview Newsweek, Mohsen Rezai, the grand old man of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, says that Maliki’s regime in Iraq ‘is of strategic importance to us. ... We want this government to stay in power. Rival Sunni countries oppose Maliki. We haven’t.’

The Post, meanwhile, writes about Amar Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, the son of. He’s taking over SCIRI, now SICI. (In the article, Robin Wright talks about the conference put together by Hakim, Iraq for All Iraqis, at which I spoke. No, she doesn’t mention me.) But in addressing SICI’s remaining power in Iraq, the Post notes that SICI’s power in the south of Iraq is ever less and less. It quotes an Arab diplomat in Iraq thusly:

‘The only person who has grass-roots support is Sadr. Hakim has Bush receiving him at the White House and the ayatollahs seeing him in Iran. But Hakim’s influence in southern Iraq began to ebb at the end of 2006.’

So there you have it. Hakim has the support of the White House and the ayatollahs. And the Iranians are calling the survival of the Dawa-SICI regime in Baghdad ‘of strategic importance.’ [emphasis added]

Exhibit xiii: Aram Roston (2008), The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi, ch. xxxii, pp. 222-23

U.S. foreign support for the SCIRI-Badr Khomeinists began long before the materially culminated Zionist-Crusader invasion of Iraq in 2003. —E.G.

Out of the public eye, the bond between the Americans and the hard-right Shiites was strengthened in an expansive conference room in the Old Executive Office Building in August 2002. On one side sat the Iraqis: Kurdish leaders and Ayad Allawi, With them was Ahmad Chalabi, And there as well was the odd man out, a bearded cleric dressed in a robe and turban. It was Ayatollah Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the brother of SCIRI’s leader. Across from the polité and ceremonious Iraqis sat Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers.

But the most dominant presence was a man who was not even in the room. On a giant wall monitor was the face of Vice President Dick Cheney, joining the meeting via videoconference from his home in Wyoming. He bid a warm welcome to his guests from the Middle East.

The man Cheney greeted from SCIRI was completely loyal to the government of Iran and was there with Tehran's full approval. [emphasis added]

Exhibit xiv: Peter W. Galbraith (Nov. 17, 2008), Unintended Consequences: How War in Iraq Strengthened America’s Enemies, ch. iii

Even neoconservatives brought themselves to admit the patent reality. —E.G.

When U.S. forces ousted Saddam’s regime from the south in early April 2003, the Badr Organization infiltrated from Iran to fill the void left by the Bush administration’s failure to plan for security and governance in postinvasion Iraq.

In the months that followed, the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) appointed Badr Organization leaders to key positions in Iraq’s American-created army and police. At the same time, L. Paul Bremer’s CPA appointed party officials from the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) to be governors and serve on governorate councils throughout southern Iraq. [emphasis added]

…

Iran’s role in Iraq is pervasive, but also subtle. When Iraq drafted its permanent constitution in 2005, the American ambassador energetically engaged in all parts of the process. But behind the scenes, the Iranian ambassador intervened to block provisions that Tehran did not like. As it happened, both the Americans and the Iranians wanted to strengthen Iraq’s central government. [emphasis added] While the Bush administration clung to the mirage of a single Iraqi people, Tehran worked to give its proxies, the pro-Iranian Iraqis it supported-by then established as the government of Iraq-as much power as possible. (Thanks to Kurdish obstinacy, neither the United States nor Iran succeeded in its goal, but even now both countries want to see the central government strengthened.)

Exhibit xv: Mark Curtis (2010), Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam, pp. 231-33

Far from merely U.S. empirical hegemony, the British are ever-complicit in propping the Zionist-Iranian conspiracy likewise. —E.G.

…in the 1990s Britain also engaged in efforts to overthrow [Saddam’s regime], which led it into contacts with a number of Islamist groups.

Soon after opposing the Shia uprising in Iraq in early 1991, President George Bush senior authorised a major covert action programme, costing over $40 million, to assist Iraqi opposition groups by funding and training their guerilla forces. Shia and Kurdish forces from Iraq were secretly flown to Saudi Arabia for training in tactics, communications and use of weapons, the latter purchased from the former Soviet Union. London and Washington also helped to establish two umbrella opposition groupings. The first, the Iraqi National Accord (INA), had been created in December 1990, and brought MI6 and the CIA into collaboration with Prince Turki’s Saudi intelligence service and the Jordanians – the familiar array of forces seen so often in postwar covert action in the Middle East.

The second group, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), was created in June 1992 as an umbrella for the vying opposition factions, with a base in London and funding from the CIA. The INC was led by Ahmed Chalabi, a secular Shia with close links to US Defence Secretary Richard Cheney, and its broad base included the two main Kurdish parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), and the two main Islamist groups calling for the establishment of an Islamic state in Iraq. The first of these was the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the principal Iraqi Shia group based in and backed by Iran since its founding in 1982, which undertook various bombings and assassinations against the Saddam regime and formed a militia, the Badr Brigade, to conduct cross-border raids into Iraq. The other, smaller Islamist group was al-Dawa al-Islamiya (Islamic Call), which had established branches in Tehran and London following its proscription in Iraq in 1980. Al-Dawa’s London branch was headed by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who, after the 2003 invasion, would return to Iraq and briefly become another prime minister. Both SCIR and al-Dawa initially sat on the INC council, but pulled out in the mid-1990s, in part over disputes with the Kurds who wanted Iraq to become a loose federation rather than a centralised state. Indeed, disputes within the INC led to its near-collapse in the mid-1990s.

