Call to blacklist Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and their affiliated militias

Seyed Hashem al-Moussavi, the spokesman for a Shi’ia Iraqi militia group known as Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, declared at a press conference on Wednesday in Tehran: “We have been in Syria for the past four years,” and added “We will not leave Syria until the last terrorist (meaning the Syrian opposition) leaves.”(Iran’s Tasnim News Agency 8 March 2017). The group openly receives training, arms, and military advice from Iran and has close ties to the notorious Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani. 

Al-Moussavi threatened Turkey, the government of Iraqi Kurdistan and Iraqi popular forces in Mosul saying: “We will resort to military action if Turkey does not retreat from Bashiqa in Iraq. We will not allow ‘the forces of Nainawa’(local tribes) to dominate Mosul… Erdogan deceived Massoud Barzani but the dreams of Turkey were buried in the borders of Senjar.”

Such blatant admissions of active participation in the genocidal massacre of the people of Syria and Iraq, underlines the need to expell the Iranian regime and the IRGC from the region and to blacklist and dissolve their affiliated terrorist goups. 

The IRGC’s Iraqi agents take advantage of the resources of the government of Iraq and utilize American weapons to implement and advance Iran’s sectarian agenda to slaughter the predominantly Sunni people in the region. They are now the main obstacle to peace and security. Under the pretext of fighting Daesh (ISIS), they seek to dominate the sensitive region of Tal Afar in order to send supplies to their forces in Syria, Lebanon and round the Mediterranean Sea. 

The al-Nujaba group was formed in 2013 by the IRGC. Its general secretary is a mullah by the name of Akram al-Kaabi. The group is comprised of three combat brigades: Amar Yasser, Imam Hassan Mojtaba and al-Hamd. They operate under the IRGC command in various parts of Syria including Damascus, Aleppo, Mazaree Shabaa. They also secure the road to the International Airport of Damascus. The Military Academy is the headquarters of this criminal group in Aleppo. The responsibility of providing protection for two airports in Aleppo and Nairab has been granted to the Amar Yasser and al-Hamd brigades.

In Syria, the al-Nujaba militia is commanded by Abu-Yousef al-Kaabi. His deputy is Abu-Zahra al-Khaffaji. Previously, al-Nujaba members received training at the Quds Force’s Jalilabad Garrison in Varamin, Iran. Recently, however, the IRGC trains these forces at a garrison in Lattakia, Syria. The wounded are sent back to Tehran. 

The policy of appeasement adopted by the previous U.S. administration led to the expansion of militia groups affiliated with the IRGC, particularly in Iraq and Syria. We welcome the remarks by the American UN Ambassador Nikki Haley who said: “Syria can no longer be a safe haven for terrorists. We’ve got to make sure we get Iran and their proxies out.”We call on the UN Security Council, the U.S. and the European Union to take the following measures in order to neutralize this threat and achieve a final resolution to the crisis in the region:

1. Blacklist the IRGC and its affiliated militia groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, etc.

2. Compel the government of Iraq to dissolve all Iraqi militia groups who are exploiting the government’s budget, faciliites and weapons. American and Europan weapons should be taken away from them, in particular.

3. The sectarian pro-Iranian militia groups must be banned from participating in the war with Daesh. They must be denied the opportunity to take advantage of the Coalition’s aerial cover to dominate more areas in Syria and Iraq.