On Dec. 22, 2006, American military officials in Baghdad issued a secret
warning: The Shiite militia commander who had orchestrated the
kidnapping of officials from Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education was now
hatching plans to take American soldiers hostage.
What made the warning especially worrying
were intelligence reports saying that the Iraqi militant, Azhar
al-Dulaimi, had been trained by the Middle East’s masters of the dark
arts of paramilitary operations: the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in Iran and Hezbollah, its Lebanese ally.
“Dulaymi reportedly obtained his training from Hizballah operatives near
Qum, Iran, who were under the supervision of Iranian Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force (IRGC-QF) officers in July 2006,”
the report noted, using alternative spellings of the principals
involved.
Five months later, Mr. Dulaimi was tracked down and killed in an
American raid in the sprawling Shii… >>>
