TEHRAN, Iran, June 19 (World Daily Times) — Reuters reported, citing eight Iraqi sources, that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps set up secret cells in Iraq to carry out drone attacks on Gulf countries that host American forces. The allegation matters because the cells were described as small, compartmentalized units operating outside established militia chains, a structure the Iraqi sources said was meant to keep the attacks harder to detect and harder to pin on any one group.
According to the sources, the IRGC formed three or four cells of about 10 elite Iraqi Shi’ite fighters each. Three Iraqi security sources said at least seven drone attacks were launched from desert locations near Basra and Samawa between April 20 and May 17, with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates named as targets. Those sources said their account was based on human intelligence, intercepted communications and evidence gathered at launch sites.
The report said some of the fighters were drawn from Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of hardline Shi’ite factions, but that the new cells operated outside its command structure and reported directly to the IRGC. Iraqi officials cited in the report said that arrangement would give Tehran plausible deniability, shift blame away from the main Iran-backed groups and ease pressure on Baghdad to disarm them.
No public arrests, charges or court filings were identified in the material, and the report did not include responses from the IRGC or the governments of Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or the UAE. For Iraq, the significance is local as well as regional: the alleged launch areas sit inside Iraqi territory, showing how southern desert space can become part of a wider contest that reaches across the Gulf.
