Official: Iran Missiles Pose Threat to U.S. Interests in Iraq
Dec. 20, 2004
WORLD TRIBUNE

A senior U.S. official said Iran and Syria have developed ballistic missiles that can destroy U.S. targets in Iraq as well as in nations aligned with Washington.

"Iran and Syria can currently reach the territory of U.S. friends and allies with their ballistic missiles," Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker said.

"Ballistic missiles from Iran can already reach some parts of Europe, and, of course, Iranian and Syrian ballistic missiles threaten our coalition forces deployed in the Middle East," he said.

The United States has also been examining the deployment of ground-based interceptor launchers and forward-based radars in states adjacent to the Middle East, according to a report by Middle East Newsline.

Rademaker told a missile defense conference by the Washington-based American Foreign Policy Council that both countries have received significant assistance from North Korea, which has sought to sell complete missile systems to the Middle East.

Iran is developing space launch vehicles as a building block for an intercontinental ballistic missile which could be completed within a few years, he said on Dec. 17.

"These systems could be ready for flight-testing in the middle to latter-part of the decade," Rademaker said.

Rademaker said North Korea was achieving self-sufficiency in developing and producing ballistic missiles and sought to sell such missiles to the Middle East. He said the missile threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East could grow significantly if Pyongyang sells what he termed longer-range ballistic missiles.

"If North Korea chooses to sell its longer-range ballistic missiles to customers in the Middle East – as it has done with its shorter-range systems – the risk to our friends and allies could grow exponentially," Rademaker said.

"And it is important to recognize that the limited accuracy and targeting capabilities of emerging ballistic missile threats suggests that hostile states possessing such missiles likely would target the population and territory of our friends and allies rather than their military forces and facilities."

North Korea has sold No Dong missiles to Iran and has developed the Taepo Dong-1 and -2 intermediate-range missiles. Officials said the Taepo Dong-2 could deliver a several hundred kilogram payload up to 15,000 kilometers.

Rademaker said the United States was engaged in missile cooperation with 18 countries, including those in the Middle East.

U.S. cooperation with Israel include the Arrow System Improvement Program, which seeks to provide the Arrow-2 with greater capability against Iranian intermediate-range missiles. Rademaker cited U.S. help for Israel to procure a third Arrow-2 missile defense battery, coproduction of the interceptor and flight tests in the United States.

"As part of the cooperative joint testing project, this past summer Israel conducted two flight tests of the Arrow from Point Magu, California," Rademaker said. "Unlike the Israeli test range, with its range safety restrictions, Point Magu permits testing against a real world Scud."

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_5.html

EXCLUSIVE: Iraq Weapons -- Made in Iran?
Intelligence Officials Say Weapons Responsible for Increasing U.S. Deaths in Iraq
By BRIAN ROSS, RICHARD ESPOSITO and JILL RACKMILL
March 6, 2006 — - U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border.

They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops' strongest armor.

What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures -- certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.

"The signature is the same because they are exactly the same in production," says explosives expert Kevin Barry. "So it's the same make and model."

U.S. officials say roadside bomb attacks against American forces in Iraq have become much more deadly as more and more of the Iran-designed and Iran-produced bombs have been smuggled in from the country since last October.

"I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there," says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. "I think it's very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops."


'Very Lethal'
U.S. intelligence officials say Iran is using the bombs as a way to drive up U.S. casualties in Iraq but without provoking a direct confrontation.

John Negroponte, director of national intelligence, testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Feb. 2, saying, "Tehran's intention to inflict pain on the United States and Iraq has been constrained by its caution to avoid giving Washington an excuse to attack it."

The U.S. Army has embarked on a crash effort to find ways to stop the bombs, according to an unclassified report issued last month. The devices are easily hidden and detonated by motion detectors -- like those used in garden security lights -- that cannot be jammed.

When exploded, the copper disc becomes a molten liquid bullet that can penetrate the thickest armor the United States has.

"They penetrate the armor of an M1 Abrams tank," Clarke says. "They're shape charges. They go through anything, and they are very lethal."

There is currently no real defense against the weapons, he says.

"The Pentagon has a major crash study under way to figure out how to stop them," Clarke says, "but they haven't figured it out yet."

