“Pentagon Report: Iraq’s Security Forces Overrun by Iranian-Backed Militants,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, February 14, 2022:

Iraq’s security forces are overrun by Iranian-backed militants, the Pentagon disclosed for the first time publicly in a report indicating Tehran’s anti-American militias have long been cashing in on U.S. taxpayer funds.

“Iran and Iran-aligned militias continue to have strong ties to some elements of Iraq’s traditional security forces,” the Pentagon’s inspector general informed Congress in a new report on U.S. military operations in the region. Iraq’s federal police and emergency response division, both overseen by Iraq’s Interior Ministry (MOI), as well as the Iraqi Army’s fifth and eighth divisions “are the units thought to have the greatest Iranian influence.” However, “officers sympathetic to Iranian or militia interests are scattered throughout the security services.”

The report marks the first unclassified admission that Iran controls and directs large swaths of Iraq’s security infrastructure, according to current and former U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon. Though Iran’s influence has been an open secret for decades, the Pentagon continued to provide funding to Iraq’s MOI, which is siphoned to the country’s Badr Corps, an Iran-created fighting force that was absorbed into Iraq’s security infrastructure after the U.S. invasion of the country in 2003.

The high-ranking presence of the Badr Corps in Iraq’s security forces has long been a source of concern for Iran hawks in Congress. But the Pentagon’s first public acknowledgment of their power is renewing calls for the Biden administration to cut off funds to Iraq’s MOI and designate the Badr Corps as a terrorist group due to its ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)….

With the Biden administration in the final stages of inking a new nuclear accord with Iran, it is unlikely the United States will cut funding to the MOI and Badr Corps?

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