December 21, 2018
The Islamic Republic has dispatched assassination teams to Iraq to kill Iraqi political figures who are trying to limit Iranian influence in Iraq, The Daily Telegraph of London says.
In a November 29 story, the daily said British security officials had told it that the hit squads were ordered into action by Gen. Qasem Soleymani, the chief of Iran’s Qods Force, the arm of the Pasdaran that operates outside Iran.
The most high-profile victim to date of the Iranian hit squads was Adel Shaker At-Tamimi—a close ally of former Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi—who was assassinated in September.
A Shia Muslim and Canadian-Iraqi dual national, Tamimi, 46, was involved in attempts in Baghdad to heal the schism between the country’s Shia and Sunni communities, and also worked as a low-key envoy to restore Iraq’s relations with neighboring Arab states, such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
The Daily Telegraph quoted security sources as saying the Iranian assassins have targeted opponents across Iraq’s political spectrum.
Other victims of Iran’s hit squads included Shawki al-Haddad, a close ally of the Shia firebrand Muqtada Al-Sadr, a former protege of Tehran who recently has adopted a more nationalist agenda. Haddad was murdered in July after accusing the Iranians of election fraud.
Meanwhile, Rady at-Tai, an advisor to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s leading Shii cleric, was the subject of a failed assassination attempt in August after he called for the reduction of Iranian influence in the new government.
“Iran is intensifying its campaign of intimidation against the Iraqi government by using assassination squads to silence critics of Tehran,” a senior British security official told The Daily Telegraph. “This is a blatant attempt to thwart efforts by the new Iraqi government to end Iran’s meddling in Iraq.”
The newspaper said the hit squads were first dispatched just after the Iraqi parliamentary elections in May, which ended with no faction having won a big portion of the vote and all the factions having to negotiate a compromise government.