Iran Focus: London, Jan. 09 Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is involved in an extensive campaign to recruit Iraqi female spies with the help of local Iraqi parties backed by Iran, a prominent Arab-language website reported. Iran Focus
London, Jan. 09 Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is involved in an extensive campaign to recruit Iraqi female spies with the help of local Iraqi parties backed by Iran, a prominent Arab-language website reported.
The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) is sending Iraqi women between the ages of 30 and 40 to neighbouring Iran to receive training in the art of intelligence gathering, al-Malaf quoted “informed Iraqi sources” as saying on Monday.
The report said some 2,000 Iraqi women had been sent to Tehran so far. It added that the women were travelling in smaller groups, though it did not specify how large each group was.
Once in Tehran, they undergo a one-month-long training course jointly organised by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and the IRGC’s elite Qods Force. They are then dispatched to their areas of duty in Iraq.
Al-Malaf said most the female recruits had strong ties to Iraq’s Shiite groups.
SCIRIs ties to Iran date back to 1982, when it was founded in Tehran on the orders of then-Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Irans current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was tasked with writing the councils manifesto and the groups primary goal was to spread Irans Islamic revolution to Iraq.
Irans current Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi was the groups chairman for several years after its founding while Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim was appointed as the groups spokesman. Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, the elder brother of current SCIRI chief Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, died in a deadly bomb blast in August 2003 in the Iraqi city of Najaf.
