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Washington -- An elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard with ties to Hezbollah is training, funding and arming insurgents in Iraq to attack coalition and Iraqi forces and conduct other missions, says a senior U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Iraq.
The Quds Force, which conducts international operations for the Iranian Guard, "played key roles in the planning and execution of bombings, kidnappings, extortion, sectarian murders, illegal arms trafficking and other attacks against the Iraqi people, the police, the Iraqi army and coalition forces," Army Brigadier General Kevin Bergner said in a July 2 briefing.
Bergner, speaking via teleconference, said that senior agents working for Hezbollah, a Lebanese-based terrorist organization, began training, equipping and forming Iraqi insurgent groups in 2004 under direction from Quds with the full knowledge of the senior leadership in Iran. Hezbollah instructors trained approximately 20 to 60 Iraqis at a time in three training centers in Iran, sending them back to Iraq to form insurgent cells, he said.
"Our intelligence reveals that the senior leadership...