The assumption under the argument

Does the Iranian government control the Quds force?

Published February 15, 2007 2:51PM (EST)

In making circumstantial -- and contradictory -- arguments to support the notion that Iranian leaders are involved in sending weapons into Iraq, the president and his men have been claiming that Iran's Quds force has been involved and that it couldn't possibly be involved without support from Tehran. "There's not a whole lot of freelancing in the Iranian government, especially when it comes to something like that," Tony Snow said earlier this week.

Maybe.

As the Los Angeles Times reports today, the degree to which the Iranian government controls the Quds force "has been hotly debated in U.S. foreign policy circles." The Brookings Institution's Kenneth Pollack tells the Times: "There are people who believe the Quds Force does not move a muscle without getting explicit orders from [supreme leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei; there are other people who believe they are rogues. The weight of evidence is somewhere in the middle."


By Tim Grieve

Tim Grieve is a senior writer and the author of Salon's War Room blog.

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