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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Iranian Complications: Between 2007 and 2010 We Taught the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force Our Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Counterinsurgency, Irregular, and Asymmetric Warfare

Iranian Complications: Between 2007 and 2010 We Taught the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force Our Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Counterinsurgency, Irregular, and Asymmetric Warfare

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Happy Monday!

Be of good cheer.

Because the US military in Iraq spent most of 2007 through 2010 teaching the Iranians our Tactics, Techniques, and Procedure (TTPs). Specifically, what I’m referring to is that under Maliki’s governing coalition with the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq (ISCI/the al Hakims) both Maliki’s Dawa Party militia and the much larger ISCI/al Hakim militia, the Badr Brigade, which now is independently led by Hadi al Amiri, significant portions of these militias were absorbed into the reconstituted Iraqi Army, Iraqi security services, and Iraqi intelligence. Unfortunately, the Dawa Party militia and the Badr Brigade had been established by the IRGC and the Quds Force while these Iraqis were in exile in Iran, most of the senior officers in each militia, and therefore in the Shi’a Arab portion of the Iraqi army, security, and intelligence services, are paid a stipend by the IRGC and/or the Quds Force. In the fight against ISIS, Badr Brigade forces, as part of the loyal to the Government of Iraq militias, fought side by side with regular Iraqi Army forces. Here too, we were teaching them how we fight irregular, asymmetric, and unconventional wars. So by teaching these guys our Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures, we were basically just teaching them to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force.

Yay us!

Reader Interactions

54Comments

  4. 4.

    trollhattan

    @Honus:
    Yeah, I remember the giddy panic that Taliban would start skulking around US airports with surplus Stinger missiles.

  6. 6.

    Mart

    Asymmetric warfare ain’t got no chance against a BoltonTrump nuke you Persian losers. Actually I am terrified by all of this war talk. Great to see the media yapping away like this will go fine just like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, etc., etc.

    In better news – After 12 hours of labor my daughter had an emergency “C” section. The twin boys and daughter are healthy. Women are so damn strong.

  10. 10.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Rob: Amiri did a good job sucking up to Bremer who ran the Coalitions Provisional Authority and other Bush 43 officials back in DC.

    Those guys were and are so stupid!

  12. 12.

    rikyrah

    Iranian Complications: Between 2007 and 2010 We Taught the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force Our Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Counterinsurgency, Irregular, and Asymmetric Warfare

    Because, of course…
    Sigh….

    I’ll say it again….

    Sleep on the Persians if you want to.

    Iran is NOT Iraq.
    Iran is NOT Iraq.
    Iran is NOT Iraq.
    There’s no way that this can go anyway but bad for us.

  15. 15.

    Mike in NC

    @Adam L Silverman: Bremer. The genius who decided to disband the Iraqi army but let them keep their weapons. Did he ever get one of those Medals of Freedom that Dubya handed out like candy?

  20. 20.

    lahke

    @Mart: Sorry, having trouble counting. Are there twin boys and also a girl? Or is it a set of one boy and one girl who are twins?

  23. 23.

    Duane

    @Adam L Silverman: Is the threat of war Trumpov’s way of distracting from all his troubles? It’s such a horrible idea for so many reasons. They can’t be serious can they?

  25. 25.

    Sab

    @lahke: Ha! I made the same mistake first time I read it. The twins are twins, so must be two. The girl is their mom, his daughter.

  26. 26.

    TomatoQueen

    @Mart: Welcome in, grandbaby boys, let this be the last time you give your mama any such trouble. Best wishes to your daughter for a healthy recovery from surgery and congratulations on the twins.

  27. 27.

    Jay

    “(Reuters) – A U.S. Border Patrol agent had called migrants “subhuman” and “savages” in text messages weeks before he knocked over a migrant with a pickup truck, according to federal court documents.

    Agent Matthew Bowen sent the messages in November 2017, two weeks before he is accused of deliberately knocking over a Guatemalan man with his Border Patrol vehicle in Nogales, Arizona, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson.”

    https://news.yahoo.com/savages-u-border-agent-accused-slurs-bumping-migrant-170327908.html

  28. 28.

