[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6714]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      IRAN'S MANIPULATION IN IRAQ

  Mr. STEARNS. Members of the House, Senate and the media should 
obviously be aware that Iran, a neighbor that shares decades of vibrant 
history with Iraq, is heavily involved in shaping the future of Iraq 
through illegal activities.
  The president of the Strategic Policy Consulting company here in 
Washington, DC; Mr. Jafarrzadeh, recently stated, ``Al-Quds Force of 
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards is stepping up terrorism and 
encouraging sectarian violence in Iraq.'' Now this is a man to listen 
to when it comes to Iran. He is the Iranian dissident who first 
revealed the existence of the clandestine nuclear sites in Iran in 
August 2002. He says that Iran's goal is to create insecurity to compel 
coalition forces to leave in order to establish an Islamic theocracy in 
Iraq.
  Iranian forces have been heavily involved in sending arms, 
ammunition, IED materials, training militia and sending its own 
intelligence agents into Iraq since 2003. My colleagues, it is a sad 
twist of irony; Al-Quds now coordinates insurgent attacks on our forces 
in Iraq from the national headquarters in Iran out of the old U.S. 
Embassy building, the same building where American diplomats were held 
for those horrific 444 days that began in the year 1979.
  One of five Iranians arrested by U.S. forces in a raid on Iran's 
consulate in a city in northern Iraq on January 11 was an envoy of the 
former Iranian President. The man, Mr. Sharoudi, is wanted in Austria 
on charges that he took part in the assassination of an Iranian Kurdish 
leader and his aids in Vienna in 1989. This historic leader of Iranian 
Kurds was killed in an apartment in the outskirts of Vienna when he was 
scheduled to meet a delegation from Iran. According to the Austrian 
police, the killer escaped arrest by hiding in Iran's embassy in 
Vienna. Austrian sources claim that the Iranian president, Ahmadinejad, 
was the logistics head of the commando groups responsible for the 
Kurdish leader's death, and Sharoudi was one of the killers. It is 
curious, then, that this same man was recently found operating with 
four other Iranians in northern Iraq.
  There is also an Al-Quds force in Iraq under the command of Mehdi 
Mohandes. According to a recent Washington Times article, it was 
Mohandes who was responsible for the attacks on the U.S. and the U.K. 
embassies in Kuwait in the eighties. Interpol placed Mohandes on a 
wanted list in 1984, and since then Mohandes has remained inside Iran's 
borders--until now. The new terror network which he commands in Iraq is 
curiously named Hezbollah, a deliberate linkage to Lebanon's own terror 
movement with which Mohandes has connections. The Iraqi network 
operates in Basra and Baghdad. Members are trained in military and 
terror tactics in Basra, and they receive armed shipments there that 
were smuggled across the border from Iran.
  To maintain this network, obviously it is expensive, has a huge cost. 
According to the Washington Times article again, Brigadier General 
Abtahi of the Iranian Revolutionary Forces in southern Iran send 
millions and millions of dollars from a small border town in Iran into 
Iraq every month. My colleagues, we have little hope of success in Iraq 
if we neglect to address this growing interference by Iran.
  In related news, the Iraqi President has changed his stance and has 
publically pledged to fight terror and insurgent groups within Iraq, 
whether they are Sunni or whether they are Shi'a, which includes the 
Sadr militia. In turn, this has motivated Sadr forces to end the 
boycott from the Iraqi government, a move towards greater participation 
in the political process there. My colleagues, it is a hopeful sign 
that perhaps with greater political participation, the popular support 
of the terrorists in the Shia community will decline.
  We must maintain this diplomatic and military pressure against these 
terrorist groups and on the Iraqi government to fight them. There is no 
hope of success in Iraq as long as Iran is allowed free reign to 
interfere and despoil the Iraqi government's efforts.
  I support the President's acknowledgement of this growing threat and 
urge him and my colleagues in Congress to work together to provide the 
material support to our service men and women on the ground they need 
to combat it.

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