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Iran uses “an army of merchants” to infiltrate Iraq |
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Sunday, 04 September 2005 |
Iran Focus
 London, Sep. 05 – Iran is using an ‘army of merchants’ to infiltrate Iraqi towns and cities to carry out political agitation and intelligence gathering work for the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), the Dubai-based daily al-Ettehad reported.
Referring to the recent discovery of Iranian-made bombs and weapon caches in Iraq, the daily wrote that despite official Iranian denial the arms could not have entered the country without the knowledge of Iranian military commanders since all weapons belonging to the Islamic Republic were systemically and accurately accounted for by Iran’s Ministry of Defence.
In August, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told a London-based Arabic newspaper that Iran continued to be the transit point for arms smuggled to insurgents in Iraq.
“Credible intelligence shows that arms smuggling continues through the Iran-Iraq border and the shipment of arms to terrorist groups in Iraq is a clear reality”, Zebari said in an interview with the daily Al-Hayat.
“One of our requests was that Iran change its policy towards Iraq, including for it not to sign bilateral deals with individual Iraqi provinces without the knowledge or approval of the central government [in Iraq">”, he added.
The Iraqi Foreign Minister asked Tehran not to “sign agreements or dialogue or joint-contracts with parties separate to the central government in power, since such violations are not acceptable under the principle of bilateral cooperation”.
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