A U.S. Army soldier stands guard during a visit to the al-Faw school in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, Aug. 14, 2008. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) From Yahoo News/AP:
WASHINGTON - Iraqi Shiite assassination teams are being trained in at least four locations in Iran by Tehran's elite Quds force and Lebanese Hezbollah and are planning to return to Iraq in the next few months to kill specific Iraqi officials as well as U.S. and Iraqi troops, according to intelligence gleaned from captured militia fighters and other sources in Iraq.
A senior U.S. military intelligence officer in Baghdad described the information Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.
The officer on Wednesday provided Iraq's national security adviser with several lists of the assassination teams' expected targets. He said the targets include many judges but would not otherwise identify them. Iraq's intelligence service is preparing operations to determine where and when the special group fighters will enter the country and is to provide an assessment to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
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Update: US: Quds, Hezbollah training hit squads in Iran -- NTV
My Comment: Cannot say that I am surprised. Iran's previous sponsored groups have either been arrested, killed, or have gone into hiding. The net result has been a sharp decline in attacks and murders for the past few months in all areas of Iraq.
Iran cannot have Iraq succeed. A "semi-democratic" Iraq with a booming economy is a strategic threat to the government of Iran. Iran's citizens, if they are witness to a successful Iraq when they visit the country on their religious pilgrimages, will carry this news back to Iran. Iran already has problems with all of its religious and ethnic minorities, it does not need to have problems with its own Persian (Farsi) speaking populations.
Iran especially does not want stories like this spreading around.
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