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In this chapter, Mohammed Ra'ad Ahmed talks about his experience during the Iraq war. Sometime shortly after the U.S. invasion, neighboring Iran began to offer training, arms, and funds to Iraqis out to fight American forces in Iraq. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Iraqis journeyed from Iraq to Iran for training in guerrilla tactics. The Iraqi fighters who returned to Iraq formed cells American forces came to call “Special Groups.” Ahmed was a career military officer in the Saddam Hussein years and fought against Iranian forces in the Iran-Iraq war. But anger at the U.S. occupation drove him to get involved with the Iranian Qods Force, a paramilitary arm of the Tehran's Revolutionary Guards that organized and backed Iraqi guerrillas fighting U.S. troops in Iraq.

September 11th opened a window for brief collaboration between Tehran and Washington. Through Iranian diplomats, the IRGC’s Qods Force, and its chief, Qassem Soleimani, provided intelligence to American diplomats on Taliban positions and provided advice on how to defeat their shared enemy in Afghanistan. Any budding trust between the two ended after President George W. Bush’s designation of Iran as a member of the “axis of evil.” However, the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban—Iran’s two main enemies—greatly benefited the IRGC. The IRGC utilized ties to Iraqi Shiite organizations and developed a cadre of Shiite client militias to gain influence in Iraq and target US forces. Washington’s pressure on Iran, and allusions to potential war, help legitimize the IRGC’s influence in Iranian and Iraqi politics. The IRGC helped elect President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who became a stalwart patron for the IRGC’s hardline politics and foreign adventurism.

President Barack Obama sought a new beginning with Iran, but the violence that followed the contested re-election of Mahmud Ahmadinejad made that impossible. The IRGC and Basij were deeply involved in the brutal suppression of the protests that followed Iran’s 2009 election. They saw the protests as an American plot to destroy Iran’s Islamic system. Washington increased pressure on Iran through sanctions on its nuclear program and the IRGC. At the same time, Iran blamed Israel for an assassination campaign against Iranian scientists. The Arab Spring exacerbated tensions between Iran and its Arab neighbors, who competed for influence in the changing region. The combination of pressures provoked a response by the IRGC, which was linked to assassination plots targeting Saudi and Israeli officials in several countries, including in the United States.

Iran has had a vested interest in shaping the outcomes of the Arab Spring. The IRGC had learned with the fall of Saddam that it could successfully exploit power vacuums for strategic gains. Syria’s civil war and the war against ISIS in Iraq were new entryways for the organization. Under Qassem Soleimani, the IRGC’s Qods Force led Iran’s campaigns in both countries. These were strategic efforts designed to protect Iran’s allies. But their resilience was rooted in religion. The IRGC saw these conflicts as part of a larger Sunni Arab and Western conspiracy against Iran and its allies. It was a war intrinsically against Shiism and the family of the Prophet. To defeat the jihadist scourge and its Sunni Arab benefactors, the IRGC mobilized pro-Iranian, pro-Shiite supporters in Syria and Iraq. These relationships helped Iran advance its agenda and expand its influence. They also intensified sectarian hatreds.