Order Code RS22323
Updated March 6, 2008
Iran’s Activities and Influence in Iraq
Kenneth Katzman
Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs
Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division
Summary
Iran is materially assisting major Shiite Muslim political factions in Iraq, most of
which have longstanding ideological, political, and religious ties to Tehran, and their
armed militias. Since late 2007, the Administration has noted a decrease in Iranian
weapons shipments, but Iran now believes it has built significant influence over Iraqi
leaders and it is building groups of extremist Shiite militiamen who do not answer to
political factions. This report will be updated. See CRS Report RL32048, Iran: U.S.
Concerns and Policy Responses.
Background
Iran’s activities and influence in Iraq affects the U.S. effort to stabilize Iraq and also
colors the U.S. perception of Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions. With the
conventional military and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) threat from Saddam
Hussein removed, the thrust of Iran’s strategy in Iraq has been to acquire “strategic
depth” in Iraq by perpetuating domination of Iraq’s government by pro-Iranian Shiite
Islamists. Doing so gives Iran leverage to forestall a potential confrontation with the
United States. At the same time, Iran’s aid to Iraqi Shiite militias worsened the Sunni-
Shiite violence, now reduced by the U.S. “troop surge” in 2007, and accelerated
competition among Shiite factions in southern Iraq.
During 2003-2005, Iran’s leaders supported the decision by Iraqi Shiite Islamist
factions in Iraq to work with the U.S.-led election process, because the number of Shiites
in Iraq (about 60% of the population) virtually ensured Shiite dominance of an elected
government. To this extent, Iran’s goals in Iraq did not conflict with U.S. policy, which
was to set up a democratic process. A Shiite Islamist bloc (“United Iraqi Alliance”),
encompassing the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), the most pro-Iranian of the
groups, the Da’wa (Islamic Call) party, and the faction of the 32 year old Moqtada Al
Sadr — won 128 of the 275 seats in the December 15, 2005, election for a full term
parliament. Most ISCI leaders spent their years of exile in Iran. Prime Minister Nuri al-
Maliki is from the Da’wa Party, although he spent most of his exile in Syria. The Sadr
faction’s ties to Iran were initially less extensive because his family remained in Iraq
during Saddam’s rule. Still, the Sadr clan has ideological ties to Iran; Moqtada’s great

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uncle, Mohammad Baqr Al Sadr, was a political ally of Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini and was hung by Saddam Hussein in 1980. Iran later came to see Sadr’s
faction — which has 30 seats in parliament, a large and dedicated following, particularly
among lower-class Iraqi Shiites — as a growing force in Iraq. He also built a “Mahdi
Army” (Jaysh al-Mahdi, or JAM) after Saddam’s fall, which might now number about
60,000 fighters. U.S. military operations put down JAM uprisings in April 2004 and
August 2004 in “Sadr City” (Sadr stronghold in east Baghdad), Najaf, and other Shiite
cities. In each case, fighting was ended with compromises under which JAM forces
stopped fighting in exchange for amnesty for Sadr.
ISCI’s militia, the “Badr Brigades” (now renamed the “Badr Organization”),
numbered about 15,000, and during 2005, with the help of an ISCI member (Bayan Jabr)
as Interior Minister, it burrowed into the fledgling Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), particularly
the commando-style National Police. The Badr Brigades were recruited, trained, and
armed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, politically aligned with Iran’s hardliners, during
the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. During that war, Badr guerrillas conducted forays from Iran
into southern Iraq to attack Baath Party officials, but they did not seriously shake the
regime. Badr fighters in and outside the ISF have purportedly been involved in sectarian
killings of Sunnis, although to a lesser extent than Sadr’s JAM.
Shiite militia power grew in 2005-2006 as sectarian warfare with Iraq’s Sunnis
accelerated after the February 2006 bombing of the Al Askari Mosque in Samarra, and
as Iran shifted to active financial and materiel assistance to all the Shiite militias.
However, Iran’s efforts to promote Shiite solidarity began to unravel as these militias and
their party sponsors increasingly battled each other in 2007, causing substantial anti-Iran
sentiment among Iraqi Shiite civilians often victimized by the fighting. JAM fighters
have been challenging ISCI, Iraqi government forces, and U.S. and British forces for
control of such Shiite cities as Diwaniyah, Karbala, Hilla, Nassiryah, Basra, Kut, and
Amarah. Other reports suggest the JAM is becoming increasingly less disciplined and
less organized, and that breakaway fighters are being organized by Iran into “special
groups.” The intra-Shiite conflict had space to accelerate as Britain drew down its forces
the Basra area. Britain has about 5,200 troops at Basra airport but it transferred Basra
Province to ISF control on December 16, 2007 and will reduce its force to about 2,500
by mid-2008. On the other hand, a popular backlash from JAM-ISCI clashes in Karbala
in August 2007 caused Sadr to declare a six month “suspension” of JAM activities; he
extended the ceasefire in February 2008 for another six months. Politically, during 2007,
Sadr pulled his faction out of the UIA bloc in the parliament and out of the cabinet,
weakening Shiite solidarity in governance.