British Foreign Minister Douglas Hogg was reported in 1995 as having ‘regular meetings’ with SCIRI.

Exhibit xvi: W. Andrew Terrill (Feb. 2004), ‘The United States and Iraq’s Shi’ite Clergy: Partners Or Adversaries?’ Strategic Studies Institute, pp. 24-27

The receipts cease to cease. —E.G.

SCIRI has also chosen to participate in the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi Governing Council, with Hojat al Islam ‘Abdul ‘Aziz al Hakim as the SCIRI representative. ‘Abdul ‘Aziz assumed this role while his brother Mohammad was still alive, and has continued on the Council after Mohammad al Hakim’s assassination.

…

The SCIRI leadership nevertheless has made frequent and caustic comments about the U.S. military presence in Iraq, despite the organization’s willingness to collaborate with U.S. authorities. In October 2003, for example, ‘Abdul ‘Aziz Hakim told an Iranian audience that the United States is an ‘enemy’ that seeks to turn Iraq into a colony. Despite such remarks, SCIRI rhetoric has also opposed guerrilla operations against U.S. forces. This view was first articulated by Mohammad al Hakim and unhesitatingly has been reiterated by his brother, ‘Abdul ‘Aziz. Rather, the SCIRI leadership maintains that the United States must leave Iraq as soon as possible, but it is not appropriate to consider armed resistance against these forces at this time. The SCIRI leadership also describes the current armed resistance as being dominated by Saddam regime remnants rather than Iraqi nationalist or patriots. The SCIRI leadership therefore is harsher in its description of the insurgents than the mainstream Arab media in neighboring countries. SCIRI detests the former Ba’thists and is not troubled by the idea of U.S. soldiers hunting them down and killing them. [emphasis added]

…

SCIRI’s leadership has initiated and maintained a strong effort to convince both the Iraqi public and the U.S. occupation authorities that the Badr Corps is not a threat to Iraqi security. Both Hakim brothers have claimed that the Badr Corps must transform itself from a military organization to a security organization in the aftermath of Saddam’s defeat. It is not totally clear how SCIRI defines the difference, although this distinction does suggest that heavy weapons are no longer necessary. In possible support of a more peaceful image, then-SCIRI leader Mohammed Bakr al Hakim announced on May 31, 2003, that the Badr Corps had given up its heavy weapons to focus on the political struggle. This claim was false, but clearly indicated that Hakim wished to reduce the profile of the Badr Corps, appear cooperative to the United States, and avoid a confrontation with coalition forces.

In May 2003, U.S. military authorities accused SCIRI of using the Badr Corps to participate in an attack on U.S. forces. SCIRI leaders emphatically denied the charge, which contradicts their strategy of cautious cooperation with the occupation. While SCIRI units may have been involved in this effort, they were probably operating without the SCIRI leadership’s authorization. SCIRI, at this time, seemed totally committed to cooperation with the occupation authorities as a matter of political strategy. [emphasis added]

…

In September 2003, ‘Abdul ‘Aziz renamed the Badr Corps as the Badr Organization as a way of indicating its movement away from military functions. Nevertheless, most Iraqis continue to call the organization the Badr Corps. SCIRI leaders often slip and use the old name, although they continue to present the message that the Badr Corps is being demilitarized. In an October 2003 interview with al Jazirah satellite television, ‘Abdul ‘Aziz stated that the Badr Corps had ‘turned into a civil organization and will play a role in the restoration of security and the reconstruction and building of a new Iraq.’ Also, in something of a contradiction, ‘Abdul ‘Aziz maintains that Badr Corps members should be included in the new Iraqi armed forces along with members of other existing Iraqi militias.

Exhibit xvii: Sens. Pat Roberts (R-KS), John D. ‘Jay’ Rockefeller IV (D-WV) (Sep. 8, 2006), ‘Report on the Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress: Together with Additional and Minority Views,’ sec. ii, p. 14. United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

Behold for yourself a confession from the horse’s mouth (no less). —E.G.

In early March 1995, a foreign government provided the U.S. information on the Iranians’ view of this meeting. It was indicated that Iran thought that the U.S. was seeking Iranian support for the Iraqi oppositionist uprising against Saddam Hussein planned for early March 1995.

Exhibit xviii: Cynthia A. Watson (Dec. 30, 2007), Nation-Building and Stability Operations: A Reference Handbook, pp. 110-11

The Badr Organization served U.S.-Israeli-Iranian hegemonic interests of not only amplifying—Gladio/P2-style—the ascendancy of Zarqawi’s AQI to discredit Iraqi Sunni Arab resistance to the Zionist-Crusader occupation, but likewise on the Shi’a front sought to liquidate nationalist holdouts among Muqtada al-Sadr’s Jaysh al-Mahdi (JAM), a.k.a. the Mahdi Army. By using the word ‘recognized,’ the author means ‘occupation-anointed.’ —E.G.

JAM and Badr Organization members periodically attack one another and are political rivals. The Badr Organization was one of the recognized militia under the Coalition Provisional Authority Order 91.

Exhibit xix: Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-DE) (Jan.-Feb. 2007), ‘Securing America’s Interest in Iraq: The Remaining Options: Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations,’ pp. 194-5. United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

Piece the dots together: American-Zionist imperialists catapulted the Iranian-trained and Iranian-beholden SCIRI-Badr nexus of sectarian Sunni-killing Khomeinist death squads into the halls of a hollowed-out Iraqi government, out of which the pseudo-Shi’a genocidal brigades slaughter enough innocent Sunni Arabs to feed Zarqawi’s AQI anti-Shi’a terrorist offshoot the manufactured validation it needed to co-opt the face of the Sunni insurgency. AQI-ISIS is a stooge creation jointly of Iran and Zionism. —E.G.

