Iran steps up flow of arms, gunmen into Iraq for a “hot October”

Iran Focus: Tehran, Sep. 30 – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and other state agencies have been sending more gunmen and weapons into Iraq in recent weeks in preparation for a “hot October”, according to sources in the Iranian government with
a good knowledge of security issues. Iran Focus

Tehran, Sep. 30 – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and other state agencies have been sending more gunmen and weapons into Iraq in recent weeks in preparation for a “hot October”, according to sources in the Iranian government with a good knowledge of security issues.

Dozens of Arab-speaking officers of the Revolutionary Guards have entered Iraq since the beginning of September and are now in Baghdad, Al-Kut, Al-Amarah, Basra, Najaf, and Karbala. Iranians living near the border in Khuzistan Province have reported sighting convoys of trucks and pick-ups going into Iraq at night through remote dirt roads with their headlights turned off.

With the U.S. presidential election looming, Iran’s clerical rulers feel October provides the best time for raising the pressure on the U.S. administration to exact major concessions on several key issues.

An assortment of weapons, including anti-tank rockets, heavy machine-guns and the old Soviet shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile, SAM-7, are smuggled into Iraq in trucks carrying fruits and vegetables.

On occasions, cars carrying coffins have been seen moving into Iraq at midnight. While Muslims do not usually carry their dead across the border at midnight and through unbeaten tracks, eye-witnesses assume that this is just the latest method devised by the Revolutionary Guards to evade Coalition and Iraqi police patrols.

Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kazem recently confirmed that the flow of Iranian arms and agents into Iraq was continuing. “The Iranian regime’s declared policy contradicts the events that are taking place,” he said.

“In its comments, Iran speaks about the need to establish security in Iraq. What actually happens, however, is the complete opposite, so much that we arrest individuals every day coming with their weapons from Iran into Iraq,” Kazem added

On Tuesday, Iran Focus reported the arrest by Iraqi security forces of a spy working for Iranian intelligence in Baghdad.

Nashaat Abd Ali Al-Hussaini confessed to “serious things that would incriminate the Iranian intelligence and its interference in Iraq’s internal affairs,” according to a senior Iraqi intelligence official.

Al-Hussaini has identified his control officers in Baghdad as Mohammad Qorbani and Hassan Zarei, two intelligence officers working for the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). Both men are working in the Iranian embassy in Baghdad under diplomatic cover.