Assertions of Iranian Support to Armed Groups
Iranian material support to militias in Iraq has added to U.S.-Iran tensions over Iran’s
nuclear program and regional ambitions, such as its aid to Lebanese Hezbollah. In
providing weaponry, Iran sought to develop a broad range of options in Iraq that includes
pressuring U.S. and British forces to leave Iraq, or to bog down the United States
militarily and thereby deter it from military or diplomatic action against Iran’s nuclear
program. In August 2007, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad heightened U.S.
concerns about Iran’s long term intentions by saying that Iran would fill a “vacuum” that
would be left by a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Senior U.S. and allied military officials
and policymakers have sometimes provided specific information on Iranian aid to Shiite

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militias. The aid is funneled by the Revolutionary Guard’s “Qods (Jerusalem) Forces”
— the arm of the Guard that operates outside Iran’s borders. No firm information exists
on how many Iranian agents might be in Iraq, but one press report said there are 150
Qods and intelligence personnel in Iraq.1
! On September 28, 2006, Maj. Gen. Richard Zahner, deputy chief of staff
for intelligence of the Multinational Force-Iraq (MNF-I), said that the
labels on C-4 explosives found with Shiite militiamen prove that the
explosives came from Iran. He added that only the Iranian military
apparatus controls access to such military-grade explosives.2
! On February 11, 2007, U.S. military briefers in Baghdad provided what
they said was specific evidence that Iran had supplied armor-piercing
“explosively formed projectiles” (EFPs) to Shiite militias. EFPs have
been responsible for over 200 U.S. combat deaths from 2003 until
December 2007, although this is many times lower than the number of
U.S. deaths at the hands of Sunni insurgents. In August 2007, Gen.
Raymond Odierno, then number two U.S. commander in Iraq, said that
the Shiite militias accounted for 73% of the attacks that killed or
wounded U.S. soldiers that month, adding that Iran had supplied the
Shiite militias with 122 millimeter mortars that are used to fire on the
Green Zone in Baghdad.
! On July 2, 2007, Brig. Gen. Kevin Begner told journalists that the Qods
Force is using Lebanese Hezbollah to train and channel weapons to Iraqi
Shiite militia fighters, and that Iran is giving up to $3 million per month
to its protege forces in Iraq. Bergner based his information on the March
2007 capture — in connection with a January 2007 attack that killed five
U.S. forces in Karbala — of former Sadr spokesman Qais Khazali and
Lebanese Hezbollah operative Ali Musa Daqduq.
! In his September 10 and 11, 2007 testimony to Congress, U.S.
commander in Iraq General David Petraeus, referring to the “special
groups” of breakaway JAM militiamen, said that Iran is seeking to turn
the Iraqi Shiite militias into a “Hezbollah-like force to serve [Iran’s]
interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition
forces....” On October 7, 2007, Gen. Petraeus told journalists that Iran’s
Ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, is a member of the Qods
Force.
In moving to curb Qods Force activity in Iraq, from December 2006-October 2007,
U.S. forces arrested a total of 20 Iranians in Iraq, many of whom are alleged to be Qods
Forces officers. Of these, five were arrested in January 2007 in a liaison office in the
Kurdish city of Irbil. On November 9, 2007, U.S. officers released 9 of the 20, releasing
1 Linzer, Dafna. “Troops Authorized To Kill Iranian Operatives in Iraq,” Washington Post,
January 26, 2007.
2 “Iranian Government Behind Shipping Weapons to Iraq.” American Forces Press Service,
September 28, 2006.

