Petraeus: Iran has spent 'hundreds of millions of dollars' on Iraq militias, training 'special ops' cells of Sadr's Mahdi Army

Above: Members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG) at prayer. The IRG operates outside of Iran's military. Literally formed to 'guard the revolution' by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, it now boasts hundreds of thousands of members and includes air and naval forces. The Qods (Jerusalem) Force is a special branch responsible for operations outside of Iran, including terrorist operations. A primary focus for the Qods Force is training Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups.

BAGHDAD — The Iranian government has spent the last few years training elite “secret cells” of renegade Shi’a cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, while funding that group and other Shi’a militias in Iraq to the tune of “hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Army Gen. David Petraeus, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq...

The “secret cells” are “Sadr special ops,” Petraeus said. “But they’re different from JAM,” he added, using the acronym for the Mahdi Army’s Arabic name, Jaysh al-Mahdi.

“You really have to distinguish between run-of-the-mill JAM and the secret cells,” who, he said, “have had extra training and selection and all the rest.”

That training is the work of the Quds Force, an Iranian special operations organization that answers directly to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Petraeus said.

Read the rest at Army Times

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