Iran: Progenitor of the New Cold War

To win the war in Iraq and eventually the GWOT, the government of Iran must be toppled or changed.

History of the IRGC and al Qaeda

One of the five Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) branches is the Qods Force or Jerusalem Force. It is also know as the Pasdaran Force. This Iranian special operations unit has been in the business of training, supporting and funding extra-territorial terrorist groups. The IRGC has two missions that it is continuously running. The first mission is to identify, evaluate and destroy any opposition and organized resistance that can lead to insurgency in Iran. The second mission is to identify and train assets in target countries outside the Iranian borders that will help the IRGC export the Islamic Revolution. The IRGC is initiating violent insurgencies in numerous countries with operatives even in the United States. Its main mission is to infiltrate countries that oppose Iran and evaluate the situation for the appropriateness of an insurgency. The ongoing insurgency in Falujah and Najaf are examples of IRGC inspired insurrections. Once these areas are under control of the US and Iraqi forces, the IRGC will initiate another insurgency in another city such as Tikrit, Kirkuk or Karbala.

The IRGC had established training camps in The Sudan in the early 1990s to train terrorist recruits for Hezbollah and Hamas. In these camps the recruits are trained in hit and run guerilla tactics, assassination, roadside ambush, kidnapping, torture, psychological operations and tactical operations involving mines, explosives and hand grenades. The IRGC is responsible for exporting the Islamic Revolution and has found some support in the Shia population in Lebanon. The IRGC has operatives in most countries with a large Islamic population. Their mission is to infiltrate the area and form relationships with rogue elements or extreme groups and offer support.  The training camps are tailored to assist the IRGC in its mission by training Afghans, Iraqis, Egyptians, Algerians and Tunisians that fought in the Afghan war as well as supporting the Islamic movements in Chechnya, Turkey and Egypt. 

In 1995 and 1996, al Qaeda operatives contacted the Iranian government with an offer to join forces to attack America.  Bin laden had met with Iranian officials prior to the bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The purpose of the meeting was to establish an “anti-US alliance”. Usama bin Laden and al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attacks in Tanzania and Kenya and bear a resemblance to the Hezbollah attacks on the US and French Foreign Legion forces in Lebanon in 1983. al Qaeda established first a tactical relationship with the IRGC linking it directly to Iran, but then also approached Hezbollah.  A second meeting between bin Laden and the operations director of Hezbollah – Imad Mugniyeh- took place to presumably solidify the strategy for the bombings. Ali Mohamed, an operative of al Qaeda, testified that he had arranged security for the meeting.  He went on to say that Hezbollah supplied explosives training to al Qaeda and Al-Jihad personnel. The coordination of training and use of explosives are key elements of the attack and appear to have been provided by Iran. The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security may have provided direct support to al Qaeda in these bombings. Phone records obtained by US officials in the investigation of the bombings, revealed that about 1 in 10 calls from cell phone used by Usama bin Laden and his staff were made to Iran. In the aftermath of the embassy bombings and as a follow-up to the al Qaeda-Hezbollah union,

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