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1 more on December 20, but continue to hold 10 that are believed of the most
intelligence value. On March 24, 2007, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted
Resolution 1747 on the Iran nuclear issue. The Resolution has a provision banning arms
exports by Iran, a provision clearly directed at Iran’s arms supplies to Iraq’s Shiite militias
and Lebanese Hezbollah. In September 2007, the U.S. military said that, to stop the flow
of Iranian weaponry, it had built a base near the Iranian border in Wasit Province, east of
Baghdad. The base and related high technology border checkpoints are manned, in part,
by the 2,000 forces sent by the republic of Georgia. In an effort to financially squeeze
the Qods Force, on October 25, 2007, the Bush Administration designated the Qods
Force, under Executive Order 13224, as a provider of support to terrorist organizations.
At the same time, the Administration designated the Revolutionary Guard and several
affiliated entities and persons, under Executive Order 13382, as of proliferation concern.
The designations had the effect of freezing any U.S.-based assets of the designees and
preventing any transactions with them by U.S. persons, but neither the Guard or the Qods
Force was named a Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), as was recommended by
H.R. 1400, passed by the House on September 25, 2007, and a provision of the FY2008
defense authorization bill (P.L. 110-181). However, the effect on the Qods Force and on
the Guard is likely to be limited because they do not likely have any U.S.-based assets and
most U.S.-Iran trade is banned.
On January 9, 2008, the Treasury Department took action against suspected Iranian
and pro-Iranian operatives in Iraq by designating them as a threat to stability in Iraq under
a July 17, 2007 Executive Order 13438. The penalties are a freeze on their assets and a
ban on transactions with them. The named entities are: Ahmad Forouzandeh,
Commander of the Qods Force Ramazan Headquarters, who is accused of fomenting
sectarian violence in Iraq and of organizing training in Iran for Iraqi Shiite militia fighters;
Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani, the Iran-based leader of network that funnels Iranian arms to
Shiite militias in Iraq; and Isma’il al-Lami (Abu Dura), a Shiite miltia leader – who has
broken from the JAM – alleged to have committed mass kidnappings and planned
assassination attempts against Iraqi Sunni politicians
In late 2007, it appeared that some U.S. counter-measures might be succeeding,
although unevenly. In November 2007, U.S. officials said that an August 2007 Iranian
pledge to Maliki to stop arming Iraqi militias was being implemented to some extent.
Since December 2007, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, Secretary of Defense
Gates, and Gen. Petraeus have reported that Shiite militia attacks on U.S. forces and
Iranian weapons shipments had diminished, although there was a rise in Iranian shipments
into Iraq in early January 2008. However, these officials and other reports say that Iran
continues to assist and organize the special groups of militiamen, which are believed
responsible for occasional mortar and rocket attacks on U.S. installations in Baghdad.
State Department officials attribute the decline in Iranian weapons to bilateral diplomacy
with Iran, but Defense Department officials attributed the decline to U.S. counter-
measures, such as arrests of Qods Force agents and raids on arms caches. Some experts
believe that Iran has decided to reduce its military involvement in Iraq to counter the anti-
Tehran backlash it observes among Iraqi Shiite civilians.
Efforts to Negotiate With Iran. Another means of curbing Iran’s activities in
Iraq has been direct diplomacy with Iran. The report of the Iraq Study Group (December
2006) recommended that the United States include Iran (and Syria) in multilateral efforts
to stabilize Iraq. Previously, U.S. officials had offered to engage Iran on the issue, but

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U.S. officials opposed Iran’s efforts to expand discussions to bilateral U.S.-Iran issues
and no talks were held. In a shift that might have been caused by Administration
assessments that U.S. military and economic pressure on Iran was increasing U.S.
leverage, the United States attended regional conferences “Expanded Neighbors
Conference”) in Baghdad on March 10, 2007,and in Egypt during May 3-4, 2007. At the
latter meeting, Secretary of State Rice and Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki held no
substantive bilateral discussions, according to both sides. Nor did they have separate
direct talks, by all accounts, at a November 2, 2007 meeting on Iraq in Istanbul. As an
outgrowth of the regional meetings, the United States and Iran have held bilateral
meetings in Baghdad on the Iraq issue, led by U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and
Iranian Ambassador Kazemi-Qomi. The first was on May 28, 2007. A second round,
held on July 24, resulted in an agreement to establish a working group to discuss ways to
stabilize Iraq; it met for the first time on August 6, 2007. In consideration of more
recent assessments that Iran was reducing its weapons shipments into Iraq, more talks in
Baghdad were scheduled for December 18, 2007, but were postponed – and still have not
been held – because Iran wants this round to be at the ambassadorial level, not working
group talks. The United States believes that the working group should meet first, and then
the talks could move to ambassador level.
Iranian Influence Over Iraqi Political Leaders
Iran has exercised substantial political and economic influence on the post-Saddam
Iraqi government, although Iran’s initiatives do not necessarily conflict with the U.S. goal
of reconstructing Iraq. During exchanges of high-level visits in the summer of 2005,
including one led by interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari in July, Iraqi officials took
responsibility for starting the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, and indirectly blamed Saddam
Hussein for using chemical weapons against Iranian forces during that conflict. During
a related defense ministerial exchange, the two signed military cooperation agreements,
as well as agreements to open diplomatic facilities in Basra and Karbala and to begin
transportation and energy links (oil swaps, provision of cooking fuels and 2 million liters
per day of kerosene to Iraqis and future oil pipeline connections). In response to U.S.
complaints, Iraqi officials have said that any Iran-Iraq military cooperation would be
limited to border security, landmine removal, and information sharing. In 2005, Iran
extended Iraq a $1 billion credit line as well, some of which is being used to build roads
in the Kurdish north and a new airport near Najaf, a key entry point for the estimated
20,000 Iranian pilgrims visiting the Imam Ali Shrine there each month. The two countries
have developed a free trade zone around Basra, which buys electricity from Iran, and Iraq
is now Iran’s second largest non-oil export market, buying about $2 billion worth of
goods from Iran during 2007. Iran opened consulates in Irbil and Sulaymaniyah in
November 2007.
Shortly after the Maliki government took office on May 20, 2006, Iran’s Foreign
Minister Manuchehr Mottaki led a visit to Iraq, during which Iraq’s Foreign Minister,
Hoshyar Zebari supported Iran’s right to pursue “peaceful” nuclear technology, while
also stating that Iraq does not want “any of [its] neighbors to have weapons of mass
destruction.”3 Maliki visited Iran during September 13-14, 2006, signing agreements to
on cross border immigration, intelligence sharing, and commerce, and threatening to expel
3 “Clarification Statement” issued by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. May 29, 2006.

