ts in toppling Saddam and promoting democracy in Iraq.
This article (again via Roger Simon) points the finger at Iran:
Iranian agents have been commuting back and forth to and from Iraq regularly, using different border crossings along the 900-mile frontier with that country. Tehran has, for instance, used the Mandali-Monthariya border in February to send into Iraq a significant number of intelligence agents, who specialize in operations and roadside bombings against the coalition forces. It has also used other border crossing for such purposes.
Sources with access to firsthand information said that a roadside attack by a five-member team of Iraqi Muslim fundamentalists against a U.S. convoy in late February was actually tied to Iran. Other pro-Iranian Iraqi extremists were apparently involved in attacks against Iraqi police vehicles last month, these sources added.
As many as 30,000 people a night were reported to have crossed into Iraq from Iran, ostensibly to visit the holy Shiite shrines; many Iranian intelligence agents were among them. The Iranian regime’s intelligence units as well as the Qods (Jerusalem) Force of the Revolutionary Guards often pose as pilgrims and blend in with ordinary people who travel from Iran to the holy sites and other regions of Iraq.
After the U.S. forces arrested a number of Iranian agents, Tehran is relying increasingly on its newly-recruited Iraqi agents, particularly for intelligence gathering operations. It assigned a number of the recruits from Najaf, Karbala, Al-Kazimiyah, Basrah and Ba’qubah to Baghdad where they have set up new intelligence gathering cells.
Iran’s intelligence agents are actually working under the cover of local businesses in Iraq. Several Iranian intelligence agents came to the city of Al-Khalis, north of Baghdad, recently, to meet with their Iraqi counterparts. “Islamic Propaganda House” in Ba’qubah acts as cover for the Iranian regime’s intelligence agents.
Iranian agents have also been recently spotted in Baghdad, offering Iraqis large sums of money, as much as $25,000, in exchange for information. Iran has already sneaked in large amounts of weaponry including mortars, anti-aircraft missiles, and RPG-7 rocket launchers, providing them mostly to Iraqi surrogate groups.
It would be naïve to rely on the “goodwill” of Iranian clerics. To prevent Iraq from further sinking into chaos, the United States must take drastic action to curb Iranian influence by stopping the free flow of Iranian intelligence agents into Iraq and warning Tehran of the dire consequences of its continuing meddling in the affairs of its neighbor to the west. The ultimate solution, however, is for the United States to beat the Iranians at their own game by relying on the well-trained anti-fundamentalist Iranian opposition groups, which are working to unseat the clerics. This is not a luxury; it’s a prerequisite.
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