His opposition group released the names, alleged dates of recruitment by Iran and the supposed salaries of 31,690 Iraqis. It claimed that most were paid by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qods Force — a faction of the Iranian military that the U.S. military says bankrolls militants in Iraq and equips them with weapons.
It said that in Iraq, the alleged operatives were mostly affiliated with the Badr Brigade, the military wing of Iraq's most powerful Shiite political group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Over 31,000 Iranians pretending to be Iraqis inside Iraq?
This is part of my last worries over defeating the enemy inside Iraq. I worry about keeping the Shias on our side. I have less worry that Sadr has the charisma to gain the support of large numbers of Iraqi Shias to overthrow the democratically-elected government on his own. But I still worry that Iran could engineer a pretend grass-roots revolt of Shias by sending Iranians into the streets of Iraqi cities with guns and essentially fooling the Shias into opposing the government and our forces.
So I am glad that we are targetting Iranian agents in Iraq. But do the Iranians really have 30,000 gunmen in Iraq? Alone they would be killed if they hit the streets, but if they essentially fool millions of Iraqi Shias into the streets, the impact will be grave. Not lost, but a testing time that really will be a Sepoy Revolt moment for the Iraqi government and our forces.
And even if this threat is not real or is much smaller than the Iranian opposition group claims, I still worry that as a last resort Iran would try a conventional invasion of Iraq.
We are winning, but we have a long way to go before victory in Iraq.
