In its editorial On April 7, the Washington Times wrote: According to U.S. military officials in Iraq, the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has played an extensive role in funnelling arms to Iraqi Shi’ite militias. Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, spokesman for the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq, on Wednesday called on the Iranian government to “fulfill its pledge to halt the flow of weapons, of training, of funding, and of other resources that the criminal groups are dependent upon here.” Gen. Bergner referred to interrogations last year of Qais Khazali, a Shi’ite radical captured last spring who implicated the Quds force in the killing of American servicemen. Khazali and a Hezbollah operative captured by coalition forces said that the senior leadership of the Quds force were responsible for a January 2007 ambush in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed. One soldier died in the ambush, carried out by attackers wearing American-style military uniforms. The other four soldiers were kidnapped and killed later.
Khazali “told us in his own words that there was no way that [Iranian] special forces could conduct the attacks that they were conducting without the support of the Iranian Quds force and their network that was training, equipping, funding and assisting special groups in undertaking these criminal activities. We have seen the continued use of Iranian-manufactured and -supplied rockets, mortars and explosively-formed penetrators,” Gen. Bergner added on Wednesday. “And in fact, we have captured individuals who tell us that they have recently been to Iran and been trained by the Quds Force operatives.