TEHRAN, Iran, June 19 (World Daily Times) — Reuters reported, citing eight Iraqi sources, that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps created small, secret cells inside Iraq to launch drone attacks on Gulf countries that host American forces. If accurate, the arrangement would show a deliberate attempt to hide the chain of command behind attacks that could otherwise be traced to Iran-backed groups operating in the region.
The sources told Reuters the cells were set up to bypass established militia networks and reduce the chance of detection. Three of the Iraqi sources described the groups as three or four cells, each with about 10 elite Iraqi Shi’ite fighters. That structure matters because it suggests a move away from large, familiar proxy formations and toward smaller units that may be harder for Iraqi and regional security forces to track.
Reuters said three Iraqi security sources linked the cells to at least seven drone attacks launched from desert areas near Basra and Samawa in southern Iraq between April 20 and May 17. The reported targets were sites in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In a region where drone incidents can escalate quickly and attribution is often contested, attacks launched from Iraqi territory carry added political weight for Baghdad as well as for the states under threat.
The report said some of the fighters were drawn from Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of hardline Shi’ite factions with thousands of fighters, but that the new cells operated outside its command structure and reported directly to the IRGC. Iraqi officials cited by Reuters said that setup could give Tehran plausible deniability, shift blame away from its better-known allied groups and ease U.S. pressure on Baghdad to disarm them.
No court case, arrest record or charging document was included in the material provided, and the allegations remain untested in public legal proceedings. But the significance of the report is clear: it points to a possible effort to use Iraqi soil as a launchpad for deniable attacks beyond Iraq’s borders, deepening the security problem for both Baghdad and Gulf neighbors.
