Iran can equip and train Iraqi military: Iranian admiral

TEHRAN, Jan. 10 (MNA) -- Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani said that Iran has the capability to train and equip the Iraqi armed forces. Shamkhani, who is the director of the Center for Strategic Research, said it is up to Iraq to request that Iran train and arm its armed forces because “no one can force anybody to buy arms from a particular seller.” However, in terms of arms production, technical use of equipment, and training of troops, Iran is “more capable than other countries in the region,” Shamkhani, a former defense minister, told on Monday. Shamkhani added that training and equipping the Iraqi armed forces is currently a part of the Iraq-U.S. agreement. "Obviously the country which sells Iraq weapons and military equipment should provide the country's army with special training to use them," he stated. "For instance," he said, "since Iraqis buy F-16 Fighting Falcons from the Americans, they should get the training to use them from Americans and not any other (country)." The former defense minister also said it is unlikely that the international community will take legal action against two former U.S. officials who explicitly threatened to assassinate Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) commanders. “If the Palestinians could succeed to get the United Nations Security Council’s approval for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, the international legal system would give a legal response to such audacious remarks,” said Shamkhani, who was defense minister from 1997 to 2005. At a meeting of the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee on October 26, Jack Keane, a retired four-star general who helped plan the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, called for the assassination of the leaders of Iran’s Qods Force, which is a branch of the IRGC, in retaliation for their alleged role in a plot to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington, a claim vehemently denied by Iranian officials. The other witness, Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer who is now a senior fellow at the neoconservative think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the committee, “I don’t think that you are going to really intimidate these people, get their attention, unless you shoot somebody.” In a letter to Interpol, Iranian National Prosecutor General Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei called for the prosecution of the two former U.S. officials.