Maj. Gen. Mahmoud al-Falahi, commander of the Anbar Operations Command in western Iraq has been passing information to an Iraqi national working for the US Central Intelligence Agency, Iran’s Fars News Agency has reported.
According to Fars, details of al-Falahi’s secret conversations were leaked by Kata’ib Hezbollah, also known as the Iraqi Hezbollah Brigades, who released audio files and screenshots of WhatsApp chats the group claims shows communication between the commander and the CIA agent.
The confidential information was said to be related to Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella paramilitary force consisting mostly of Iraqi Shia Muslim militias formed in June 2014 to fight ISIL.
According to Fars’ analysis of the conversations, the CIA agent reportedly asked al-Falahi to give him details about Popular Mobilization Forces bases along the borders between Iraq and Syria, which he claimed would be subjected to attacks “by the US and Israeli air forces.”
The agent also asked al-Falahi to meet with US military and intelligence officials in Erbil, a city in Iraqi Kurdistan, or at the US forces base in al-Habaniyeh in western Iraq.
al-Falahi reportedly complied with the requests for information, and gave the CIA detailed coordinates about bases in al-Anbar province, where he serves as regional commander of Iraqi ground forces.
