A former commanding officer of 22 SAS Regiment has disclosed details of what he describes as Iran's systematic campaign to kill British troops in Iraq. Writing in the Daily Mail, Richard Williams claims that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was responsible for the deaths of the majority of the 136 British service personnel who died in Iraq between 2003 and 2009.
Williams highlights the 2003 killing of six Royal Military Policemen in Majar Al-Kabir, southern Iraq, as an example of IRGC brutality. He asserts that the killers were not Iraqi insurgents but IRGC special forces operating covertly, who executed the soldiers in cold blood. The IRGC, he says, used improvised explosive devices, mortars, mines and shootings to target British forces, with orders intercepted by intelligence services to 'keep killing them until they leave Iraq'.
The former SAS officer also links Iran to the deaths of 457 British personnel in Afghanistan, claiming the IRGC equipped the Taliban with IEDs and weapons. He states that the British withdrawal from Iraq left a power vacuum that allowed Iran to supply deadly explosively formed penetrators, which killed over 600 US soldiers by 2011.
Williams argues that the Iranian regime is 'evil' and that the current war on Iran is 'just', criticising political leaders for cowardice and indecision since the 1979 revolution. He claims Iran's campaign did not end with troop withdrawals, as the regime continues to use subversion to weaken Western influence.
