Associated Press, Paris, 26 January – By Jamey Keaten – Iran has thousands of paid operatives working in neighboring Iraq, an Iranian opposition group based in France said Friday, and it released the names of nearly 32,000 people it alleged were involved.
The National Council of Resistance’s allegations could not be independently verified. And a press officer at the Iranian Embassy in Paris, speaking on condition of anonymity because of embassy policy, called the claims "completely false" and said Tehran supports stability in the region.
The council is the political wing of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran, which advocates the overthrow of Iran’s Islamic government. The council has been based in France since shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Mohammad Mohaddessin, who heads the council’s foreign affairs committee, alleged that thousands of Iraqis are working on Iran’s behalf.
"The clerical regime, faced with intensifying domestic crisis and isolation inside Iran, views its only chance for survival in the establishment of a proxy regime in Iraq," Mohaddessin said at a news conference in Paris.
The council released the names, alleged dates of recruitment by Iran and the supposed salaries of 31,690 Iraqis. It claimed that most were paid by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qods Force _ a faction of the Iranian military that the U.S. military says bankrolls militants in Iraq and equips them with weapons.
It said that in Iraq, the alleged operatives were mostly affiliated with the Badr Brigade, the Iranian-trained military wing of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite political group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Mohaddessin said the list was compiled in 2003 and 2004 by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and obtained by the council’s "sources" within it, declining to elaborate. He alleged that most of those named were still working on Iran’s behalf
