TEHRAN, Iran, June 19 (World Daily Times) — A Reuters report, citing eight Iraqi sources, says Iran’s Revolutionary Guards built secret cells inside Iraq to launch drone attacks on Gulf states that host American forces. If the allegations are borne out, they point to a shift in how the Guards may be operating in Iraq: using smaller, harder-to-track groups rather than relying only on established militia networks.
The sources told Reuters the cells were created to bypass those networks and avoid detection. Three of the sources described three or four cells, each with about 10 elite Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim fighters. The report said some members came from Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of hardline Shi’ite factions, but that the new cells were outside its command structure and reported directly to the IRGC.
Reuters also cited three Iraqi security sources saying the cells launched at least seven drone attacks from desert areas near Basra and Samawa between April 20 and May 17, with targets in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The sources said they based that account on human intelligence, intercepted communications and evidence collected at the launch sites.
The allegations matter because they suggest a more fragmented and deniable model of cross-border attack. Iraqi officials cited by Reuters said the goal was to keep blame away from the main Iran-backed groups and reduce U.S. pressure on Baghdad to disarm them. For Iraq, that means territory in the south can still be used as a launch point for actions that ripple across the Gulf.
The report does not identify any arrests, charges or court cases, and it does not include responses from the IRGC, the Iraqi government or the Gulf states named in the story. But it adds to the picture of how southern Iraq, including desert areas near Basra and Samawa, can factor into regional security risks far beyond Iraq’s borders.
