Active Duty Military Army Navy Air Force Marines Coast Guard Reserves Veterans

The Scenario in Iran We Recommend: DEBKAfile

CIA Undercover Unit in E. Iran

Establish a Kurdish state encompassing part of northeastern Iraq to include Baghdad and northwestern Iran (by treaty). All land South of Baghdad partitioned into a Shiite state under Iran's control (by treaty.) Iraq ceases to exist except as an Iranian protectorate.

From DEBKA-Net-Weekly N. 76.

September 26, 2002, 4:11 PM (GMT+02:00)

According to our sources, a CIA undercover unit has entered Iran through Zabul, in the Sistan Baluchistan province. Its assignment is to stir up dissent among the largest population in the area, the Baluchi tribes. This province is of small strategic value per se. Nonetheless, the CIA finds it valuable in two ways:

1. The Baluchis, one of Iran’s impoverished and neglected minorities, control the dope and contraband smuggling routes from Iran to the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf destinations. Last December, al Qaeda fugitives, including some 4,000 Saudis, began using these obscure routes on their way from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Lebanon and other points in the Middle East. The CIA’s undercover unit has undertaken the tall order of closing this al Qaeda escape route, while gathering intelligence on its nefarious traffic.

2. This American unit is also keeping a close watch on the hundreds of al Qaeda fighters who have set up a base in Iranian Baluchistan with a view to penetrating the base and breaking it up.

Tehran becoming aware of the CIA unit’s penetration hurriedly whisked the most senior 30 al Qaeda operatives and mid-level commanders to hiding places in Tehran and the holy city of Qom. Reporting this, our intelligence sources note that least five of the most high-ranking al Qaeda officers given refuge in Iran were in the group moved out to safe places.

In late May, Arab intelligence sources in the Gulf claimed Iran was harboring no more than two senior al Qaeda operatives: Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian on the FBI's most-wanted list, and Mahfouz Ould Wali, from Mauritania. The two, according to our intelligence sources, turn out to be no more than mid-level operatives. What the Arab sources omitted to mention was the three truly high-ranking al-Qaeda officials given a safe berth in Iran. Their identities Tehran is keeping under wraps and are still unknown to US intelligence. This trio, our sources say, are lodged in separate locations in Qom under the watchful eye of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

The US administration has been running close-up surveillance of the Iran scene in search of incidents and data useful for destabilizing the Islamic Republican government. A group of 50 ex-Iranians living in California were selected by the Interviewing Service of American, Inc. to run day-long telephone campaigns to private citizens and companies in Iran, in order to solicit real-time information on current events in the Islamic republic.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly, our electronic intelligence newsletter, offered this story first to its growing number of subscribers nearly two weeks ago. To access the news that really matters first, week by week, place your order by clicking HERE .

Iran Embeds Badr troops in Iraq’s Shiite centers, Races US for control

DEBKAfile Special Report

April 22, 2003, 1:50 PM (GMT+02:00)

The first great pilgrimage to Karbala that Iraqi Shiites were permitted to make in almost 30 years, starting Tuesday, April 22, may prove the defining event in the US-Iran contest for influence over Iraq’s majority Shiite community. The freedom to commemorate the 7th century death in battle of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, was a mark in America’s favor. However, the striding pilgrims arrived with banners calling on the Americans to leave Iraq. Some also demanded an Islamic state to replace the Saddam regime. The three-day event in which a million or more dancing, chanting worshippers form processions around self-flagellating ecstatic youths will sorely test American skills in maintaining order without angering crowds inflamed by competing imams, especially at the ceremonies’ climax on Wednesday, April 23.

DEBKAfile’s sources in Baghdad and Tehran report that the Iranians raised the military stakes by pouring thousands of Al Badr Brigades troops into Iraq on Sunday and Monday, in advance of the pilgrimage and in breach of its understandings to Washington. One column of 3,000 men, heading south from Kurdistan, seized control of sections of the strategic town of Baqubah in the Diyala region only 50 km northeast of the Shiite al Azamiya and Saddam City districts of Baghdad. Baqubah also straddles the main Baghdad-Iran routes. A second Badr Brigades contingent of 3,000 to 4,000 crossed from Iran into Iraq near the southeastern town of Al Amarah and advanced into al Kut, where it split into three sub-units, one each for Nasiriyah, Najef and Karbala.

The troops in southern Iraq are in civilian clothes and drive civilian vehicles, much like armed militiamen, while in Baquba they sport Iranian Revolutionary Guards camouflage uniforms and move around in Iranian army vehicles.

The Badr Brigades are in fact an undercover elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. They are made up of foreign elements, mostly Iraqi and Afghan Shiites. The Badr Brigades thrust into Iraq this week was in effect an Iranian military movement timed to coincide with the Karbala celebration and spearhead the rise of local Iraqi Shiite militias in Iraq’s heartland region against the American military presence. Some 70 percent of Iraq’s estimated 12,000 Shiites inhabit the area between Karbala and Najef in the south and Baquba in the north, including Baghdad.

