Quds Force


The Quds Force is one of five branches of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It specializes in unconventional warfare and military intelligence operations. The U.S. Army's General Stanley McChrystal describes the Quds Force as an organization analogous to a combination of the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command in the United States. Responsible for extraterritorial operations, the Quds Force supports non-state actors in many countries, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthi movement, and Shia militias in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. According to Michael Wigginton et al., the Quds Force is "a classic example of state-sponsored terrorism."
The Quds Force reports directly to the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei. After Qasem Soleimani was assassinated in a U.S. drone strike, his deputy, Esmail Qaani, replaced him. The U.S. Secretary of State designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Quds Force as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 2019 based on the IRGC's "continued support to and engagement in terrorist activity around the world." This was the first time that the U.S. ever designated another government's department as a FTO.

Name

While the formation's official name is Quds Force, it has also been referred to as the 'Quds Corps' in Persian media. In Arabic, Jerusalem is most commonly known as القُدس, meaning "The Holy" or "The Holy Sanctuary", cognate with.
It was originally titled Corps but changed to Force by Khamenei.

History and mission

The predecessor of the Quds Force, known as 'Department 900', was created during the Iran–Iraq War as a special intelligence unit, while the IRGC was allegedly active abroad in Afghanistan before the war. The department was later merged into 'Special External Operations Department'. After the Iran–Iraq War ended in 1988, the IRGC was reorganized and the Quds Force was established as an independent service branch. It has the mission of liberating "Muslim land", especially al-Quds, from which it takes its name—"Jerusalem Force" in English.
Both during and after the war, it provided support to the Kurds fighting Saddam Hussein. In 1982, a Quds unit was deployed to Lebanon, where it assisted in the genesis of Hezbollah. The Force also expanded its operations into neighboring Afghanistan, including assistance for Abdul Ali Mazari's Shi'a Hezbe Wahdat in the 1980s against the government of Mohammad Najibullah. It then began funding and supporting Ahmad Shah Massoud's Northern Alliance against the Taliban. However, in recent years, the Quds Force is alleged to have been helping and guiding the Taliban insurgents against the NATO-backed Karzai administration. There were also reports of the unit lending support to Bosnian Muslims fighting the Bosnian Serbs during the Bosnian War.
According to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad helped fund the Quds Force while he was stationed at the Ramazan garrison near Iraq, during the late 1980s.
In January 2010, according to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the mission of the Quds Force was expanded and the Force along with Hezbollah started a new campaign of attacks targeting not only the US and Israel but also other Western bodies.
In January 2020, Quds Force commander Major General Qasem Soleimani was killed by a US airstrike on his convoy outside Baghdad International Airport.
The Quds force is run from Tehran, and has ties with armed groups in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories.

Predecessors

Liberation Movements Unit

The LMU of the IRGC was established in 1981 by Mohammad Montazeri, son of Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri, and Mehdi Hashemi, then a member of the IRGC Command Council and brother of Ayatollah Montazeri’s son-in-law. This unit was tasked with providing military assistance to "Islamic liberation movements" abroad, especially in Shia-majority countries ruled by Sunni minorities, including Bahrain, Iraq and Lebanon. Both Montazeri and Hashemi had themselves received irregular warfare training in Palestine Liberation Organization-run training camps in Southern Lebanon before the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

9th Badr Brigade of the IRGC

During the Iran–Iraq War, Major-General Mohsen Rezaee, then the Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Guards, ordered the formation of the 9th Badr Brigade, which consisted of Iraqi Shia fugitives who had fled from Saddam Hussein's persecution and were fighting for Iran. The Badr Brigade was manned by Iraqis but led by Iranian officers. Among the Badr Brigade's earliest Iraqi members were Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Deputy Chief of the Popular Mobilization Forces who was assassinated together with Soleimani in January 2020, and Brigadier-General Hadi al-Amiri, later Interior Minister of Iraq. Muhandis and Amiri took part in the 1986 Iranian Siege of Basra under the command of IRGC General Hassan Danaeifar. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Danaeifar became the Iranian ambassador in Iraq between 2006 and 2010. Muhandis had fled Iraq to Kuwait in the early 1980s and allegedly collaborated with Lebanese Hezbollah's Chief of Military Operations Imad Mughniyeh in bombing the US embassy in Kuwait in 1983, after which he fled to Iran.

