The Washington Post on Sunday described alleged classified U.S. intelligence documents included in the “Discord Leaks” — the trove of documents allegedly surfacing on the video game platform — that said Iran concealed weapons in its humanitarian aid shipments to Syrian victims of the massive earthquakes in February.
According to the alleged top-secret document viewed by the Washington Post, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) saw the devastating earthquakes in February as a golden opportunity to smuggle weapons to Iran-allied Syrian militias, using Iran-allied militias in Iraq as middlemen:
In the earthquake’s immediate aftermath, Iran and its affiliates moved quickly to exploit the chaos, the leaked intelligence document contends. On Feb. 7, a day after the disaster leveled scores of homes and other buildings, setting off desperate rescue efforts, a militia group based in Iraq “allegedly orchestrated the transfer of rifles, ammunition and 30 UAVs hidden in aid convoys to support future attacks on U.S. forces in Syria,” it says. UAV is military shorthand for unmanned aerial vehicle.
On Feb. 13, a Quds Force officer directed an Iraqi militia group to “embed weapons within legitimate earthquake aid,” the leaked U.S. document indicates, noting that another Quds Force officer maintained a list of “hundreds” of vehicles and goods that entered Syria from Iraq after the earthquake, an apparent effort to manage where all of the trafficked weapons were headed.
The leaked U.S. assessment also implicates the “PMC chief of staff,” an apparent reference to Abu Fadak Al-Mohammedawi, a senior official with Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces. The consortium of Shiite militias, aligned in many cases with Iran, receives Iraqi government funding through its formal state body, the Popular Mobilization Committee, or PMC.
Members of a family keep warm next to a fire as they follow a rescue team searching for their relatives among destroyed building in Antakya, southern Turkey, Wednesday, February 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
The Washington Post saw similarities between this allegedly leaked intelligence report and a story published by Reuters in April that said Iran used hundreds of earthquake relief flights to deliver weapons and advanced communications equipment to its proxies in Syria.
Reuters said Israel “quickly became aware of the flow of weapons into Syria and mounted an aggressive campaign to counter it,” including precision strikes on the exact vehicles in a “relief convoy” that was carrying Iranian contraband.
United Nations sends 14 trucks full of aid within cross-border humanitarian aid to Syria after 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes centered in southern Turkiye hit multiple provinces of Northern Syria including Idlib, on February 10, 2023. (Izzeddin Kasim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The Washington Post also obtained confirmation of its report from an unnamed Israeli military official. On the other hand, a senior Iraqi official dismissed the document reviewed by the Post as “fake” and said the borders with Syria are so “wide open” that Iran doesn’t need to hide weapons in its aid shipments.
CNN on Monday said “two sources familiar with U.S. intelligence and an Israeli defense official” confirmed the Washington Post report.
A U.S. contractor in Syria named Scott Dubis was killed by an attack using an Iran-made drone in March. An American defense official told the Washington Post that the drone which killed Dubis was not smuggled into Syria via the earthquake-relief flights.