Part 5: Chalabi's Iran connection

Aram Roston Investigative producer

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, which is tasked to propagate Iran’s Islamic Revolution, divided its operations in Iraq into three directorates after the U.S. invasion (of Iraq). The southernmost is referred to by the Quds Force as the “Ramadan,” or “Ramazan” (in Farsi), command, and the complex Iranian operations there are overseen by Gen. Ahmed Frouzanda (sometimes transliterated as “Frohazendah”). It is the most important region of Iraq, from Iran’s perspective, not just because of the shared border but because the area is home to Iran’s Shiite constituency. Ayatollah Khomeini had sought to make it his second Islamic Republic.

Frouzanda is one of Iran’s master operatives. U.S. military and counterterrorism officials treated him as a “high-value” intelligence target for years, even before the Iraqi invasion, and they try to track his whereabouts. They believe he cut his teeth working in Lebanese Hezbollah operations against the United States and Israel in the 1980s.

Chalabi had met him at least twice before the war, according to former INC official Nabeel Musawi. Frouzanda is said to be distinctive in appearance, getting portly in his fifties but with handsome features and a salt-and-pepper beard. He is, as Musawi points out, a “handsome” man. Musawi says he was at a lunch meeting with Frouzanda and Chalabi, where they discussed how to ensure that INC operations in southern Iraq went smoothly.

There can be no doubt about Frouzanda, according to American intelligence experts. “He is a murderer of Americans,” said a former CIA official familiar with Frouzanda’s file and with the hunt for him. “He is an intelligence officer of a hostile service which is directly involved with operations that kill Americans. He is a paramilitary officer with the Revolutionary Guard and a skilled one. He is an enemy of the United States.”

Once the United States invaded Iraq and Chalabi continued to accept DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) cash, according to U.S. intelligence sources, he did not cut himself off from Frouzanda or other members of Iranian intelligence. In the late winter and spring of 2004, the United States was battling Sunnis in the west of Iraq and Shiites in the south, and cracking down on Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Chalabi had positioned himself ever more closely to the Shiite bloc.

It was then, sources say, that the CIA believed there was another meeting between Ahmad Chalabi and Frouzanda. The meeting, they believed, took place in northern Iraq, near the small border town of Penjwin, and was set up by Aras Habib Kareem, Chalabi’s enforcer and intelligence chief.

(Editor’s Note: In January 2008, the U.S. government issued an Executive Order designating Ahmed Foruzendeh (a different spelling of his name) and others as threatening the stability of Iraq. Among other things, the order said that Foruzandeh “leads terrorist operations against Coalition Forces and Iraqi Security Forces, and directs assassinations of Iraqi figures.”)

It was in this same time frame that the NSC intercepted communications indicating that Tehran had been warned its codes had been broken. It was a high-level breach of U.S. intelligence. Soon, the FBI began investigating. “It was an enormous investigation,” said a CIA official on the ground at the time. FBI agents from their counterintelligence squads, as well as their national security division, began trying to uncover the source of the breach. They quickly pulled the DIA agents in from their assignments over at the Iraqi National Congress headquarters to interrogate them. DIA agents were sent home to the States in shame for questioning.

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