U.S. Army's Iraq War General Stanley McChrystal describes the Quds Force as an organization analogous to a combination of the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the United States.

[9] Responsible for extraterritorial operations,[10] the Quds Force supports non-state actors in many countries, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthi movement, and Shia militias in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

[20] The Force also expanded its operations into neighboring Afghanistan, including assistance for Abdul Ali Mazari's Shi'a Hezbe Wahdat in the 1980s against the government of Mohammad Najibullah.

[29][30][31] According to the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad helped fund the Quds Force while he was stationed at the Ramazan garrison near Iraq, during the late 1980s.

[36] This unit was tasked with providing military assistance to "Islamic liberation movements" abroad, especially in Shia-majority countries ruled by Sunni minorities, including Bahrain, Iraq and Lebanon.

[37] During the Iran-Iraq War, Major-General Mohsen Rezaee, then the Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Guards, ordered the formation of the 9th Badr Brigade, which consisted of Iraqi Shia fugitives who had fled from Saddam Hussein's persecution and were fighting for Iran.

Among the Badr Brigade's earliest Iraqi members were Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, Deputy Chief of the Popular Mobilization Forces who was assassinated together with Soleimani in January 2020, and Brigadier-General Hadi al-Amiri, later Interior Minister of Iraq.

Both Vahidi and Vardinejad were tasked in 1985 by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the IRGC to negotiate with Robert McFarlane, U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s special envoy to Iran, on the issue of the Lebanon hostage crisis.

[43] 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.

[57] In 2020, Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute estimated the Quds Force had the "divisional strength military formation" of approximately 17,000 to 21,000 members, split regionally.

[54] Mahan Abedin, director of research at the London-based Center for the Study of Terrorism (and editor of Islamism Digest), believes the unit is not independent: "Quds Force, although it's a highly specialized department, it is subject to strict, iron-clad military discipline.

When the Taliban took over Afghanistan in 1996, Hezbe Wahdat had lost its founder and main leader, Abdul Ali Mazari, so the group joined Ahmad Shah Massoud's Northern Alliance.

[68] This was subsequently confirmed in July 2012, after a report by the Delhi Police found evidence that members of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps had been involved in the 13 February bomb attack in the capital.

[68] On 11 October 2011, the Obama Administration revealed the United States Government's allegations that the Quds Force was involved with the plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to the United States Adel al-Jubeir, which also entailed plans to bomb the Israeli and Saudi embassies located in Washington, D.C.[69][70][71] In August 2022, plans to assassinate former US government officials John Bolton and Mike Pompeo were uncovered by US federal prosecutors, likely in retaliation for the January 2020 death of Soleimani.

Guaidó also said that Soleimani "led a criminal and terrorist structure in Iran that for years caused pain to his people and destabilized the Middle East, just as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis did with Hezbollah.

[84] The New York Sun reported that the documents described the Quds Force as not only cooperating with Shi'a death squads, but also with fighters related to al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Sunna.

[98] On 2 July 2007, the U.S. military said that information from captured Hezbollah fighter Ali Musa Daqduq established a link between the Quds Force and the Karbala raid.

[99] In June 2007, U.S. General Ray Odierno asserted that Iranian support for these Shia militia increased as the United States itself implemented the 2007 "troop surge".

The investigation uncovered evidence that Moore, 37, a computer expert from Lincoln was targeted because he was installing a system for the Iraqi Government that would show how a vast amount of international aid was diverted to Iran's militia groups in Iraq.

The military accused the Iranian of being a member of the elite Quds Force and smuggling powerful roadside bombs, including armor-piercing explosively formed penetrators, into Iraq.

"I express to you our outrage for these American forces arresting this Iranian civil official visitor without informing or cooperating with the government of the Kurdistan region, which means insult and disregard for its rights", Talabani wrote in a "letter of resentment" to Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, and Gen. David Petraeus.

[107] On 24 November 2007, US military officials accused an Iranian special group of placing a bomb in a bird box that blew up at a popular animal market in central Baghdad.

"[110] According to reports produced by Agence France-Presse (AFP), The Jerusalem Post, and Al Arabiya, at the request of a member of the United States' House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in 2011 Congressional counter-terrorism advisor Michael S. Smith II of Kronos Advisory, LLC produced a report on Iran's alleged ties to Al-Qaeda that was distributed to members of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus.

[111][112][113] Titled "The al-Qa'ida-Qods Force Nexus: Scratching the Surface of a Known Unknown", a redacted version of Smith's report is available online via the blog site owned by American military geostrategist and The Pentagon's New Map author Thomas P.M.

On 3 January 2020, a drone strike approved by United States President Donald Trump at Baghdad International Airport killed General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force.

[citation needed] In May 2018, Quds forces on the Syrian-held side of the Golan Heights allegedly fired around 20 projectiles towards Israeli army positions without causing damage or casualties.

[125] In January 2019, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed that it had carried out strikes against Iranian military targets in Syria several hours after a rocket was intercepted over the Golan Heights.

[127] In January 2018, German authorities conducted raids in Baden-Württemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria and Berlin, searching homes and businesses belonging to ten alleged Iranian Quds Force members, suspected of spying on Israeli and Jewish targets.

[118] The United States Department of the Treasury designated the Quds Force under Executive Order 13224 for providing material support to US-designated terrorist organizations on 25 October 2007, prohibiting transactions between the group and U.S. citizens, and freezing any assets under U.S.

[142] On 1 May 2020, The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated dual Iranian and Iraqi national Amir Dianat, associate of Revolutionary Guards Quds Force officials.