Shiite Insurgent Groups. The Shiite political community in Iraq is broken into a number of significant groups and parties, but Shiite insurgents generally fall into one of three groups. The Jaysh al-Mahdi (Mahdi Army) is nominally under the control of renegade cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. This group took to the streets in large numbers in 2004, especially in its strongholds of Najaf and Karbala, from which it was cleared by a large scale yet careful coalition military operation. The Badr Corps is the military arm of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), of which Abdul Aziz al-Hakim is the leader. This group was formed and supported by Iran in the 1980s and continues to maintain close ties to Tehran, although the degree of Iran’s control of SCIRI and the Badr Corps is unclear. The third group of Shiite fighters is the vigilantes who have sprung up in Sadr City and Shiite and mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad, much as the Sunni vigilante groups have grown in this period of chaos.

The Badr Corps and the Jaysh al-Mahdi share some goals and concerns, but not others. They both seek to establish Shiite sharia law in Iraq and to ensure Shiite domination of the country. They are both concerned about Sunni rejectionism and the Sunni insurgency, which has provided the principal justification for their efforts to recruit and maintain their militias. Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s relentless attacks on Shiite civilians have powerfully supported their justification and aided their recruiting.

Exhibit xx: Apr. 8, 2008, ‘Badr Corps Activities in Iraq,’ Iraq After the Surge: What Next? pp. 349-50

The Zionist-Crusader empire is kind enough to connect the dots on our behalf and provide sufficient clues incriminating their behavior. Most of humanity however chooses to wallow in intellectual ineptitude as they fail to realize the empire laughs in their faces, let alone grasping that ISIS and its AQI predecessors always were neo-Gladio puppets of the Zionist-Iranian facet of universal Sabbatean Frankism. —E.G.

BADR CORPS ACTIVITIES IN IRAQ

Question. During your testimony you said that ‘The Supreme Council is and the Badr corps were elements in Iraq.’ During his testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on January 17, 2008, Mark Kimmitt, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, testified that the Badr Corps remains active in Iraq. Is the Badr Corps still operational in Iraq at this time? Does the Badr Corps receive arms, funds, or training from Iran?

Answer. Currently, the Badr Organization is part of the legitimate political process in Iraq and supports the Iraqi Security Forces. Until 2003, Badr Corps was the armed wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (now the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq), a Shia political movement. From 2003 to 2005, the Badr Corps transformed into the Badr Organization—a political entity that holds elected seats in the Iraqi Council of Representatives. While the Badr Organization retains some discrete, narrow security responsibilities (for example, it provides security for some of its party offices in southern Iraq), almost all of its militia members were integrated into the Iraqi Security Forces under Coalition Provisional Authority Order 91.

Undoubtedly, the Badr Organization leaders maintain links to Iran that were formed during its decades in exile there prior to 2003. Although the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq—with which Badr Organization remains associated—seeks to publicly distance itself from Iran, some current and former Badr Organization members still receive training in Iran and maintain ties with Iranian intelligence.

IDENTIFICATION METHODS OF ROGUE BADR CORPS MEMBERS IN IRAQI SECURITY FORCES

Question. You noted in your testimony that the Badr Corps has been ‘integrated’ into the Iraqi Security Forces and that rogue elements are thrown out of the Iraqi Security Forces. How are you able to identify these rogue elements? Do you believe that sectarianism has been eliminated from the Iraqi Security Forces, including all those individuals who remain loyal to ISCI or the Badr Brigade?

Answer. Significant strides have been made to reduce the level of sectarianism within the Iraqi Security Forces, but there is more that remains to be done. Certainly, there are individuals in the Iraqi Security Forces who were previously members of groups such as the Badr Organization (formerly Badr Corps); in fact, the Badr Corps was among the elements that a CPA order directed should be integrated into the ISF. In the majority of cases, this has not proven to be a problem. We occasionally see reports of individuals within the Ministries of Interior and Defense pursuing sectarian agendas. Those individuals are dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Identification of sectarian elements within the Iraqi Security Forces is accomplished through a combination of covert and overt collection methods to include human intelligence and the use of biometric tools.

Exhibit xxi: Nicolas S. J. Davies (2010), Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq, ch. xiii, pp. 258-59

As Stalin-esque brutal as Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime was, it most certainly was not the bastard offspring of Zionism and Iran that came after it. —E.G.

…Knight Ridder Newspapers reported that the CIA was still in firm control of the ‘intelligence’ functions of the Iraqi puppet government. ‘Right after Saddam’s ouster, the U.S.-led coalition took the top intelligence agents from each of the main opposition parties and trained them in how to turn raw intelligence into targets that could be used in operations,’ an Iraqi intelligence expert who took part on the program explained. ‘The CIA recruited agents from SCIRI [emphasis added], the two main Kurdish factions, and two secular Arab parties: the Iraqi National Congress led by Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Accord led by Iyad Allawi who later became the interim prime minister.’

Exhibit xxii: Mona Mahmood (Mar. 6, 2013), ‘Revealed: Pentagon’s link to Iraqi torture centres,’ The Guardian

SCIRI-Badr sadists regard innocent Iraqi Sunni Arab civilians just as the nazijewish Fourth Reich regards innocent Palestinian civilians. —E.G.

After the Pentagon lifted a ban on Shia militias joining the security forces, the special police commando (SPC) membership was increasingly drawn from violent Shia groups such as the Badr brigades.

