Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has quietly built a network of secret cells inside Iraq, designed to launch attacks against Gulf nations that host American military forces — and to do so without being traced back to established Iranian-backed militia groups, according to eight Iraqi sources who spoke with Reuters.
Between April 20 and May 17, three or four of these cells — each made up of roughly 10 highly trained Iraqi Shi’ite fighters — carried out at least seven drone strikes launched from remote desert areas near the southern Iraqi cities of Basra and Samawa. The targets included sites in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, according to three of those sources.
Some members of these new cells were recruited from the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a broad coalition of hardline Shi’ite factions with thousands of fighters. However, the newly formed groups operate completely outside that coalition’s chain of command, answering directly to the IRGC instead. That information came from a group of sources that included two Iraqi military officials, one security official, and five local militia commanders.
The creation of these cells — which had not been publicly reported before — signals a change in how the IRGC operates. The five militia commanders said the shift reflects Iran’s effort to maintain its regional influence at a time when its network of armed proxy groups has been significantly weakened and its own military and financial resources are stretched thin.
Iraq, a country with a Shi’ite Muslim majority, is home to numerous militias, many of which have strong ties to Tehran. These groups have long been central to Iran’s regional “Axis of Resistance,” a network that extends from Gaza and Lebanon to Yemen and Iraq.
Factions operating under the Islamic Resistance in Iraq banner have claimed credit for dozens of drone and rocket attacks on American assets in the country since the U.S. and Israel struck Iran on February 28, drawing deadly retaliatory airstrikes in response. But there has been no large-scale mobilization of Iran’s proxy forces within Iraq’s borders.
Several influential Shi’ite factions have been signaling since last year that they are prepared to lay down their weapons and shift their focus to domestic politics, in part to avoid a deepening confrontation with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. According to retired Iraqi army general Jasim al-Bahadli and two lawmakers from the Shi’ite governing alliance, that trend may have pushed the IRGC to form groups it could control directly.
Two of those factions — Asaib Ahl al-Haq and the Imam Ali Brigades — announced this month that they would begin turning over their weapons to Iraqi state authorities, following repeated warnings from the U.S. to Baghdad to dismantle armed groups operating on its soil.
“The newer groups established by the IRGC appear smaller, more ideologically hardened and more tightly controlled, reflecting Iran’s need to conserve resources amid economic strain,” said Bahadli, who is recognized as an expert on Shi’ite armed groups.
The revelations come as the U.S. and Iranian presidents signed an interim agreement Wednesday to halt the ongoing war, with further negotiations planned on thorny issues including the future of Tehran’s nuclear program. However, Iranian officials have made clear that their support for what they call “resistance groups” is not on the table, and the agreement does not address that issue.
Iran’s foreign ministry and its missions to the United Nations in New York and Geneva did not respond to detailed questions submitted for this story.
The U.S. State Department repeated its call for Iraq’s government to take immediate steps to “dismantle all the tools of Iran’s destabilizing activities in Iraq,” specifically naming the IRGC and Iran-aligned militias.
At a meeting held Monday, Iraq’s new prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, and U.S. envoy Tom Barrack discussed Iraqi plans to pursue “the complete disarmament and disbandment of all armed groups” outside Iraqi state control and to guarantee that “Iraqi territory cannot be used by any side to threaten regional peace,” according to a joint statement released following the meeting.
Zaidi’s military spokesman, Sabah al-Numan, declined to comment on the story. Kuwait’s information ministry, the Saudi government communications office, and the UAE foreign ministry also did not respond to requests for comment.
The broader conflict has taken a heavy toll on the world’s most vital energy-producing region, disrupting oil supplies and fueling inflation. Tehran responded to U.S.-Israeli bombing campaigns by effectively shutting down the Strait of Hormuz — a critical waterway through which approximately one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas trade flows — and unleashing a widespread campaign of drone and missile attacks against neighboring Gulf states.
The newly emerged Iraqi groups, often operating under unfamiliar names with little public presence, were responsible for at least three drone attacks targeting Kuwait, two aimed at Saudi Arabia, and two directed at the UAE, according to three Iraqi security sources. Their information came from human intelligence, intercepted communications, and physical evidence recovered from launch sites.
Among the targets were Kuwait’s Ali Al Salem Air Base, where U.S. forces are stationed, and a military terminal at Kuwait’s international airport, the sources said, though they offered no further details. The strikes aimed at Saudi Arabia and the UAE were intercepted before reaching their targets, the sources said, though they could not confirm what the intended targets were.
Reuters was unable to independently confirm these accounts.
Iraqi officials said the IRGC deliberately turned to these new cells to maintain plausible deniability, shield the country’s main Iran-backed groups from scrutiny, and reduce American pressure on Baghdad to disarm them.
Iraqi security forces have limited knowledge of these groups but are actively working to map out their command structures in an effort to prevent future attacks. The groups are said to include elite fighters with specialized skills in drone operations and communications.
Iran invested decades and billions of dollars building its regional alliance network, which has been badly damaged since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel has conducted sustained military operations against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, while the Houthi movement in Yemen has faced U.S. and British airstrikes. The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 cut off a key supply route for Iraqi militias and further isolated Tehran.
Rather than maintaining a large, well-funded network of militia groups in Iraq, Iran now appears to be betting on a smaller number of “more radicalized cadres willing to operate with leaner financial support, prioritising loyalty, deniability and operational impact over mass recruitment,” Bahadli said.
The situation represents an early and significant test for Prime Minister Zaidi, who took office last month after U.S. pressure on the dominant Shi’ite political alliance to block the return of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has close ties to Iran. Baghdad has long tried to balance its relationships with both Washington and Tehran — a difficult act that became even harder during the war.
Attacks launched from Iraqi soil also threaten to unravel Baghdad’s careful efforts to repair ties with wealthy Gulf neighbors, relationships that were badly damaged when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 but had begun to improve in recent years. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE all summoned Iraq’s ambassadors in April to formally protest the strikes.
Iraqi authorities are also investigating whether a new group was behind a May 17 drone attack that sparked a fire at the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant. Saudi Arabia reported intercepting three drones that entered its airspace from Iraq that same day — an attack Iraqi officials attributed to one of the newly formed cells.
Zaidi publicly condemned both attacks, calling them criminal acts, and pledged to conduct a joint investigation with both Gulf countries to determine whether Iraqi territory was used to carry them out. His spokesman, Numan, did not respond to questions about where that investigation currently stands.