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
http://abcnews.go.com/International/IraqCo...=1692347&page=1

Russia blames USA for tragedy with four Russian diplomats slain in Baghdad

27.06.2006 Source: URL: http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/terror/8...ian_diplomats-0

Vladimir Putin may start today’s meeting with Russian diplomats at the Foreign Affairs Ministry with a moment of silence. The sad ceremony will be held in memory of the four officers of the Russian embassy killed in Baghdad.

The third secretary of the Russian embassy in Iraq, Fyodor Zaitsev (27), security guard Oleg Fedoseyev (41), driver Anatoly Smirnov (33) and cook Rinat Agliulin (also in his late twenties) were brutally killed by al-Qaeda terrorists in Baghdad.

Russia’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs originally refused to confirm the fact of the murder yesterday. However, the officials had to acknowledge later in the evening that the four employees of the Russian embassy in Baghdad had been killed indeed.

The pessimistic conclusion has been made as a result of the analysis of the video tape that the terrorists uploaded on the Internet. The terrorists that killed the Russian officials in Baghdad are considered to be members of the al-Qaeda network in Iraq. The footage of the execution contains quite a number of contradictory factors. The hostages’ faces are not visible during the moment of the actual execution; some of them wear different shirts than those worn during the first days of captivity.

However, experts came to conclusion that the Russian hostages have been killed. The terrorists put two hostages on their knees, cut their heads off and shot the third hostage dead. It is still unknown how the fourth official died. The dead bodies of the killed Russian diplomats have not been found yet.

Moscow has urged the Iraqi administration and the command of the multinational forces in Iraq to take efforts and punish those who committed the horrible crime against the Russian citizens. It goes without saying that it will be extremely hard and almost impossible to find the murderers. The local authorities or the US administration do not seem to be able to do anything at this point either.

Russian officials stated yesterday that the coalition forces were responsible for security in Iraq, including the safety of foreign diplomats in Baghdad. “The responsibility for the execution of the Russian diplomats is the burden on the shoulders of all those who occupied Iraq. This crime is on their conscience,” deputy speaker of the Russian State Duma Lubov Sliska said.

The head of the Iraqi Cultural Forum (the organization unites Iraqi emigrants in Russia, mostly those people who stand against Saddam Hussein’s regime), Salyam Musafir, said in an interview with Vremya Novostei newspaper that Western secret services were standing behind the tragedy with the Russian diplomats. “This is a US-led game. This is how they decided to punish the Russian diplomacy for its anti-war stance. The USA is definitely responsible for the fact that they have occupied Iraq but failed to establish law and order there,” the official said.

Several Russian officials share the same opinion, although this point of view is absolutely rejected in Iraq. Iraqi politicians are certain that the crime has been committed by al-Qaeda.

“The events have taken the worst turn for the Russian hostages from the very beginning of the story. US forces killed al-Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab Zarqawi four days after the Russian diplomats had been kidnapped. In addition, Russian forces destroyed a terrorist leader in Chechnya (Abdul Sadulayev) on June 17. It became even harder to try and rescue the kidnapped diplomats after that,” a Russian official said.

It is worthy of note that terrorists gave Russia a ridiculous 48-hour ultimatum on June 19 to withdraw troops from Chechnya. Moscow described those people as “monsters without dignity, conscience and faith.”

Vremya Novostei

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov
Pravda.Ru

http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/terror/2...ian_diplomats-0

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

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Putin seeks to start anti-terror offensive
Published July 5, 2006