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the 3,400 members of the Iranian opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organization of
Iran (PMOI), based in Iraq during Saddam’s rule and now confined by U.S.-led forces
to a camp near the Iranian border. During Maliki’s visit to Iran during August 8-9, 2007
— during which the Iranian pledge to curb aid to Shiite militias was made — Maliki
signed an agreement with Iran to build pipelines between Basra and Iran’s city of Abadan
to transport crude and oil products for their swap arrangements; the agreement was
finalized on November 8, 2007. He also invited Ahmadinejad to Iraq; Ahmadinejad made
the visit, a first since the 1979 Islamic revolution, on March 2-3, 2008. During the trip,
in which he was warmly welcomed at the highest levels of the Iraqi government,
Ahmadinejad called for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and said the Iraqi people reject the
U.S. presence. In conjunction with the visit, Iran announced $1 billion in credits for
Iranian exports to Iraq, and the two sides signed seven agreements for cooperation in the
areas of insurance, customs treatment, industry, education, environmental protection, and
transportation. Others believe that Iraq’s cabinet vote not to attend the November 27,
2007, Middle East summit in Annapolis was out of respect for Iran, which was not invited
to the meeting.
Prospects
Some believe Iran’s influence will fade over the long term as territorial and Arab-
Persian differences reemerge. Iraq’s post-Saddam constitution does not establish an
Iranian-style theocracy, and rivalry between Iraq’s Shiite clerics and those of Iran might
increase if Najaf reemerges as a key center of Shiite Islamic scholarship to rival Qom in
Iran. Iraqi Shiites generally stayed loyal to the Iraqi regime during the 1980-1988 Iran-
Iraq war. Although exchanges of prisoners and remains from the Iran-Iraq war are mostly
completed, Iran has not returned the 153 Iraqi military and civilian aircraft flown to Iran
at the start of the 1991 Gulf War, although it has allowed an Iraqi technical team to assess
the condition of the aircraft (August 2005). Another dispute is Iran’s shelling of border
towns in northern Iraq that Iran says are the sites where the Party for a Free Life in
Kurdistan (PJAK), an Iranian Kurdish separatist group, is staging incursions into Iran.
However, most territorial issues are resolved as a result of an October 2000 bilateral
rededication to recognize the thalweg, or median line of the Shatt al Arab waterway
between them, as their water border. This was a provision of the 1975 Algiers Accords
between the Shah of Iran and the Baathist government of Iraq. (Iraq abrogated that
agreement prior to its September 1980 invasion of Iran.) The water border remains
subject to interpretation, but the two sides agreed to renovate water and land border posts
during the Ahmadinejad visit to Iraq in March 2008.
Iranian influence might increase if momentum builds to create new autonomous
regions in Iraq, including a large Shiite region envisioned by ISCI. A U.S. Senate
amendment adopted in September 2007 (P.L. 110-181, FY2008 defense authorization
bill) supports implementation of “federalism” in Iraq, and many Iraqi parties have
denounced this amendment as an effort to “partition” Iraq. Any Shiite region in Iraq
would no doubt look to Iran for economic, political, and even military support.

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