The lowdown on Iran's Al Quds Force

That is, the group that the U.S. military is now firmly convinced was behind the killing of 5 American soldiers in Karbala, Iraq in January. As RFE/RL reports:

A top U.S. military official told a press conference in Baghdad today that the information [that convinced them] comes from a senior Hizballah operative captured in southern Iraq in March.

The Hizballah operative referred to is Ali Musa Dakduk, who was captured in March. Dakduk served in the organization for 24 years. He was described as a "surrogate" Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps' Quds Force by the military official, Brigadier General Kevin Bergner. As the RFE/RL report continues:

"Quds Force, along with Hizballah instructors, train approximately 20 to 60 Iraqis at a time, sending them back to Iraq, organized into these special groups," Bergner said. "They were being taught how to use EFPs [explosively formed penetrators], mortars, rockets, as well as intelligence, sniper, and kidnapping operations."

Bergner said Dakduk was a contact point between the Quds Force and a breakaway militant Shi'ite group. He said that group had been led by Qays al-Khaz'ali, a former spokesman for radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

So what is this Iranian Quds Force?

Here's how the Quds Force was described in a February RFE/RL interview with one Mahan Abedin, the director of research at the London-based Center for the Study of Terrorism and the editor of "Islamism Digest" journal:

RFE/RL: What is [the Quds Force] main function and in what countries has it been operating in the past two decades?

Abedin: Its essential function is to conduct special operations outside of Iran, and historically -- over the past 25 years or so -- it's been involved in the following theaters: involved in Afghanistan in the 1980s; it had extensive involvement in Lebanon; extensive involvement in Iraq throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, when they were working with Iraqi dissident groups and the Kurdish faction in the north to undermine Saddam [Hussein's] regime. [The Quds Force] was extensively involved in Bosnia in the early 1990s; it was in charge of supplying arms to the Bosnian Muslims. Their operations -- which have rarely received any coverage -- [included] their involvement in southern Sudan in the early 1990s, when they worked with the Sudanese army. So it's been involved in various theaters."

RFE/RL: What role does the Quds Force play in Iraq, and how does it operate?

Abedin: What they do essentially is work with militias and armed factions in Iraq, and they enable them to gain a critical advantage over their adversaries -- and their adversaries are, first and foremost, the Sunni factions.

RFE/RL: Does that mean they provide them with training?

Abedin: It depends on what you mean by "training." They would certainly give them highly specialized training in forming networks whose primary function is to gather and manipulate intelligence, and that's the primary battle in Iraq. . . If you talk about arms training, that is not necessarily the case, because a lot of these [fighters] already have that training.

Later on in the interview, Abedin disputes the notion that the Quds Force could possibly operate independently of Tehran:

Abedin: The Quds Force, although it's a highly specialized department, it is subject to strict, iron-clad military discipline. It's completely controlled by the military hierarchy of the IRGC, and the IRGC is very tightly controlled by the highest levels of the administration in Iran. If the Quds Force was going around blowing up American soldiers, then that would be definitely sanctioned by the highest levels of the Iranian government. But my point is that they're not doing that, because Iranian policy in Iraq is not about that. Iranian policy in Iraq is to give proper training and support to Iran's natural allies in Iraq in order to influence their political positioning in post-occupation Iraq. The Iranians are far too smart, in my view, to challenge American power in Iraq directly.

As to the size of this force:

Abedin: I think its core doesn't go beyond 800 people. These kind of specialized departments tend to be very small. But it's a very capable force -- their people are extremely talented [and] they tend to be the best people in the IRGC.

Ironic detail du jour: Iranian-made E.F.P.s killing Shiites in Iraq

Another load of Iranian munitions was intercepted in Iraq according to this New York Times dispatch:

American soldiers today detained an alleged cell of smugglers who procured powerful, armor piercing bombs and other weapons from Iran, the military said. The operation came in a raid, and it was one in a series aimed at stopping the flow of a type of powerful roadside bomb known as explosively formed projectiles, or E.F.P.s, into Iraq, said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a spokesman for the Multi-National Force Iraq.

Ironically, as the Times goes on to report, "Most of the attacks using [these Iranian-made] E.F.P.s have been in the eastern areas of the city which is predominantly Shiite."

This means that unwittingly or not, the Shiite regime in Tehran is supplying the very munitions that are killing its coreligionists in Iraq. How's that for irony?

Now a bit about Iran's role in the Iraqi insurgency

A dispatch direct from CENTCOM, the U.S. military command center in the region:

Through interrogations of key detainees in the past month, the United States has learned a great deal about Iranian involvement in terrorist activities in Iraq, specifically the financing and training of insurgent groups, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq said here today.

The interrogation of leaders and members of the Qazali terror network who have been in detention for more than a month revealed that Iran provided the network substantial funding, training on Iranian soil, advanced explosive munitions and technologies as well as arms and ammunition, and in some cases advice and even a degree of direction, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of Multinational Force Iraq, said in a Pentagon news conference.

Apparently, Iran is supplying some of the more deadly explosive devices, according to the U.S. military (who is on the ground there in contrast to most media outlets). As Centcom reports:

The U.S. has learned more about Iranian involvement in Iraq through the detention of one of the heads of the Sheibani network, which brings explosively formed projectiles into Iraq from Iran, Petraeus said.

This leader’s brother was in Iraq, and was the conduit who received munitions from Iraq and distributed them among the extremist elements.

“Those munitions, as you know, have been particularly lethal against some of our armored vehicles and responsible for some of the casualties, the more tragic casualties, in attacks on our vehicles,” Petraeus said.

The U.S. so far can't determine exactly who in Iran is directing this effort.

Also, there's no evidence that Iran is behind the, in Centcom's phrasing, "the spectacular car bomb attacks in Iraq." So far the military believes these are conducted by foreign jihadists coming in through Syria - along with the pious folk in Al Qaeda.

Here's a question for everybody, especially those readers in the region: So what should the U.S. do about Iran? And what to do about Syria?