Assyrian Democratic Organization ADO
Beirut – AP-AFP-Naharnet — U.S.-led forces have arrested an Iranian-controlled Hizbullah agent in Iraq, where he was training extremists, a U.S. general said Monday, accusing Iran of using the Lebanese group as a “proxy” to arm Shiite militants in the war-torn country.
A senior Hizbullah operative, Ali Moussa Dakdouk, also known as Hamid Mohammed Jabur al-Lami, was captured March 20 in southern Iraq, U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner told reporters. Dakdouk served for 24 years in Hizbullah and was “working in Iraq as a surrogate for the Iranian Quds Force,” Bergner said.
The general also accused Tehran’s elite Quds force of helping militants carry out a January attack in Karbala in which five Americans were killed. He said that Dakdouk was a liaison between the Iranians and a breakaway Shiite group led by Qais al-Kazaali, a former spokesman for radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Bergner said al-Kazaali’s group carried out the January attack against a provincial government building in Karbala and that the Iranians assisted in preparations. Al-Khazaali and his brother Ali al-Khazaali were captured with Dakdouk.
Dakdouk told U.S. interrogators that the Karbala attackers “could not have conducted this complex operation without the support and direction of the Quds force,” Bergner said. Documents captured with al-Khazaali showed that the Quds Force had developed detailed information on the U.S. position at the government building, “regarding our soldiers’ activities, shift changes and defenses, and this information was shared with the attackers,” Bergner said. The Karbala attack was one of the most sophisticated against U.S. forces in four years of fighting in Iraq, and American officials at the time suggested Iran may have had a role in it.
In the assault, up to a dozen gunmen posed as an American security team, with U.S. military combat fatigues, allowing them to pass checkpoints into the government compound, where they launched the attack. One U.S. soldier was killed in the initial assault, and the militants abducted four others who were later found shot to death.
The U.S. military in the past has accused the Quds Force — the external arm of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards — of arming and financing Iraqi extremists to carry out attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces. Tehran has denied the U.S. accusations. Hizbullah spokesmen in Lebanon said they were checking into the claims Dakdouk was a member of the group and would not comment.
The group has in the past denied any activities in Iraq. In late 2005, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said his government suspected that Iran and Hizbullah might be supplying technology and explosives to Shiite militant groups operating in Iraq, but he provided no proof. Bergner said Iraqi extremists were taken to Iran in groups of 20 to 60 for training in three camps “not too far from Tehran.” When they returned to Iraq, they formed units called “special groups” to carry out attacks, bombings and kidnappings.
“Our intelligence reveals that the senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity,” he said. Asked if Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be unaware of the activity, Bergner said, “That would be hard to imagine.” Dakdouk was “tasked to organize the special groups in ways that mirrored how Hizbullah was organized in Lebanon,” the general said.
Dakdouk was ordered by Hizbullah’s leadership to work with the Quds Force and went to Iran in May 2006 to meet with Quds Force commanders, Bergner said. He then made four trips to Iraq over the next year. Hizbullah, Bergner said, helps the Iranians as a “proxy … to do things they didn’t want to have to do themselves in terms of interacting with special groups.”
He added that Hizbullah did not appear to have an extensive network in Iraq, saying Dakdouk was “being used specifically as a proxy by the Quds Force.
