TEHRAN, Iran, June 19 (World Daily Times) — Reuters reported that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps set up secret cells in Iraq to launch drone attacks on Gulf states hosting American forces, a claim that highlights how the Iraq theater can be used to project pressure far beyond its borders.
Citing eight Iraqi sources, including two military officials, a security official and five local militia commanders, Reuters said the cells were built to bypass established militia networks and avoid detection. Three of the sources described the groups as three or four cells, each with about 10 elite Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim fighters. The report said some members were drawn from the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of hardline Shi’ite factions, but that the new cells operated outside that group’s command structure and reported directly to the IRGC.
The reported pattern matters because it points to a more compartmentalized form of covert action. Iraqi officials quoted by Reuters said the structure would give the IRGC plausible deniability, shift blame away from larger Iran-backed factions and reduce pressure on Baghdad to disarm them. In other words, the allegation is not just that drones were launched from Iraq, but that the organizing model itself was designed to make attribution harder.
Reuters said three Iraqi security sources traced at least seven drone attacks to desert locations near Basra and Samawa in southern Iraq. Those sources said their conclusions were based on human intelligence, intercepted communications and evidence collected at launch sites. The attacks, according to the report, targeted sites in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates between April 20 and May 17.
For Iraq, the significance is immediate. If the allegations are accurate, they would place parts of southern Iraq inside a cross-border security network aimed at Gulf neighbors, raising the risk that Iraqi territory is being used to stage attacks that could draw regional retaliation. That would also deepen pressure on Baghdad, which has long faced demands from Washington to curb armed groups tied to Iran.
The report did not identify any arrests, charges or court cases. It also did not include public responses from the IRGC, the Iraqi government or the governments of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or the UAE. For now, the claims remain allegations attributed to Iraqi sources speaking to Reuters, but they describe a level of organization that, if confirmed, would suggest a deliberate effort to hide the chain of command behind attacks launched from inside Iraq.