Ramadan Headquarters

In 1986 the Ramadan Headquarters of External Operations was created within the IRGC. This headquarters was responsible for Iran's links to Iraqi Kurdish groups, including the forces of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani. One of the Ramadan Headquarters' senior commanders and its chief of staff in the 1980s was the IRGC Brigadier-General Iraj Masjedi, who from 2017 to 2022 served as Iran’s ambassador to Iraq. At the time, another commander of the Ramadan Headquarters was the IRGC Brigadier-General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, who was later appointed as commander of the Basij militia.

Lebanon Corps

The "Lebanon Corps" of the IRGC was established in June 1982 when Iran sent 1,500 Revolutionary Guard commandos to the Syrian-controlled Beqaa Valley of Eastern Lebanon to fight against Israel's invasion. This force was led by IRGC Brigadier-General Hossein Dehghan and was tasked with training members of Hezbollah. Two other people who were influential in guiding and communicating with Hezbollah after Dehghan were IRGC Brigadier-General Ahmad Vahidi, the IRGC’s intelligence chief at the time and later the first commander of the Quds Force from its establishment in 1988 to 1998, and Fereydoun Vardinejad, later the Political Deputy of the Office of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Both Vahidi and Vardinejad were tasked in 1985 by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the IRGC to negotiate with Robert McFarlane, U.S. President Ronald Reagan's special envoy to Iran, on the issue of the Lebanon hostage crisis.

Organization

The force is described as "active in dozens of countries." According to former U.S. Army intelligence officer David Dionisi, the Quds Force is organized into eight different directorates based on geographic location:
According to journalist Dexter Filkins, the force's members are "divided between combatants and those who train and oversee foreign assets," and the force is divided into branches focusing on "intelligence, finance, foreign languages, politics, sabotage, and special operations." Members are chosen both for their skill and "allegiance to the doctrine of the Islamic Revolution."
In addition, Dionisi asserts in his book American Hiroshima that the Iranian Quds Force headquarters for operations in Iraq was moved in 2004 to the Iran–Iraq border in order to better supervise activities in Iraq. The Quds Force also operates a base in the former compound of the U.S. Embassy, which was overrun in 1979.
According to Filkins and American General Stanley A. McChrystal, it was the Quds Force that "flooded" Iraq with "explosively formed projectiles" which fire a molten copper slug able to penetrate armor, and which accounted for "nearly 20%" of American combat deaths in Iraq. In September 2007, a few years after the publication of American Hiroshima: The Reasons Why and a Call to Strengthen America's Democracy in July 2006, General David Petraeus reported to Congress that the Quds Force had left Iraq. Petraeus said, "The Quds Force itself, we believe, by and large, those individuals have been pulled out of the country, as have the Lebanese Hezbollah trainers that were being used to augment that activity."
On 7 July 2008, journalist Seymour Hersh wrote an article in The New Yorker revealing that President Bush had signed a Presidential Finding authorizing the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command to conduct cross-border paramilitary operations from Iraq and Afghanistan into Iran. These operations would be against the Quds Force and "high-value targets." "The Finding was focused on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change," a person familiar with its contents said, and involved "working with opposition groups."

Subdivisions

According to an Iraqi intelligence study which discusses the foundation of the Quds Force after the end of the Iran–Iraq War and Khomeini's death, the IRGC-QF has four main command centers to direct its intelligence and operational activities in neighboring countries in order to achieve its goals in these countries:
  • Ramadan Headquarters is responsible for Iraq, led formerly by Brigadier-Generals Hassan Danaeifar and Iraj Masjedi,
  • Nabi Al-Akram Command Center is dedicated to Pakistan,
  • Al-Hamzah Command Center is focused on Turkey and the Kurdish issue,
  • Al-Ansar Command Center is intended for Afghanistan and Central Asia, led formerly by General Hossein Musavi and Colonel Hasan Mortezavi.
Besides these main command centers, the document indicates that there are also six corps for each country or area in which they operate: