Further evidence of Iran's support of the Shia death squads and Sunni al Qaeda has emerged. At the end of December, two Iranian agents of the Qods force were arrested in a SCIRI compound in Baghdad. The Iraqi government was angry over the arrests, as the Iranians were part of a diplomatic delegation, and the agents were later released and deported.
But the Washington Post reported the two Iranian intelligence agents captured in Baghdad possessed "weapons lists, documents pertaining to shipments of weapons into Iraq, organizational charts, telephone records and maps, among other sensitive intelligence information... [and] information about importing modern, specially shaped explosive charges into Iraq." One was "the third-highest-ranking official of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' al-Qods Brigade."
The New York Sun described the documents as "the equivalent of Iran's Iraq Study Group" which "show how the Qods Force — the arm of Iran's revolutionary guard that supports Shiite Hezbollah, Sunni Hamas, and Shiite death squads — is working with individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunna." "We found plans for attacks, phone numbers affiliated with Sunni bad guys, a lot of things that filled in the blanks on what these guys are up to," an intelligence official told the New York Sun.
Iranian involvement with al Qaeda and other Sunni jihadis groups is nothing new, however the conventional wisdom in media and some intelligence circles is Shia Iran could never cooperate with Sunni al Qaeda due to ideological differences. This ignores a mountain of evidence to the contrary, such as Iran's sheltering of over 100 al Qaeda leaders, including Said bin Laden, Osama's son, and Saif al-Adel, al Qaeda's strategic planner, or Iranian support of Somalia's Sunni Islamic Courts by providing arms and training.