A second special adviser, retired Colonel James H Coffman, worked alongside Steele in detention centres that were set up with millions of dollars of US funding.

Coffman reported directly to General David Petraeus, sent to Iraq in June 2004 to organise and train the new Iraqi security forces. Steele, who was in Iraq from 2003 to 2005, and returned to the country in 2006, reported directly to Rumsfeld.

The allegations, made by US and Iraqi witnesses in the Guardian/BBC documentary, implicate US advisers for the first time in the human rights abuses committed by the commandos. It is also the first time that Petraeus – who last November was forced to resign as director of the CIA after a sex scandal – has been linked through an adviser to this abuse.

Coffman reported to Petraeus and described himself in an interview with the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes as Petraeus’s ‘eyes and ears out on the ground’ in Iraq.

‘They worked hand in hand,’ said General Muntadher al-Samari, who worked with Steele and Coffman for a year while the commandos were being set up. ‘I never saw them apart in the 40 or 50 times I saw them inside the detention centres. They knew everything that was going on there ... the torture, the most horrible kinds of torture.’

Additional Guardian reporting has confirmed more details of how the interrogation system worked. ‘Every single detention centre would have its own interrogation committee,’ claimed Samari, talking for the first time in detail about the US role in the interrogation units.

‘Each one was made up of an intelligence officer and eight interrogators. This committee will use all means of torture to make the detainee confess like using electricity or hanging him upside down, pulling out their nails, and beating them on sensitive parts.’

…

Samari claimed that torture was routine in the SPC-controlled detention centres. ‘I remember a 14-year-old who was tied to one of the library’s columns. And he was tied up, with his legs above his head. Tied up. His whole body was blue because of the impact of the cables with which he had been beaten.’

Gilles Peress, a photographer, came across Steele when he was on assignment for the New York Times, visiting one of the commando centres in the same library, in Samarra. ‘We were in a room in the library interviewing Steele and I’m looking around I see blood everywhere.’

Exhibit xxiii: Peter Baker (Oct. 22, 2013), Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House, ch. xxv, p. 448

Find for yourself a piously submissive woman who loyally begs you for favors as Iranian-deployed agent Abdul Aziz al-Hakim prostrated his hide pitifully before Zionist-Masonic war criminal George W. Bush. —E.G.

By the end of the week, Sunni political leaders announced they would drop out of government formation talks, and the Baghdad morgue reported as many as 1,300 corpses. Entire blocks of Sunni families had been wiped out, and reports reaching the Oval Office grew grimmer. On February 25, Bush called seven Iraqi leaders one after the other, imploring them to tamp down the incendiary rhetoric and come to the table. When he reached Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party, he was met with silence. Then, finally, Hakim said, ‘Mr. President, please help us. Help us, Mr. President.’ [emphasis added]

Exhibit xxiv: Hossein Mousavian, Shahir Shahidsaless (May 22, 2014), Iran and the United States: An Insider’s View on the Failed Past and the Road to Peace, p. 193

Dialectical bedfellows are truly a sight to behold as each partner believes they wield the upper hand to manipulate the other. —E.G.

The fascinating thing was that Iranians and Americans were both considering the prospect of democratization in Iraq, but drawing two contrasting conclusions. Americans viewed democratization as a preamble to the fall of the Iranian Islamic system, while Iranians predominantly viewed it as a huge game changer in their favor. The chief reason that the US invaded Iraq was to strengthen its influence in and democratize Iraq in order to stimulate other regime changes, first in Iran, but more broadly throughout the Middle East.

Exhibit xxv: Tareq Y. Ismael (2015), Iraq in the Twenty-First Century: Regime Change and the Making of a Failed State, pp. 87-88

CIA-MI6 organizers of the ‘Iraqi opposition’ umbrella were evidently not perturbed by SCIRI-Badr-Da’wa sectarian credentials. —E.G.

Through its public relations arm Rendon Company, the CIA was concurrently responsible for founding and funding the INC, headed by Aḥmad Chalabî, which held its first meeting in Vienna in April 1992. Between 1992 and 1996, the CIA had paid it $12 million. This investment increased substantially in later years, however. Figures from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report even higher figures, claiming that, from March 2000 through September 2003, the INC received a total of $33 million. The US found in Chalabî’s ambitions a working façade for mobilizing Iraqi expatriates to replace the Hussein regime following its overthrow (Chossudovsky, 2004; Dizard, 2004; Peri, 2003; Source Watch, 2010). In 1992 the Clinton Administration attempted to market Chalabî and the INC in the Arab world as a legitimate opposition to Saddam Hussein, while pressuring Saudi Arabia to officially host him and his two close associates, Layth Kubba and Muhammad Ali. Although they were issued Saudi entry visas, no Saudi official met with them (al-Zubaidi, 2009). In October 1992 an opposition meeting was held in Salahuddin, Iraqi Kurdistan, under the tutelage of PUK leader Jalâl Ţâlabânî and KDP leader Mas‘ûd Barzânî. Both SCIRI and the Iraqi Da‘wa Party attended the meeting and developed a leadership structure and executive council whose composition was based on an explicit principle of ethnosectarianism (Allawi, 2007, p. 53).

Exhibit xxvi: Ned Parker (Dec. 14, 2015), ‘Torture by Iraqi militias: the report Washington did not want you to see,’ Reuters

Badr’s excuse? ‘It’s the Sunnis’ fault for exposing our savage crimes against them!’ The Khomeinist rotten apple doesn’t fall far from the Zionist rotten tree. —E.G.

