Iran ‘stoking’ radical Islam in Iraq

PARIS, Feb 12 (AFP) – An Iranian dissident launched a book on Thursday in which he alleges Iran’s powerful clerics are trying to export radical Islam to neighbouring Iraq and have ordered the surveillance of the US military occupiers there.

Mohammad Mohaddessin, in a statement accompanying a presentation of his book “Enemies of the Ayatollahs”, said the basis of the clerics’ way of thinking was “that the US public would not tolerate a long presence of US forces in Iraq, especially if the human cost continued to rise”.

His book says that a unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the Qods Force, has reinforced its presence near the Iraqi border in recent weeks “to coordinate the force’s activities in Iraq”.

Mohaddessin, who is a member of the Iranian opposition group the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said the unit had in recent years set up “a number of autonomous terrorist cells in Iraq” and was now stepping up surveillance of bases and convoys belonging to the US-led Coalition forces.

The US occupying authorities in Iraq have been struggling against daily assaults by unidentified attackers they often depict as foreign “terrorists”.

More than 100 Iraqis died in bombings on Tuesday and Wednesday. The number of US combat deaths since US President George W. Bush declared an end to major hostilities on May 1 last year has risen to 257.

© AFP

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