General George Casey, Chief of Staff of the United States Army and Commanding General of MNF-I (2004 to 2007) was among the guest of honors at the Paris rally on June 13, 2015. The gathering was held honor the martyrs and political prisoners in Iran. Gen. Casey addressed a crowd of over 100,000 Iranian exiled at the Grand Iranian Resistance Gathering and began his speech by saying: “It’s an honor for me to be here with you again this year as you continue your struggle against the regime in Tehran. I’d like to use my brief moments with you this evening to reemphasize a point that we made in our statement, and that’s the point about Iran’s destabilizing role in the region. And it’s that role that I have personal experience with during my time in Iraq between 2004 to 2007. In our statement we said it is by now beyond dispute that the regime in Tehran is fomenting instability and conflict throughout the region, most notably in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq. And we went on to say that Iran’s destructive role throughout the region must be curbed and deterred. I could not agree more. For me by the middle of 2006 it was clear that the Iranian regime was providing military training and lethal equipment to the Shiite militias. This was the major factor in inflaming and sustaining the sectarian violence that racked Iraq in 2006 and 2007, and continues to this day. This support was provided by the Quds Force, the regime’s destabilizing arm, and it is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of coalition forces and thousands of Iraqis. I know the Quds Force was involved because we caught them red-handed. We captured six of them in a safe house in Baghdad with maps showing sectarian population movements and records of weapons shipments in and out of Iraq. There can be no doubt that the Quds Force is doing the same type of thing across the region today. The Iranian regime is a state sponsor of terror. They are using terror to accomplish their political and ideological objectives across the region. We could not have more diametrically opposed objectives. So not only must Iran’s destructive role in the region be curbed and deterred, the regime’s support for terror must end.”