According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, Iran, in addition to moving Badr Brigades units into Iraq’s Shiite centers, made a further three tactical moves:

1. It pumped thousands of trained, well-armed guerrilla fighters through Basra and Al Amara into the Najef and Karbala regions to mingle with the pilgrims and manipulate the mood of the crowds from within.

2. The infiltrators delivered weapons, explosives and cash to pro-Iranian Iraqi leaders, arming them to fight pro-American or even moderate elements in the Shiite community.

3. They sent into Iraq the rabble-rousing Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, deputy head of the Supreme Assembly of the Iraqi Revolution, SAIRI, and brother of its leader, Ayatollah Muhammed Bakir al-Hakim, from Tehran where they live. He arrived with a group of fighters to stir into action the scores of clandestine anti-Saddam SAIRI cells believed to consist of between 1,500 and 2,500 militants.

Intelligence reports from the field point to Abdul Aziz al-Hakim’s men as having murdered Majid Khoei in the Najef mosque on April 10. The young, long-exiled Iraqi Shiite cleric had been designated as main American conduit to Iraq’s Shiite leaders.

The al-Hakim brothers are doubly dangerous to US plans for a democratic, multi-ethnic and stable Iraq. In the first place, behind their political-religious front, they command substantial military strength. DEBKAfile’s sources in earlier reports exposed French attempts to persuade the Iraqi Ayatollah to deploy his fighting units in Iraq against the US military presence. The second problem is the plausible formula he preaches that the US will find it very hard to debunk. His thesis in a nutshell is this: The best political course for Iraq is the parliamentary system of one-man, one-vote, without a sectarian agenda. The future government in Baghdad should uphold religious values rooted in Islam, the Sharia should be the main source of legislation. But the rights of all religious minorities will be respected.

On the face of it, what could be more democratic? The ayatollah welcomes a free general election no less than the Americans. And no wonder. Since the Shiites account for some 60 percent of the Iraqi population, the election results are a foregone conclusion: the Shiites will take over government in Baghdad by perfectly democratic means, displacing the Sunnites who ruled under Saddam Hussein and setting up a pro-Iranian, anti-American administration.

Many of the banners carried by the pilgrims thronging Karbala were prepared in advance and distributed by SAIR. They all carried the same message: The Americans must leave, No foreign rule for Iraq. We want an Islamic state. (For Islamic, read Shiite).

Tehran clearly seized on the Karbala pilgrimage as its opening for a mighty shove against the American presence in Iraq. No one is willing to predict whether the confrontation will pass quietly or degenerate into armed clashes with the potential for spreading to other parts of the country, including Baghdad itself.

The US-UK military command under US General Tommy Franks appears calm in the face of this potential. Troops of the US 82nd Airborne Division are watching over security from a distance, mainly keeping an eye on the 70-km long pilgrimage route between Karbala and Najef. However, DEBKAfile’s military sources have discovered that coalition forces deployed between Basra and Baghdad have been quietly placed on the ready, in case of trouble erupting on Wednesday. Washington has also forwarded a grave caution to Tehran with a demand to withdraw the Badr Brigades troops from Baquba and Karbala and keep them out of Baghdad.

How the American forces stand up to these Iranian and pro-Iranian provocations among the Shiite pilgrims in the latter part of this week will strongly affect the outcome of the developing US-Tehran standoff; it will even shape Washington’s posture on Iran, Syria and the militant Shiite Hizballah’s home base in Lebanon.

Priorities:

Iran

1. Eliminate ALL aircraft related assets military and civilian

2. Eliminate ALL military hardware on the ground through air strikes

3. Eliminate all military-industrial infrastructure - especially nuclear

4. Avoid civilian casualties and urban environments to the extent possible

5. Eliminate all naval capabilities and facilities in the Persian Gulf

6. U.S. troops mass on the eastern border at Abadan and western border at Zahedan and in the South at Bandar-E-Abbas and converge on Yasd seizing the southern half of the country.

7. U.S. troops control the southern half of the country and ALL Persian Gulf access ports.

8. Negotiate a treaty with Iran

9. Begin pacification and realignment of the entire Middle East region

a. Syria (pacify and control - regime change if needed)

b. Yemen (pacify and control)

c. Algeria (regime change)

d. Pakistan (remove nuclear capabilities - control border regions)

e. Saudi Arabia (regime change)

f. Israel - assist in control and elimination of Palestinian radical elements

10. Establish a Kurdish state encompassing part of northeastern Iraq including Baghdad and northwestern Iran (by treaty). All land South of Baghdad partitioned into a Shiite state under Iran's control (by treaty.) Iraq ceases to exist except as an Iranian protectorate.

11. Establish a pro western equivalent of NATO (METO) in the Middle East Asia Minor

Indonesia (assist in control of radicals)

North Korea

1. The pacification of Iran and the partition of Iraq would facilitate further efforts in the Middle East. This ould eliminate North Korea's trading partners and prevent the need for a "Nuclear Pre-emptive First Strike" which might otherwise become a horrible and unavoidable necessity.

DEBKA File