ERBIL, Iraq – It was one of the most shocking events in one of the most brutal periods in Iraq’s history. In late 2005, two years after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, U.S. soldiers raided a police building in Baghdad and found 168 prisoners in horrific conditions.

Many were malnourished. Some had been beaten.

The discovery of the secret prison exposed a world of kidnappings and assassinations. Behind these operations was an unofficial Interior Ministry organisation called the Special Investigations Directorate, according to U.S. and Iraqi security officials at the time.

The body was run by militia commanders from the Badr Organisation, a pro-Iran, Shi’ite political movement that today plays a major role in Baghdad’s war against Islamic State, the Sunni militant group.

Washington pressured the Iraqi government to investigate the prison. But the findings of Baghdad’s investigation – a probe derided by some of its own committee members at the time as a whitewash – were never released.

The U.S. military conducted its own investigation. But rather than publish its findings, it chose to lobby Iraqi officials in quiet for fear of damaging Iraq’s fragile political setup, according to several current and former U.S. military officials and diplomats. [emphasis added]

Both reports remain unpublished. Reuters has reviewed them, as well as other U.S. documents from the past decade.

The documents show how Washington, seeking to defeat Sunni jihadists and stabilise Iraq, has consistently overlooked excesses by Shi’ite militias sponsored by the Iraqi government. The administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have both worked with Badr and its powerful leader, Hadi al-Amiri, whom many Sunnis continue to accuse of human rights abuses.

…

Badr official Kadhimi blamed the prison controversy on Sunnis opposed to the Shi’ite government. ‘The terrorists initiated this slander campaign,’ he said.

Exhibit xxvii: Spencer Tucker (Dec. 14, 2015), U.S. Conflicts in the 21st Century: Afghanistan War, Iraq War, and the War on Terror, p. 356

Al-Hakim’s credentials as an Iraq leader was democratically selected! By the majority will of Zionist-Crusader imperialists, of course. His appeal to everyday Iraqis was—to put it mildly—lacking. —E.G.

[Abdul Aziz al-Hakim] maintained a close relationship with the U.S. government. In fact, he was the favorite of various American figures to succeed Ibrahim al-Jafari, perhaps due to his English skills and demeanor, but was not as popular with Iraqis, as was demonstrated at the polls.

Exhibit xxiii: Feb. 27, 2018, US-Iran Political and Economic Relations Handbook, vol. I: Strategic Information and Developments, p. 252

By two or three witnesses is a matter established. We find uncountably many witnesses of Amerian-Iranian collusion. —E.G.

THE BADR ORGANIZATION

One major Shiite militia is neither a Sadrist offshoot nor an antagonist of U.S. forces during 2003-2011. The Badr Organization was the armed wing of ISCI, the mainstream Shiite party headed now by Ammar al-Hakim. The Badr Corps, the name of the organization’s underground military wing during Saddam’s rule, received training and support from the IRGC-QF in its failed efforts to overthrow Saddam during the 1980s and 1990s. The Badr Organization largely disarmed after Saddam’s fall and integrated into the political process, supporting the U.S. military presence as a facilitator of Iraq’s transition to Shiite rule. Its leader is Hadi al-Amiri, an elected member of the National Assembly, who is viewed as a hardliner who advocates the extensive use of the Shiite militias to recapture Sunni-inhabited areas. In addition, the militia exerts influence in the Interior Ministry, which is led by a Badr member, Mohammad Ghabban. Badr has an estimated 20,000 militia fighters.

Exhibit xxix: Farhad Rezaei (May 22, 2018), Iran’s Foreign Policy After the Nuclear Agreement: Politics of Normalizers and Traditionalists, ch. v, p. 120

The U.S. occupation and Iranian-compliant SCIRI-Badr-Da’wa dared not fully cross one another for the same reason the nazijewish pedophile syndicate and al-Nusra/ISIS did not diametrically interfere with one another’s operations along the Golan Heights in 2015. Apart from that, enjoy the Hakims’ chutzpah explaining why ignorance is strength. —E.G.

…by 2006, the sectarian strife had turned into a virtual civil war. Ayatollah Abdul Aziz al-Hakim played a highly duplicitous role. While encouraging the bloodbath, he reassured the world about Iraq’s commitment to democracy. During a meeting with President Bush on December 4, 2006, al-Hakim stated: ‘we have gone a long way to establish a democratic and pluralistic society in Iraq.’ Al-Hakim reiterated that Iraq is ‘unified and strong’ and described talk about sectarian strife as ‘an attempt to weaken the position in Iraq. Al-Hakim, who was touring the United States at the invitation of the American University’s Center for Global Peace and the Catholic University of America, lectured on the ‘Freedom and Tolerance in Shiite Islam and the Future of Iraq.’

Al-Hakim’s son, Amar Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who established the al-Hakim Foundation, furthered the narrative of the Shiite liberalism and tolerance. Headquartered in Najaf, the Foundation, which had a consultative status in the critical United Nations Economic and Social Council, oversaw a vast network of educational, cultural, and religious institutions. But it was also a dispenser of the IRGC cultural products specializing in the Iraqi Shiite market. Amar al-Hakim’s close relations with the Revolutionary Guards attracted the attention of the American intelligence. In February 2007, the American military arrested al-Hakim and his entourage when crossing the border from Iran on suspicion of smuggling weapons. He was speedily released when it became clear that SICI had organized several large demonstrations in Basra. Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Baghdad, offered an apology to the al-Hakim family.

