(FiveNation.com)- According to a recent report from the Pentagon’s Office of the Inspector General, Iraqi security forces who receive US taxpayer funding, have been overrun by Iranian-back militants.
According to the inspector general, the units believed to have the greatest Iranian influences are Iraq’s federal police and emergency response division, overseen by Iraq’s Interior Ministry (MOI), as well as Iraq’s fifth and eighth Army divisions. Additionally, scattered throughout the Iraqi security services are officers sympathetic to Iran or the Iranian-backed Iraqi militias.
Despite knowing for decades of Iranian influence within the Iraqi forces, the Pentagon continues to provide funding to Iraq’s Interior Ministry. This funding is being siphoned to Iraq’s Badr Corps, the Iranian-created fighting force that became part of Iraq’s security infrastructure after the 2003 US invasion.
The Trump administration privately raised concerns over both the Badr Corps and Iran’s growing influence over the Iraqi security forces, but its attempts to cut funding received pushback from the Pentagon.
And now that the Biden administration is working to restart the nuclear deal with Iran, it is unlikely the Pentagon will cut funding to the Interior Ministry and the Badr Corps.
According to Texas Republican Congressman Pat Fallon from the House Armed Service Committee, the IG report confirms that the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats “are complacent in the funding of Iran’s terrorism within the Iraqi government.”
According to South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson, head of the Republican Study Committee’s national security task force, the inspector general report confirms that Tehran and Iranian-linked militias “continue to have strong ties to some elements of Iraq’s traditional security forces.”
Wilson, who has been fighting to block US funding to the Badr Corps for over a year, told the Washington Free Beacon that so long as Iranian-backed militias like Badr Corps are linked to the Interior Ministry, the Biden administration should “re-evaluate funding.”
Members of the Iranian-backed Badr Corps were responsible for the terrorist attack on the US Embassy in Baghdad in December 2019.