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From combined dispatches
MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin asked parliament yesterday for the right to send soldiers and special forces anywhere in the world to fight terrorists, acting just days after having pledged to "destroy" the terrorists who killed five Russian diplomats in Iraq.
Moscow confirmed early last week that terrorists had killed four abducted diplomats, beheading two of them in an Internet video, after Russia refused their demand to leave the breakaway republic of Chechnya. A fifth diplomat was killed during the abduction June 3.
Russian security services last week offered a $10 million reward for the capture of the Islamic insurgents responsible for the killings.
According to a Kremlin statement, Mr. Putin yesterday went to the upper house of parliament, known as the Federation Council, to make his dramatic bid.
The Kremlin said he had requested the right to defend "the human rights and freedoms of citizens, the sovereignty of the Russian Federation, its independence and state integrity," by using security forces outside Russia.
Under the constitution, Mr. Putin must get permission from the Federation Council, which usually does his bidding, before sending troops abroad.
Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov had said two days ago that the chamber was ready to authorize Mr. Putin to use special forces and the agents of the GRU army intelligence service outside Russia.
Mr. Putin did not say the troops would be sent to Iraq. Nor was it clear whether the United States would object to Russian forces operating in the country or welcome any assistance in dealing with insurgents who for three years have kept Iraq on the edge of chaos.
The kidnapping of the Russians was claimed by the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella group that includes al Qaeda in Iraq and also was responsible for the killing of two abducted American soldiers late last month.
The captors had demanded that Russia withdraw all its troops from Chechnya, a demand that Moscow rejected.
An open microphone last week caught a spat over the killings between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a foreign minister's meeting in Moscow. Mr. Lavrov had wanted an official statement to declare that international forces in Iraq should do more to protect diplomats, while Miss Rice argued that diplomats should not be singled out for special attention.
Apart from the atrocity in Iraq, Mr. Putin is still engaged in a war with independence-seeking insurgents in Russia's southern territory of Chechnya and has accused neighboring countries of harboring Chechen terrorists.
Gunmen attacked a Russian military convoy in the region yesterday, killing at least five troops and wounding as many as 25 others, officials said. Pro-rebel Web sites said that more than 20 Russian soldiers were killed.
Moscow threatened to send warplanes to bomb terrorist bases worldwide after Chechen rebels took 1,300 hostages in a school in the town of Beslan in 2004. About 330 people -- half of them children -- died after a three-day siege.
At the time, Russia did not say which countries it accused of harboring militants -- and no air strikes were forthcoming -- but it had accused Georgia of doing too little to stop Chechen guerrillas from crossing its territory.
Russia also has 500 troops deployed in support of separatists in two breakaway regions of Georgia. Georgia has angered the Kremlin by seeking closer ties with the West since President Mikhail Saakashvili rose to power in that country's Rose Revolution.
Mr. Putin met with Mr. Saakashvili last month, but diplomats said the talks failed to defuse the tension.
Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent, Moscow-based defense analyst, told The Washington Times afterward that the countries appeared to be laying the groundwork for an armed conflict.
"What we've been seeing is an exchange of prewar statements," he said. "We could see military action in the coming weeks and months."
The Russia parliament unanimously passed a resolution last week blaming the United States for the deaths of the diplomats in Iraq and demanding better security for foreign envoys there.
"The tragedy that occurred recently in Iraq was only possible because of the growing crisis in the country as the occupying powers increasingly lose control of the situation," read the statement. "All the responsibility for the situation in Iraq, including the security of its citizens and of foreign workers, lies with the occupying powers."

http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.p...05-015538-8154r

Former Iran president urges U.S. to stay in Iraq
September 7, 2006

CHARLOTTESVILLE -- Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami told a University of Virginia audience today that American military forces should not leave Iraq immediately because violence would most likely break out.

"We have reached a paradoxical stage," Khatami told an invitation-only group at the Rotunda.

"On one hand the occupation must come to an end so that there will be peace in the region. At the same time, you can't leave Iraq in the hands of insurgents and terrorists.

"If you asked me if America should leave Iraq tomorrow, I'd say no, don't do it."

Khatami's trip to U.Va. was somewhat controversial, but all was peaceful on campus during his visit. Though police surrounded the Rotunda to provide security for Khatmai, only half-dozen students protested his appearance.

"We object to the fact he's coming to U.Va.," said Thomas Codevilla, a fourth-year student. "It shows the university's ideological bias to the left."

http://www.dailyprogress.com/servlet/Satel...;path=!news

Ahmadinejad: Iraq's security is Iran's security


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JPost.com Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 12, 2006

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Iranian President Ahmadinejad promised visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that Iran would help Baghdad maintain full security, Israel Radio reported Tuesday.

Following a meeting between the two leaders, Ahmadinejad said that Iraq's security was Iran's security, as well.

Maliki, who was visiting Teheran for the first time since taking office in May, declared that there was nothing blocking the way to cooperation between the two countries.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid...Article/Printer

Iraq asks Iran for help on militants

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer

TEHRAN, Iran - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made his first official visit to Iran, a close ally, asking the Islamic regime on Tuesday to crack down on al-Qaida militants infiltrating his country and seeking new deals to help Iraq's troubled oil industry.

The visit reflected the complex relationship between Iran, a mostly Shiite Muslim country, and Iraq's government, now dominated in the post- Saddam Hussein era by Shiite allies of Tehran. Since Saddam's fall in 2003, Iraq has sought better relations with Iran and to heal scars left by the 1980-88 war that killed more than 1 million people on both sides.