Exhibit xxx: Mahan Abedin (2019), Iran Resurgent: The Rise and Rise of the Shia State, p. 120

For both the Anglo-American/Zionist and Iranian standpoints—though especially the latter—the Badr Organization was a utility to harness in contrast to the the Mahdi Army as a liability to contain. Iranian ‘support’ for JAM was always to maintain duplicitous plausible deniability credentials, far from any authentic kinship with the Sadrists. —E.G.

Broadly speaking, Iran adopted a two-pronged approach to undermining and ultimately defeating Anglo-American strategic objectives in Iraq. At one level, SCIRI and Al-Daawa were encouraged to work closely with the Americans with a view to defining the post-Baathist political order. At another level, Muqtada al-Sadr and the Shia ‘street’ were utilised to push back against the occupation. In due course ‘special’ groups were formed from within the ranks of the Sadrists to oppose the occupation at a military level. From the start the Iranians were much more exercised by the British presence in Basra and the south generally than by the American presence in Baghdad and the rest of the country. At one level this was the continuation of the volatile Anglo-Iranian relationship and reflected Iran’s deep mistrust of the UK. But at a more pragmatic level, the Iranians had identified the UK military presence in Basra and the surrounding region as the Achilles heel of the occupation and accordingly mobilised and directed resources to test the limits of that vulnerability.

Exhibit xxxi: Joseph Alpher, Yossi Alpher (2019), Winners and Losers in the ‘Arab Spring’: Profiles in Chaos, ch. i

It was none other than IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani who directed Iran’s shamelessly Machiavellian-Faustian two-faced Empirical Janus script of simulaneously colluding with and ‘opposing’ the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq. The U.S. and Britain sold out their own frontline rank-and-file troops to face Iranian-funded IED bombardments after committing war crimes against Iraqi civilians, all the while USAian and British high-level intelligence officials officially coordinated with their Iranian-beholden deep state counterparts. —E.G.

Soleimani rose rapidly through the ranks during a succession of tough battles in the eight-year-long (1980-1988) Iran-Iraq war, and helped suppress Kurdish uprisings in northwestern Iran both before and after that war. He is a strikingly handsome man, with a carefully trimmed graying beard and thoughtful, penetrating eyes that project charisma. He is rumored to sleep only three hours a night. Fittingly, as a night person he remained very much in the shadows until the 2003 US occupation of Iraq. From that point on, he increasingly managed Iran’s drive for influence there in two seemingly contradictory ways: fighting the US, yet collaborating with the US. [emphasis added]

On the one hand, Soleimani and cadre of Iranian Quds Force veterans presided over the recruitment, training and deployment of a variety of Iraqi Shiite militias. Many of these were modeled after the Badr Brigades that were originally formed in Iran as an anti-Saddam guerilla force prior to 2003. These militias were dedicated to combating both the American occupation forces and militant Sunni forces that eventually coalesced into al-Qaeda in Iraq and then the Islamic State. The Iranians and Iraqi Shiites sponsored by the Quds Force spilled a lot of American blood in Iraq. According to one official estimate from 2015, they killed upwards of 500 US soldiers.

On the other hand, Soleimani advised and guided Iraq’s newly empowered Shiite leaders as they formed parties and parliamentary coalitions and negotiated agreements with the US and UK occupiers. At one point in early 2008, Soleimani famously sent a text message via Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to commander of US forces David Petraeus which read, ‘Dear General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qasem Soleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Quds Force member. The individual who’s going to replace him is a Quds Force member.’ After Iraq’s May 2018 parliamentary elections Soleimani was again reportedly dispatched to Iraq to guide pro-Iranian militant Shiite parties in their coalition negotiations.

Exhibit xxxii: Nader Uskowi (Nov. 9, 2018), Temperature Rising: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Wars in the Middle East, ch. iv, p. 52

We have yet additional confirmation of Soleimani’s utmost interesting record—it would be a massive shame for the Persian supremacists if the masses understood. In any case, it is worth noting that JAM’s sectarian flanks were likely cultivated by Iranian-deployed infiltrators operating as rogue deviators from Muqtada al-Sadr’s orders. —E.G.

Badr Organization

By 2004, the Quds Force had developed a two-pronged strategy in Iraq. Militia IEDs and other attacks on U.S. and coalition forces were to raise the cost of occupation in order to push them out of the country while control of Iraqi security institutions would ensure long-term influence in the country. The Badr Organization was Soleimani’s preferred vehicle for achieving the latter goal, while more militant splinter groups were to take on the Americans.

Soleimani used the post-invasion chaos to have loyal militiamen infiltrate the Iraqi army, security, and intelligence institutions. The U.S.-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Order Number 2 made the job that much easier. In May 2003, the American administrators of post-Saddam Iraq disbanded the country’s military and security apparatus and began to organize new structures instead. The Badr Organization wasted no time pouring ‘volunteers’ into the new army and security organizations, which were badly in need of new hires. It also used the CPA’s de-Ba’athification policy to infiltrate other government agencies that had been decimated after expulsion of anyone suspected of being a Ba’ath Party sympathizer.

…

The Mahdi Army

Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr founded the Mahdi Army—Jaysh al-Mahdi—upon his return from a trip to Iran in June 2003, three months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Muqtada was building a militia force for the Sadrist Movement, a religious populist movement founded by his father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and his father-in-law, Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr. Following his return from Iran, Muqtada al-Sadr called upon Sadrists to join his Mahdi Army, which they did in droves. The goal was to raise the cost of the occupation of Iraq and eventually expel the American and coalition forces from Iraq.

