IMAM VEIS (Iraq), May 3: Iranian rebels based in Iraq have deployed heavy weaponry to try to prevent incursions by Iran-based Iraqi Shia forces, their commanders said on Saturday.

The People’s Mujahideen, classified as a terrorist group by the United States, has moved tanks, rocket launchers and artillery as close as 15kms to the Iranian border.

The United States bombed Mujahideen bases at the start of the war against Saddam Hussein, but decided last month to let the rebels keep their weapons in “non-combat” positions.

“We are obviously in combat positions here, but we are not against the U.S. forces,” Mitrah Bagherzadeh, a Mujahideen commander, told Reuters, within sight of Iranian peaks.

“We had to establish these bases near the border to defend ourselves against incursions and provide a shield against the Iranian regime,” the 42-year-old woman fighter said.

The United States and the Mujahideen have a common interest in stopping Iraqi fighters of the Tehran-based Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) from returning to their homeland to fill the power vacuum left by Saddam’s removal.

Mujahideen commnanders said they have skirmished almost daily with members of SCIRI’s Badr Brigade and Iranian troops in the area, which is about 150kms northeast of Baghdad.

U.S. military officials have declined to comment on reports of infiltration by Iranian forces, denied by Tehran, but Washington has warned Iran over cross-border operations by its proxies, thought to be a reference to the Badr Brigade.

The Mujahideen showed no evidence of the firefights they said had occurred as recently as Thursday night. They said they had lost about 30 dead in the fighting since March.

The Iranian government, which denies backing any armed group in Iraq, is an implacable foe of the Mujahideen, who fought alongside Saddam’s forces in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Scores of khaki-uniformed Mujahideen fighters with assault rifles were deployed in desert camps near the border village of Imam Veis on Saturday. Rocket launchers pointed towards Iran. Several tanks could be seen manoeuvring inside the bases.

Goat herders and children playing football in dusty villages waved at Iranian rebel fighters in trucks mounted with machineguns as they drove along a 60-km stretch of road punctuated with Mujahideen checkpoints.

There was no sign of U.S. troops, but Bagherzadeh said American special forces moved around the area in white trucks.

The Mujahideen waged a bloody campaign in the early 1980s to topple the Islamic Republic by assassinating top officials. They lost much popular support at home when they fought against their countrymen during the eight-year war with Iraq.

Some Washington hardliners back the Mujahideen as allies against Iran, bracketed by U.S. President George W. Bush with Saddam’s government and North Korea in an “axis of evil”.

But with Saddam gone, the United States might consider disarming the rebels if Iran promised not to interfere in Iraq.

“If that were to happen it would only benefit the Iran regime, which is the greatest threat to stability in the region,” Bagherzadeh said of that suggestion.

After 22 years with the Mujahideen, she did not believe the group’s days were numbered. “When I look at those mountains I am happy, because I know one day we will achieve victory and we will be over there,” she said, gesturing towards Iran. —Reuters