Organization
The force is described as "active in dozens of countries". According to former U.S. Army intelligence officer David Dionisi, the Quds force is organized into eight different directorates based on geographic location:
- Western countries
- Iraq
- Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India
- Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan
- Turkey
- North Africa
- Arabian peninsula
- Republics of the former USSR
In addition, Dionisi asserts in his book American Hiroshima that the Iranian Quds Force headquarters for operations in Iraq was moved in 2004 to the Iran-Iraq border in order to better supervise activities in Iraq. The Quds Force also has a headquarters based in the former compound of the U.S. Embassy, which was overrun in 1979. In September 2007, a few years after the publication of American Hiroshima: The Reasons Why and a Call to Strengthen America's Democracy in July 2006, General David Petraeus reported to Congress that the Quds Force had left Iraq. Petraeus said, "The Quds Force itself, we believe, by and large those individuals have been pulled out of the country, as have the Lebanese Hezbollah trainers that were being used to augment that activity."
On July 7, 2008, Pulitzer Prize winning author Seymour Hersh wrote an article in The New Yorker revealing that President Bush had signed a Presidential Finding authorizing the CIA's Special Activities Division to conduct cross-border paramilitary operations from Iraq and Afghanistan into Iran. These operations would be against al-Quds (AKA Qods Force) and “high-value targets”. “The Finding was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change”, a person familiar with its contents said, and involved “working with opposition groups”.
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