Muqtada had accepted the Iranians’ help, but his relations with the Quds Force were problematic. His father was an ardent Shia Arab activist, and his teachings on the importance of Arabism and tribalism to the identity of Iraqi Shias ran counter to Khomeini’s pan-Shia, anti-nationalist ideology. Muqtada also did not believe in Khomeini’s velayat-e faghih over all Shias, including Iraqi Shias. But his strong passion against the occupying powers, especially the Americans, prompted him to accept assistance from the Iranians, who for the same reasons were ready to help a movement whose ideology ran counter to theirs.

In April 2004, members of the Mahdi Army carried out simultaneous attacks in Baghdad’s Sadr City, Najaf, Karbala, and Kufa, targeting U.S. and coalition forces.8 Soleimani provided arms and advisers to the Mahdi Army. While the uprising was crushed by the end of April, Muqtada and his movement had proven to be significant forces in the anti-occupation movement. The Mahdi Army also positioned itself as a distinctly Iraqi phenomenon, founded independently of the Quds Force and pursuing its own goals.

The Quds Force had kept direct contact with more radical elements within Muqtada’s organization, likely without his knowledge.

Exhibit xxxiii: Imad Mansour, William R. Thompson (2020), Shocks and Rivalries in the Middle East and North Africa, ch. vi, p. 117

One rampart resisted the Zionist-Crusader tide. It was not Iran. —E.G.

Lacking the personal and ideological animosity of his father toward Saddam Hussein, Bashar was more open to mending fences with Iraq. Syria ignored UN sanctions on Iraq and resumed economic cooperation with the besieged Iraqi government (Aljabiri 2007, 18). These policies generated popularity for the new Syrian leader, who sought to establish legitimacy apart from his father’s policies and alignments (International Crisis Group [ICG] 2004, 18). In this regard, Bashar showed more hostility toward American policies than his father ever did, and his appreciation of the importance of the relationship with Iran was more modest too. The 2003 American invasion of Iraq revealed a deep schism between the two long-standing allies. Iran supported American efforts to remove the regime of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein [emphasis added], whereas Syria opposed the American invasion and was accused by the George W. Bush administration of supporting Iraq’s war efforts (Guardian 2003). From 2003 to 2010 Syria backed the Sunni opposition to the American occupation of Iraq and the Iran-backed Shi’ite government in Baghdad.

Exhibit xxxiv: 2005(?), The Iranian Journal of International Affairs, vol. XVIII, iss. iv

As it happened, both the Zionist-Crusader occupation and Iran (along with their jointly sponsored AQI Salafi-jihadist zombie adherents of Zarqawi) hated JAM. —E.G.

In August, when the second round of fighting between Moqtada Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the coalition forces broke out, Iran adopted a tougher stance against Mr. Sadr.

Exhibit xxxv: Juan Cole (Jan. 4, 2007), ‘Muqtada Al Sadr and the Sunnis,’ Informed Consent

Muqtada al-Sadr was reviled by Zionists and Iranians not because he posed objective destabilizing peril to Iraq, but because he promoted civilian cross-sect unity that threatened to jeopardize the imperial ‘stability’ of preserving the balkanized condition of sectarian national infighting they worked so hard to accomplish. Although JAM offshoots outside al-Sadr’s control perpetrated grisly ethnic cleansing campaigns against Sunnis, the chief militia head himself extended bridges of reconciliation and inter-sect unity. —E.G.

It is an abiding paradox of contemporary Iraq that the Mahdi Army and the Sunni Arab guerrillas are slaughtering each other daily, but that young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr (the leader of the Mahdi Army) has a better political relationship with Sunni Arab MPs and leaders than any other Shiite.

During the first siege of Fallujah in late March and April of 2004, Muqtada’s Sadrists sent aid convoys to the besieged Sunnis there. In spring of 2005, the Association of Muslim Scholars (hardline Sunni) accused the Shiite Badr Corps paramilitary of having formed anti-Sunni death squads inside the special police commando units of the Ministry of the Interior. This open accusation caused a political crisis between AMS and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the Shiite fundamentalist party that sponsors the Badr Corps. It was Muqtada al-Sadr who engaged in shuttle diplomacy to calm the two parties down. He could play this role because he had credibility with both sides.

From his side, Muqtada makes a distinction between ‘Sunnis’ on the one hand, and ‘Saddamis’ and ‘Nawasib’ on the other. (Nawasib are those Sunnis who have a violent hatred for the Shiites and the family of the Prophet, and nowadays in Iraq ‘al-Qaeda’ would be such a group in Muqtada’s eyes.)

So many Sunni fundamentalist MPs and officials of the Iraqi Accord Front (some of them rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood) are acceptable to Muqtada. He would argue that the Mahdi Army is not killing Sunnis, only Saddamis and Nawasib.

From the Sunni Iraqi side it makes most sense to think of it in negative terms. Most Sunni Arabs in Iraq now hate the United States and Iran. Muqtada hates the United States and expresses resentment of Persian dominance of Shiism. So if you think of them as Iraqi nativists, they have a lot in common. If the fundamentalist Sunnis could gain the Sadrists as allies, they would have a better chance of getting rid of the Americans, their main goal in life. And, allying with Shiite Islamists who are perceived as real Iraqis isn’t so hard for them.

Exhibit xxxvi: Patrick Cockburn (Jan. 4, 2007), ‘Saddam: From monster to martyr?’ The Independent

The ghost of Saddam Hussein al-Majid cannot stop haunting the destroyers of Iraq. —E.G.

