Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps set up secret cells in Iraq to carry out attacks against Gulf states that host U.S. bases, Reuters reported Friday, citing informed Iraqi sources. The sources said three to four cells operated inside Iraq, each with about 10 Iraqi Shiite fighters.
Those teams launched at least seven drone attacks against Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates from desert areas near Basra and Al-Samawa in southeastern Iraq. The strikes took place between April 20 and May 17. Some of the fighters were reportedly drawn from the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group for several pro-Iranian Shiite militias tied to Tehran’s “axis of resistance.”
According to the report, however, the cells did not act through the Islamic Resistance’s normal chain of command. Instead, they received orders directly from the Revolutionary Guards. Iraq’s strategic location in the Middle East has also made it a platform for covert regional activity by other powers.
The article also recalled an Israeli base in Iraq that was exposed by the Wall Street Journal, a foreign outlet not bound by Israeli censorship rules. That covert base was reportedly built in the Iraqi desert before the war against Iran began, about 180 kilometers west of Najaf, south of Baghdad, and roughly 400 kilometers from Iran, near the Saudi border, to support air strikes against Iran. American officials told the paper the base was also used in an attack on Iraqi soldiers, who nearly discovered it at the start of the war. That incident occurred on March 3, four days after the war began, and was reported in Iraq shortly afterward.
