Iran and Hezbollah Build their Bridge: A New IRGC in Iraq and Syria

As recently as a week ago, one of the founders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Mohsen Rafighdoost, said that Iran is ready to “assist” the Iraqi government in establishing its own revolutionary guard. Rafighdoost announced during an interview with the Iranian club of journalists on June 7, that the elite troops could defend Iraq against what he called “tensions and instabilities.” “The revolutionary guards have been successful on the international arena and have the potential to become a good model for the countries in the region,” Rafighdoost said. Another prominent Shia clergy also revealed that Iran is planning to establish military bases on Iraqi territories close to border with Saudi Arabia.

All the while, Qassem Soleimani, a prominent leader in the IRGC, has been working on that plan in Iraq, and possibly Syria, and Iran’s IRGC is helping different Shia armed groups in the two countries to merge as a first phase in implementing Rafighdoost’s project. The number of members of armed Shia groups in Iraq is estimated at 100,000 and in Syria at 30-40,000.

Moreover, Iranian security forces have issued several statements in the last few weeks announcing that at least three battalions of the Quds Force, the elite overseas branch of the Revolutionary Guard, were dispatched to Iraq to fight ISIS.

In Iraq, the Quds Force focused on organizing and training the al-Khorasani Battalion, made up of Iraqi Shias. This is the same group that Rafighdoost proposed as a nucleus for the planned Iraqi IRGC or Hezbollah or whatever name they pick.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Navy General Ali Fadavi was quoted in an Iranian news site as saying that Tehran trains “volunteers” on the Faror Island in the Gulf. Favadi explained that the objective is to build a rapid deployment force ready to move to conflict areas quickly. 

An example of the kind of forces built by the Iranians is the al-Khorasani Battalion which is already playing a role in the campaign to free Fallujah from ISIL. Under this cover it has committed unspeakable massacres against the Sunni population living around Fallujah. MEB spoke to two eye witnesses who managed to flee the battle zone to London. An effort to document the atrocities of the Shia militias against Sunnis is already underway. We could not independently verify the stories of the two eye witnesses, but their narratives were nearly identical, though we spoke to them independently. Human rights organizations are already investigating the matter.

The first eye witness told us that militiamen ordered the separation of men and women and took about 1000 men aged between 12 and 50 years old to a school called Zo al-Nourin on the road between Boukash and al- Saqlawiyah. Most of the arrested males belong to the Mahamda tribe.

At the school yard, the detainees were told that they are responsible for the Speicher camp’s massacre. The massacre they were accused of was the tragic event which happened on June 12  2014 when ISIL attacked the government-run  Speicher training camp and killed over 1700 cadets all of them Shias.

Shia militias believe that local Sunnis participated in the attack. This is why the militiamen who took the prisoners to the school told them that it is the moment for payback for the massacre and were chanting about revenge for the “souls of the Speicher martyrs”.

The first eye witness told us that about 300 of the prisoners were killed at the school. Then the prisoners were moved to a hangar in al- Saqlawiyah where an additional number of them were killed (the witness did not know precisely how many). The rest were later moved to a militia camp in the near-by al Mazra’a.

A delegation of members of Parliament was on their way from to the region Baghdad when Mahamda elders started loudly complaining about the arrest of their men. The delegation, headed by MP Ghazi al-Muhammadi, wanted to inspect the prisoners. When the delegation arrived at al-Mazra’a camp, they found only 605 men of the 1000 detainees. The rest had been killed in various ways that are difficult to put in words.

The second witness confirmed the story of the first adding some details about tens of the names of victims executed in front of their relatives at the school and the hangar. We understand that some human rights organizations are already investigating the case. It is worth adding that the Mahamda elders declared their allegiance to ISIL on June 9, just a few days after news of the massacre spread.

The largely Shia militia group officially known as al-Hashd al-Shaabi or  the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), headed by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, (a U.S.-designated terrorist) has, according to the United Nations, committed atrocities against Sunnis in the two newly liberated areas of Saqlawiyah and al-Karmah, both located just kilometers from Fallujah city.

Two things are clear from the above:

1- Iran intends indeed to create an Iraqi IRGC in both Iraq and Syria. This will enable Tehran to depend upon local forces to ensure its planned bridge to the East Mediterranean. The Iraqi and Syrian new IRGCs run forces will work with Lebanon’s Hezbollah as the knife spliting northern Levant from the rest of the Arab World.

2- The new IRGC’s have a central mission. The tragedies taking place now around Fallujah indicate that their immediate task is to spread horror and fear among the indigenous Sunni population, therefore preventing the Sunnis from organizing to build a self-defense force.

The two objectives have various stumbling blocks. The main one is that the majority of the population of both all of Syria and Central Iraq are Sunnis. There is no question in our minds and the minds, nor should there be in the minds of any observer, that the Sunnis will react. This promises long decades of sectarian wars which will bring any hope of building an inclusive national identity in both Syria and Iraq to total collapse.

And this is precisely what Iran wants. As we have repeatedly written, Iran feels threatened if there is a sustainable nation-state in its western borders. It helped Iraq’s former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to dismember Iraq. It helps Lebanon’s Hezbollah in keeping Lebanon divided. And now, it is helping Iraqi Shia militias to conquer Sunni lands in Central Iraq.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Minister of Defense Khaled al-Ubaidi ordered a “comprehensive” investigation into the crimes of Iranian militias around Fallujah. But neither man controls enough forces or can garner enough political support to do anything serious to save Iraq. PMF refused Abadi’s orders to withdraw from the ares around Fallujah.

It is obvious now that Iran has already moved in for the kill in the Levant and Iraq. And Russia is watching enthusiastically, while moving ahead with its renewed alliance with Tehran. On June 9, Defense Ministers from Russia, Iran and Syria met in Tehran to discuss ways to enhance their cooperation in fighting the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

Iran Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan said after the meeting that the three countries showed their determination to fight terrorists (which of course do not include the PMF or Hezbollah or the Syrian Shabihas in his opinion). “Our relations are based in confronting and defeating terrorist groups and preventing anyone from providing them assistance”.

But General Dehghan must have meant exclusively Sunni groups, not terrorist groups in general. Russia has bombed non-terrorist Sunni groups in Syria, Iran has killed Sunni civilians around Fallujah, and Russia is actively supporting the project of Tehran-Hezbollah Bridge. Furthermore, Sunnis in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon mostly fight ISIL and pro-Iran forces simultaneously, and probably this makes them deserve the terrorist badge in Iran’s lexicon and gets them bombed by Russia and killed by the “Iraqi IRGC” as well as Assad.