WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) – The US is offering up to $15 million “for information on the financial activities, networks, and associates” of Abdul Reza Shahlai, a senior commander in the Qods Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC.)
The State Department’s Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook, made that announcement on Thursday, as he explained that Shahlai was now in Yemen, where Iranian-backed Houthi rebels are fighting the internationally recognized government, backed by Saudi Arabia, in what is essentially a proxy war between the two Middle Eastern states.
Hook described Shahlai’s “long history of attacks” against the US and its allies, which go back over a decade, to 2007, when he was behind the planning of a sophisticated assault on the headquarters of the Karbala provincial government. The attackers, disguised as an American security team, managed to gain access to the compound, and their assault resulted in the death of five US soldiers.
In 2011, Shahlai “funded and directed a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador” to the US, Hook explained. He also plotted “follow-on attacks” that, had they been carried out, could have killed as many as 200 Americans.
The US first sanctioned Shahlai in 2008, under a presidential order targeting individuals who threatened Iraqi and Coalition forces. Ahmed Hassan Kaka al-Ubaydi, a Sunni insurgent, was also sanctioned then.
“A former Iraqi Intelligence Service officer and a Ba'th Party official,” according to the US Treasury Department, Ubaydi operated around Kirkuk, where his violence included directing the assassination of Kurdish figures.
Two weeks ago, a US Navy warship interdicted a “significant cache” of “suspected Iranian guided missile parts” bound for Yemen, the Associated Press reported. The cache was found on “a small wooden boat” which was stopped and boarded, because it failed to display the flag of any country.