BAGHDAD, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- Iran-trained and financed militants attacked U.S. forces in Iraq this week, wounding three soldiers in a rocket attack, the U.S. military said.
Officials said militants fired rockets at U.S forces at Contingency Operating Station Garry Owen in Maysan province, which borders Iran, in the latest attack on the station, The New York Times reported Friday.
Military officials did not provide more details about the Wednesday attack.
U.S. officials said Shiite militias that are aligned, trained and financed by Iran's elite Quds Force have killed many Iraqi civilians and members of security forces so far this year, becoming the United States' most deadly enemy in Iraq since the capacity of Sunni militants diminished.
The attack on the operating station came the day after U.S. President Obama's administration announced it thwarted an alleged plot by the Iranian group to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States and bomb Saudi and Israeli embassies.
Officials and analysts believe the Quds Force has one goal: Weaken Iraq so it is more dependent on Iran, the Times said.
"Anything they can do to cause separation between us and Iraq helps achieve their greater aims," Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the United States military's spokesman in Iraq, said. "Anything they can do to cause dissent or attack our forces and cause us to leave."
A senior American official said Abdul Reza Shahlai, one of the top Quds Force officials named by the United States in the assassination plot, "has a notorious past as one of the central architects of Iran's strategy in Iraq."
