In his prepared statement to the US House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees last week, Gen. David Petraeus claimed that Iran is using the Quds Force to turn Shiite militias into a “Hezbollah-like force” to “fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq”. But Petraeus then shattered that carefully constructed argument by volunteering in answering a question that the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, had essentially left Iraq. “The Quds force itself, we believe, by and large those individuals have been pulled out of the country as have the Lebanese Hezbollah trainers that were being used to augment that activity...”

Petraeus’s contradictory statements on the Quds force are emblematic of an administration propaganda line that has essentially fallen apart because it was so obviously out of line with reality. Nine months after the George W Bush administration declared that it was going to go after Iranian agents in Iraq who were threatening US troops, the US military still has not produced any evidence that the Quds Force operatives in Iraq were engaged in assisting the militias fighting against US troops.

The US military command in Iraq has failed to capture a single Quds Force member. And evidence suggests that Quds force personnel in Iraq never had the mission of assisting Shiite militias, as claimed by the Bush administration. It appears that an increasing number of military intelligence officers in Iraq have concluded that the Quds force has been steering clear of working directly with Shiite militias attacking US troops, in order to avoid giving the Bush administration a pretext for aggression against Iranian territory.

In a military briefing presented in Baghdad on Feb. 11, an unnamed US official stated flatly that weapons were being smuggled into the country by the Quds Force, but the briefers failed to present any specific evidence to back up the assertion. Since that briefing, the US military command has captured the alleged deputy head and key logistical officer of the main Iraqi EFP, or armour-penetrating explosives, network and a Hezbollah operative who was a liaison with the network, as well as a number of what it called “suspected members” or “suspected leaders” of a “secret cell terrorist network known for facilitating the transport of and EFPs from Iran to Iraq”. But the interrogations of these detainees have not led to the capture of a single Iranian official.

The charge that Iran was using the Quds force to fight a proxy war was an effort to raise tension with Iran by suggesting a potential reason for US attack against Iran. Similarly, the pressure for targeting the Quds Force in Iraq late last year came from senior officials in the Bush administration who wished to demonstrate US resolve to confront Iran, according to an in-depth account of the origins of the plan by the Washington Post’s Dafna Linzer published Feb. 26.

That policy was regarded with “scepticism” by the intelligence community, the State Department and the Defence Department when it was proposed, Linzer wrote, because of

the fear it would contribute to an escalation conflict with Iran.

“This has little to do with Iraq,” a senior intelligence officer told Linzer. “It’s all about pushing

Iran’s buttons. It’s purely political.” — IPS