Iran’s Quds Force training proxy naval forces, opposition group says

Iran’s hardline regime is expanding its efforts to recruit, train and arm proxy naval units that rely on mercenaries from Yemen, Lebanon and other Mideast conflict countries to stage maritime attacks around the region, a leading Iranian dissident group said Wednesday.

The proxy training operation is run by a newly formed naval unit within the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), whose sources in Tehran have a history of revealing nefarious activities of the Iranian regime.

NCRI representatives say the regime aims to use proxy naval forces to expand Tehran’s maritime influence well beyond Iran’s shoreline by employing asymmetric tactics similar to those that Iran’s conventional navy has used to create disruptions in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz in recent years.

“The Iranian regime’s navy, especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, has 43 years of experience,” NCRI Deputy Director Alireza Jafarzadeh told reporters gathered Wednesday at a Washington hotel. “Everyone knows about the threats that the Iranian regime has made in various fields, specifically also in the naval area. They turned all of that experience through these proxies.” 

The comments came at an event marking the dissident group’s publication of a new report outlining previously unreleased details about the new Quds Force unit that provides maritime commando training to proxy forces in countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. 

“Since early 2021, and more so since August 2021, when Ebrahim Raisi took office as the new president of the Iranian regime, Tehran has stepped up its maritime terrorist operations using its foreign mercenaries, especially the Houthis in Yemen,” the NCRI report states.

The report claims that the Quds Force unit aims to expand Iran’s influence in strategic waterways and complicate the maritime threat landscape, especially in the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen, where the Quds Force has equipped Houthi rebels with speedboats, missiles, mines and other weapons. 

The Quds Force also has trained mercenaries from Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to carry out maritime operations, according to the report, which leverages information gathered by Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), an NCRI-affiliated group whose members operate inside Iran.

The Quds Force, which runs bases in countries throughout the Middle East, has a long history of recruiting and training local militants to operate at arm’s length in service of the Iranian regime. 

The NCRI report claims that operatives of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ new Quds Force naval unit — referred to by the acronym IRGC-QF — are recruiting mercenaries to participate in specialized naval courses in Iran before redeploying to the coasts off of their home countries to carry out operations sponsored by their Iranian handlers. 

In January 2020, the IRGC-QF launched a six-month training course for nearly 200 Yemeni mercenaries at the Khamenei Academy of Naval Sciences and Technology at Ziba Kenar University located on Iran’s Caspian Sea coastline, the report states.

It asserts that the trained Houthis return to Yemen, where they are then organized under naval battalions overseen by the Quds Force and used to disrupt navigation, hijack commercial vessels and attack ports.

A group of Iraqi mercenaries entered training at Khamenei Academy in July 2020 before returning to al-Faw peninsula and Basra, where they formed a naval unit controlled by Iran, according to the report. 

Mercenaries also receive naval commando training at the IRGC navy training facility on Farur Island in the Persian Gulf and learn how to smuggle weapons and other goods at a facility on Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz, the NCRI report says.

The report also says the Quds Force has established a network to smuggle weapons and equipment to outfit its naval proxies, often using third-party countries to transfer weapons between small boats before reaching their final destination. In some cases, cargo ships and fishing vessels are forcibly enlisted by Iran to deliver weapons, according to the report.  

The use of Houthi rebels, in particular, has been a key focus by the IRGC-QF as a means of strengthening its intervention in Yemen.

“After the elimination of Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, which weakened the Quds Force’s ability to directly encroach in the countries of the region, the IRGC’s capacity to intrude in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria has been on the decline,” according to the NCRI. “To compensate for this failure, the IRGC has turned to intervention in Yemen, especially escalating naval terrorist activities and threatening the international shipping on its shores.”

“[Iran] is a long way from Iran to the Bab al-Mandab,” Mr. Jafarzadeh said. “And so it’s a bit of a sophisticated task for the Iranian regime to accomplish. And that’s why they gave it a very high priority for the Quds Force.” 

Since August 2021, the NCRI has documented several terrorist attacks off the coast of Yemen carried out by naval mercenaries backed by the Quds Force, including multiple suicide attacks on ports and beaches. 

The U.S. also has seized in the Arabian Sea multiple shipments of Iranian weapons destined for militants in Yemen. 

The Quds Force’s growing influence over waterways has developed in lockstep with an uptick in Iran-backed drone attacks throughout the Middle East. 

“Since the installation of Ebrahim Raisi as the Iranian regime’s president by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the destructive intervention of the Quds Force in the region has intensified, as have Tehran’s [drone] attacks,” the NCRI report states. 

The Iranian drone activity was revealed amid speculation that the Biden administration may be preparing to ease sanctions on Iran as part of an effort to lure the regime into diplomatic talks to restore aspects of the Obama-era Iranian nuclear deal.

Critics argue that U.S. sanctions relief tied to the nuclear talks have further emboldened the Iranian regime.

“This new information is added evidence that none of the sanctions against the regime should be lifted until it has stopped all its rogue behavior abroad as well as its suppression of the Iranian people at home,” the NCRI said. “To the contrary, additional sanctions are warranted as a result of the Iranian regime’s escalation of violence in the region and stepped up repression at home.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misreported a quote by NCRI Deputy Director Alireza Jafarzadeh.