Word: irgc
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...revealing any information that might help its enemies fine-tune their strategies. But the reason for the break from standard procedure, the officials said, was the origin of the EFPs: the weapons, they claimed, are produced in Iran and smuggled into Iraq by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) elite al-Quds Force...
...intelligence analyst at the briefing said that the EFPs came from the IRGC and that the IRGC reports directly to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But the Iranian government is notoriously factionalized, and drawing conclusions about Iranian intentions based on Iranian operations in Iraq isn't so simple. It's been clear for years that the Iranians are exerting influence in Iraq; the surprise would be if they weren't. Even after Sunday's briefing the nature and extent of Iranian military aid to Iraqi militants remains difficult to assess. "It's plausible deniability," the intelligence analyst explained...
...briefing sought to put the Iranian government, not the Iraqi government, front and center. But, even with slides showing an IRGC IED seized in last month's raid in Irbil, and with an explosives expert on hand to explain why EFPs and other munitions could only have come from Iran, demonstrating a definitive link was easier said than done. The Iranians, according to the intelligence analyst, use Iraqi smugglers to transport weapons across the Iran-Iraq border. However, it is still Iraqi militant groups, not the Iranians, who, in the end, use the weapons against U.S. forces...
...speculation that Karbala was an IRGC operation may have as much to do with Iraqis' respect for IRGC capacity for revenge as it does with the truth. Nevertheless, we should count on the IRGC gearing up for a fight. And we shouldn't underestimate its capacities. Aside from arming the opposition, the IRGC is capable of doing serious damage to our logistics lines. I called up an American contractor in Baghdad who runs convoys from Kuwait every day and asked him just how much damage. "Let me put it this way," he said. "In Basra today the currency...
...Mindful of the spreading chaos in Iraq, President Bush has promised not to take the war into Iran. But it won't matter to the IRGC. There is nothing the IRGC likes better than to fight a proxy war in another country...