A top Iranian dissident living in Paris says up to 800 clerics and theology students from Iran are in the process of infiltrating cities in neighboring Iraq in time for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins Friday. Ayatollah Jalal Ganje'i, a prominent critic of the Iranian regime, said in an interview with The Washington Times that the influx is part of continuing efforts by Tehran's power brokers to exploit the crisis in Iraq in order to set up a sister fundamentalist Islamic republic. The religious leaders, dispatched by the Islamic Propaganda Organization, plan to use the holy month to propagate militant Islamic views, he said, with the goal of strengthening Iraqi political groups whose philosophy and aims coincide with those of Iran's theocratic regime.
The cleric said the religious leaders will take their message into Kut, Nasariyah, Amarra, Najaf, Basra and Baghdad, joining a massive network of other Iranian agents already in Iraq, many in armed underground cells. "I expect the violence to increase, and this will also set the stage for further meddling in upcoming Iraqi elections," said Ayatollah Ganje'i, who is affiliated with the National Council of Resistance, a State Department-designated terrorist group. Also known as the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran, the group was the first to reveal details of Iran's nuclear activities. "Iran is hoping to use the January elections to bring its own Islamic fundamentalists to power," the cleric said. He did not specify which leaders Tehran was working with in Iraq.
Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld similarly said there has been "a lot of meddling" by Iranians in Iraq. "They clearly want to affect the outcome of the election, and they are aggressively trying to do that," he said. "They're sending money in, they're sending weapons in, and they're notably unhelpful." Mr. Rumsfeld said millions of refugees and pilgrims regularly travel between the porous border separating Iran and Iraq, adding, "There's no way we could stop the flow of these pilgrims." An official at the Iranian Interests Section in Washington referred a request for comment to a telephone number in New York, which was out of service. |