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As sectarian warfare between Sunnis and Shias raged, the Shia population looked to Iran as a protector. According to the intelligence ministry documents, Iran has continued to take advantage of the opportunities the United States has afforded it in Iraq.
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Iran, for example, reaped an intelligence windfall of American secrets as the United States presence began to recede after its troop withdrawal. The C. Short of money, many began to offer their services to Tehran. And they were happy to tell the Iranians everything they knew about C. In November , one of them, an Iraqi who had spied for the C. Turning to Iran for protection, he said that everything he knew about American intelligence gathering in Iraq was for sale: the locations of C.
Source told the Iranian operatives he had worked for the agency for 18 months starting in , on a program targeting Al Qaeda. But swearing on the Quran, he promised that his days of spying for the United States were over, and agreed to write a full report for the Iranians on everything he knew from his time with the C. Iranian spies, Iraqi officials say, are everywhere in the south, and the region has long been a beehive of espionage. It was there, in Karbala in late , that an Iraqi military intelligence officer, down from Baghdad, met with an Iranian intelligence official and offered to spy for Iran — and to tell the Iranians whatever he could about American activities in Iraq.
In a meeting that lasted more than three hours, the Iraqi told of his devotion to the Iranian system of government, in which clerics rule directly, and his admiration for Iranian movies. He said he had come with a message from his boss in Baghdad, Lt. Whatever you need is at their disposal. We are Shiite and have a common enemy. And there was more, he said. In an interview, General al-Maksusi, disputed saying the things attributed to him in the cables and denied ever working for Iran. He praised Iran for its help in the fight against the Islamic State, but said he had also maintained a close relationship with the United States.
By late , the United States was once again pouring weapons and soldiers into Iraq as it began battling the Islamic State. Iran, too, had an interest in defeating the militants.
As ISIS took control of the west and the north, young Iraqi men traveled across the deserts and marshes of the south by the busload, heading to Iran for military training. Some within the American and Iranian governments believed the two rivals should coordinate their efforts against a common enemy. The rise of ISIS was at the same time driving a wedge between the Obama administration and a large swath of the Iraqi political class. Obama had pushed for the ouster of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki as a condition for renewed American military support. He believed Mr. His replacement, the British-educated Haider al-Abadi, was seen as more friendly to the West and less sectarian.
As the meeting progressed, it became clear the Iranians had little cause to worry about the new Iraqi government. One by one, Mr. Danaiefar went down the list of cabinet members, describing their relationships to Iran. Ibrahim al-Jafari — who had previously served as Iraqi prime minister and by late was the foreign minister — was, like Mr. In an interview, Mr. The former ministers of municipalities, communications and human rights were all members of the Badr Organization, a political and military group established by Iran in the s to oppose Saddam Hussein.
The former minister of municipalities denied having a close relationship with Iran; the former human rights minister acknowledged being close to Iran, and praised Iran for helping Shiite Iraqis during Mr. The former minister of communications said that he served Iraq, not Iran, and that he maintained relationships with diplomats from many countries; the former minister of education said that he had not been supported by Iran, and that he served at the request of Prime Minister al-Abadi.
The former environment minister could not be reached for comment. The Syrian civil war was raging to the west, Islamic State militants had seized almost a third of Iraq and American troops were heading back to the region to confront the growing crisis.
The minister of interior ordered an investigation into the role of several high-ranking police officials; however, the investigation produced no results by year's end. The ICS system operated 11 prisons and pretrial detention facilities, and Kurdish authorities operated seven. Generally, the government was generally disposed to cooperate with the UN and its agencies on human rights issues. The commissioners commenced their work with a series of meetings and interviews in London n late November, and did not arrive in Iraq until early in January The government offered no substantive assistance for victims of FGM. From dream to reality, the international team started with an impossible task because of the nature of the country. These laws were selectively enforced against Baha'is, but at year's end they had not been formally repealed.
Against this chaotic backdrop, Mr. Jabr, then the transportation minister, welcomed General Suleimani, the Quds Force commander, to his office. General Suleimani had come to ask a favor: Iran needed access to Iraqi airspace to fly planeloads of weapons and other supplies to support the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad in its fight against American-backed rebels. It was a request that placed Mr. Jabr at the center of the longstanding rivalry between the United States and Iran.
General Suleimani, Mr. The transportation minister did not hesitate, and General Suleimani appeared to be pleased.
As you wish! Jabr told the intelligence ministry officer. Jabr confirmed the meeting with General Suleimani, but said the flights from Iran to Syria carried humanitarian supplies and religious pilgrims traveling to Syria to visit holy sites, not weapons and military supplies to aid Mr. Assad as American officials believed. Meanwhile, Iraqi officials known to have a relationship with the United States came under special scrutiny, and Iran took measures to counter American influence.
Indeed, many of the files show that as top American diplomats met behind closed doors with their Iraqi counterparts in Baghdad, their conversations were routinely reported back to the Iranians. Throughout and , as a new Iraqi government settled in, the American ambassador, Stuart Jones, met often with Salim al-Jabouri, who was speaker of the Iraqi Parliament until last year.
Jones declined to comment. The source urged the Iranians to develop closer ties to Mr. Another report reveals that Nechervan Barzani, then the prime minister of Kurdistan, met with top American and British officials and Mr. Through a spokesman, Mr. Sometimes, the Iranians also saw trade value in the information they received from their Iraqi sources. The source explained that the Americans might eventually try to export the natural gas to Europe, a major market for Russian natural gas.
And although Iran was initially suspicious of Mr. Abadi declined to comment. But it has come at the cost of stability, with Sunnis perennially disenfranchised and looking to other groups, like the Islamic State, to protect them. That signaled divisions within Iran over its Iraq policies between more moderate elements under President Hassan Rouhani and militant factions like the Revolutionary Guards. The area around Jurf Al-Sakhar has been cleansed of terrorist agents. Their families have been driven away, most of their houses have been destroyed by military forces and the rest will be destroyed.
In some places, the palm orchards have been uprooted to be burned to prevent the terrorists from taking shelter among the trees. Jurf al-Sakhar, which lies just east of Falluja in the Euphrates River Valley, is lush with orange trees and palm groves. It was overrun by the Islamic State in , giving militants a foothold from which they could launch attacks on the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf. When Shiite militias supported by Iran drove the militants out of Jurf al-Sakhar in late , the first major victory over the Islamic State, it became a ghost town.
Tens of thousands were displaced, and a local politician, the only Sunni member on the provincial council, was found with a bullet hole through his head. One cable describes the damage in almost biblical terms. Above all, its officers blamed General Suleimani, whom they saw as a dangerous self-promoter using the anti-ISIS campaign as a launching pad for a political career back home in Iran. Doing that had made it obvious that Iran controlled the dreaded Shia militias — a potential gift to its rivals.
It is not clear, however, if that initiative materialized. We must think about limiting violence against innocent Sunnis in Iraq and limiting Mr. Currently, any actions taken against Sunnis will be blamed on Iran, whether Iran had a direct or indirect role in it, or none at all. Just as often, Iran would use its influence to close lucrative development deals. Today, Iran is struggling to maintain its hegemony in Iraq, just as the Americans did after the invasion. Iraqi officials, meanwhile, are increasingly worried that a provocation in Iraq on either side could set off a war between the two powerful countries vying for dominance in their homeland.
This story was reported in partnership with The Intercept , where James Risen is the senior national security correspondent and Murtaza Hussain is a reporter.
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