Somehow many senior US officials have convinced themselves that it is Mr Sadr, revered by millions of Shia, who is the obstacle to a moderate Iraqi government. In fact his legitimacy in the eyes of ordinary Shia Iraqis, the great majority of the population, is far greater than the ‘moderate’ politicians whom the US has in its pocket and who seldom venture out of the Green Zone. Mr Sadr is a supporter of Mr Maliki, whose relations with Washington are ambivalent.

An attack on the Shia militia men of the Mehdi Army could finally lead to the collapse of Iraq into total anarchy. Saddam must already be laughing in his grave.

Exhibit xxxvii: Patrick Cockburn (2008), Muqtada al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq, ch. xi, pp. 165-66

Sadrists understood full well it wasn’t only the U.S. and Iran whose interests were actively served by the SCIRI-Badr network. —E.G.

The bitter rivalries of the past did not diminish. The Sadrists remembered al-Hakim’s past denunciations of Sadr II as a Baathist with anger. But al-Hakim had a powerful asset in the shape of the Badr corps which at this time had about 4,000 to 8,000 well-trained and armed men. These returned to Iraq without fanfare, leaving their heavy weapons and artillery behind in Iran so as not to alienate the US. The Sadrists pointed out that Badr, the one professional military Shia force, had failed to cross into Iraq to fight in support of the Shia uprisings in 1991 or 1999. Muqtada did not mince his words. Before al-Hakim returned he was quoted as saying he ‘betrayed the people of Basra and the south when he urged [them] to fight [in 1991] and didn’t help them, causing the intifada to fail’. Baqir al-Hakim’s men had fought on the Iranian side during the Iran-Iraq war and were believed by many Iraqis to have savagely tortured Iraqi prisoners. ‘Hakim does not represent Iraq,’ said Muhammad Fartousi, Muqtada’s representative in Sadr City soon after Hakim’s return. ‘He represents outside forces and works with Iran, the US and Israel. We need someone from inside who suffered with Iraqis and represents the people’s voice. We don’t want an Iranian state’. [emphasis added]

It was bizarre that President Bush was to claim repeatedly over the next four years that Muqtada and the Mehdi Army were Iranian pawns when SCIRI and Badr, by now allied to the US, were demonstrably Iranian creations.

Exhibit xxxviii: Michael J. Boyle (Apr. 15, 2014), Violence After War: Explaining Instability in Post-Conflict States, p. 280

Iran’s Axis of Resistance heroes devoted their time in Iraq to liquidating anyone who long sought cross-sect nationalist unity against Nazi-Israel. Nothing to see here. —E.G.

SCIRI played a complex and often violent game remaining simultaneously inside and outside Iraqi politics. It allied with some smaller parties to form the United Iraqi Alliance, which won the most votes in the December 2005 legislative election. Once the government was formed, a significant portion of the membership of the Badr Brigades went into the police and Interior Ministry. The remainder of the organization was rebranded as the Badr Organization for Reconstruction and Development, but this was a cosmetic change as they did not fully disarm. Once in government, SCIRI was alleged to operate death squads from within the Interior Ministry. There were also persistent rumors that the Badr Organization operated death squads against Sunnis, including the infamous Wolf Brigade, which has been accused of torture and reprisals against ex-Baathists, Sunni clerics, and Palestinians living in Iraq. The return of the Badr forces to Iraq, and the appointment of SCIRI official Bayan Jaber to the Interior Ministry in 2005, appeared to confirm to Sunni insurgents that Shiite forces were determined to control the government while conducting a dirty war of murder and expulsion against them. The behavior of SCIRI and the Badr Brigades also infuriated the Sadrists, who distrusted them for fighting on the side of Iran during the Iran-Iraq war and believed them to be puppets of the United States, Iran, and even Israel.

Exhibit xxxix: Simona Mazzeo (Oct. 28, 2025), ‘Did Israel support the Iraq War? Strategic interests and calculations,’ Brussels Morning

We have here a Zionist stooge admitting the Israelis colluded with Iran’s right-arm Iraqi proxy government, while rushing to denying the obvious conclusion drawn from the very facts she states in order to preserve the fantasy binary. —E.G.

Relationship between Iraq and Israel

There is very little trade between Israel and Iraq. Iraq has not recorded exports to Israel in the past, and what little trade there has been is quite small. For instance, Iraq sold roughly $759,000 worth of nitrogenous fertilizers to Israel in 2008, yet generally, Iraq and Israel do not exchange many goods or services. In contrast, no significant product categories dominated Israel’s 2008 exports to Iraq, which totaled about $1.62 million. Although Israeli exports to Iraq have grown at a yearly pace of almost 29.9% in recent years, the total volume of commerce with Iraq is still quite minor when compared to their other trading partners.

Regional conflicts between Israel, Iran, and the United States have a significant impact on Iraq’s political environment and security issues. The improved relationships between Iraq and Israel may not be probable with the internal security challenges, as witnessed by the fight against ISIS, as well as the existence of other militias. The fact is that the United States maintains a military presence in Iraq as the primary means of ensuring security in the country to eliminate terrorism and protect Iraqis, but this does not directly translate to a relationship between Israel and Iraq.

Exhibit xl: Vivian Yee, Alissa J. Rubin (Mar. 19, 2023), ‘In the U.S.-Led Iraq War, Iran Was the Big Winner,’ The New York Times

As Bob Dreyfuss concluded his 2005 book, ‘The devil’s game continues.’ Indeed it has. —E.G.

These days, no Iraqi prime minister can take office without at least the tacit approval of both the United States and Iran, an arrangement that often produces prime ministers torn between Washington and Tehran. Iraqis with connections to Iran hold posts throughout the government.