    Ruckus

    @rikyrah:
    The new mayor looks/sounds like she means business. And she kicked ass, 74% of the vote. Hard to question her with a win like that.

  30. 30.

    TenguPhule

    @Duane:

    It’s such a horrible idea for so many reasons. They can’t be serious can they?

    Always bet on Trump doing the worst thing possible.

  32. 32.

    Miss Bianca

    Has anybody briefed the *president and his mad mustachioed lapdog, Bolton, on this set of inconvenient facts? Are they even capable of understanding the implications?

  36. 36.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Duane: My take is the President thinks he’s bluffing and this will get the Iranians to reach out and try to negotiate.

    The thing, one among all of the things, that Trump doesn’t understand here is that the Iranians are not going to call him. From the Iranian’s perspective, they reached out after 9-11 and got somewhere between ignored and told to shove off. They reached out again years later, specifically having Soleimani negotiate directly with senior American interlocutors, and from the Iranian perspective the senior Americans he was negotiating with got overruled by the folks back in DC. And the one time they finally did come to the table and agreed on something, the JCPOA, they got a letter from Tom Cotton and 46 of his colleagues telling them that anything they agreed to wasn’t worth the paper it was written on, and then a couple of years later Trump reneged on the agreement even though they were, and still are, in compliance.

    If you were the Iranians you wouldn’t call either.

  38. 38.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Ruckus:

    And she kicked ass, 74% of the vote. Hard to question her with a win like that.

    Putin and all the dictators in Africa are laughing at her poor showing

  40. 40.

    Dan B

    @Mike in NC: I had a wonderful friend, an anaesthesiologist from Iraq, who fled because she was developing PTSD from putting under Sadaam’s enemies. Their ears were cut off and their terror affected her. She believed that dismantling the one million strong Iraqi military would lead to disaster because one million young men unable to earn a living would lead to sectarian militias.

    How prescient.

  41. 41.

    Dan B

    @rikyrah: Chilling reporting on Pence. His history in Indiana provides some equally awful history. He diverted funds from HIV prevention into “conversion therapy” programs. Not long after there was an outbreak of new HIV infections in southern Indiana. “Morality” triumphed over science.

    Those of us who love science believe it’s a better guide to a compassionate world than blind faith.

  43. 43.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Dan B:

    Those of us who love science believe it’s a better guide to a compassionate world than blind faith.

    And other people love Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood. YMMV.

    Not really. You are totally correct.

  46. 46.

    Cheryl Rofer

    It’s bluster, but very dangerous bluster. He thinks if he does this, Iran will call. But Adam nailed that upthread. Trump thinks that this kind of thing brought North Korea to the bargaining table. And, oh yes, as I said some time back, he’s just going to gaslight us and probably himself that everything is fine there.

  48. 48.

    gene108

    @Dan B:

    It wasn’t just dismantling the military. Bremmer also kicked all the Ba’thists our of government; basically destroying all the bureaucracy and forcing a new government be built from scratch

  49. 49.

    boatboy_srq

    In a sense the Fauxnews talking bobblehead was right. The only way to win against Iran is to nuke the entirety of Persia to a lifeless glassy plain. Anything short of that is disaster for the attacker (and nuked to a lifeless glassy plain is disaster in and of itself).

    Only The Walrus thinks war with Iran is winnable.

  50. 50.

    PIGL

    By bailing from the JPCOA and imposing economic sanction against Iran on a flimsy pretext, the USA has imposed an illegal blockade against Iran, which constitutes an act of war.

    Discuss.

  51. 51.

    Jay

    @gene108:

    It wasn’t just the Government, de-Baathification impacted the Courts, Universities, Hospitals, Industry, Power, Water, Energy, Reconstruction.

  52. 52.

    Chetan Murthy

    I recall reading that Maliki and the other leadership of SCIRI (old name of ISCI) were all being paid pensions from the IRGC, b/c they’d fought with Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. Not sure if that’s accurate.

  54. 54.

    Jay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    It’s not accurate. eg. Maliki fled to Syria, where he ran the newspaper and media arm of Dawa. He moved from Syria to Iran in 1982.

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