The two enjoy increasingly strong ties that include new oil cooperation. Iraq has already turned to Iran for help with a chronic shortage of petroleum goods, reaching a deal last month to import Iranian gasoline, kerosene and cooking fuel. Iraqi officials said al-Maliki's visit and other recent exchanges could improve the cooperation.

But at the same time, the United States — the Iraqi government's other top ally and a bitter enemy of Iran — has repeatedly accused Tehran of interfering in Iraqi politics and allowing insurgents to cross the porous 1,000-mile border. Iran denies the claims.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Tuesday that the United States favors good relations between Iraq and Iran. But he noted that Washington has "repeatedly expressed our concerns, as have others, about Iranian interference in Iraq's internal affairs. That is something that we remain concerned about."

Moreover, Iraq is struggling to control months of brutal Shiite-Sunni sectarian violence, some of which is blamed on Shiite militias that are linked to parties in the government but also believed to have ties with Iran.

Al-Maliki's welcome was warm in Iran, where he spent part of his yearslong exile from Iraq during Saddam's rule.

The Iraqi premier had a red-carpet reception at the office of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After their meeting, the two leaders exchanged jokes and answered questions from reporters.

"All our assistance to the Iraqi people will be to establish complete security" in Iraq, Ahmadinejad told a joint press conference, according to the state-run news agency.

"Iran and Iraq enjoy historical relations. These relations go beyond neighborly ties. Our relations will remain excellent," he said.

Al-Maliki said his visit would be "a turning point in the expansion of relations between Iran and Iraq that enjoy historical and ancient ties."

Asked about allegations that Iran was interfering in Iraq, al-Maliki said, "There is no obstacle in the way of implementing agreements between Iran and Iraq."

Neither mentioned the issue of al-Qaida militants. But Haidar al-Obadi, a parliament member from al-Maliki's Dawa Party, said the Iraqi leader was asking Iran "for cooperation in controlling the border to prevent any al-Qaida exploitation of the border."

"There are al-Qaida members and al-Qaida strongholds in Iran," he told the Associated Press in Cairo, speaking in a telephone interview from Baghdad. The militants have been "taking advantage of the long border" to smuggle weapons and people into Iraq "most likely without the Iranian government's knowledge," he said.

The United States accuses Tehran of harboring al-Qaida fugitives. Tehran has denied the charges and says it has no interest in fomenting instability across the border. However, Iran has not ruled out the possibility that some infiltrators might have crossed its border illegally. Al-Qaida's branch in Iraq has carried out some of the most brutal suicide attacks against Iraqi Shiites.

"We consider Iraq's progress, independence and territorial integrity as our own," Ahmadinejad said.

Ahmadinejad also said Iran hoped "unwanted guests will leave the region," a reference to U.S. forces in Iraq.

An Iraqi economic delegation visited Iran just before al-Maliki to discuss more petroleum deals, apparently further Iranian exports of gasoline and other fuel goods, said Haidar al-Obadi, another Dawa party parliamentarian.

Details of any new agreements have not been released. Al-Maliki said "Iraq is willing to expand its relations with Iran in the area of political and economic arenas especially energy and water."

Despite its huge oil reserves, Iraq has been suffering under shortages of fuel products because of the damage to the industry from insurgent attacks and the turmoil in the country. It has also turned to Syria and other countries for supplies.

In July 2005, former Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari made a landmark visit to Iran, the first by an Iraqi premier since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam.

Since the fall of Saddam in 2003, the two countries have sought to heal scars left by the 1980-88 war that killed more than 1 million people on both sides.

___

Associated Press correspondent Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/iran_iraq

Iran test-fires 3 new missiles in Persian Gulf
Tehran says missiles can cover the Gulf, strategic Strait of Hormuz

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran has successfully test fired three new models of missiles in the Persian Gulf, state TV reported Friday.

Television showed footage of the elite Revolutionary Guards firing the missiles from mobile launching pads on the shore, and from warships.

The three new types of missiles, named Noor, Kowsar, and Nasr, have a range of about 105 miles and were built for naval warfare, TV reported.

The weapons are “suitable for covering all the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf and the sea of Oman” said Admiral Sardar Fadavi, the deputy navy chief of the Revolutionary Guard.

Some 20 percent of the world’s oil supply passes every day through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

The Revolutionary Guards began maneuvers Thursday, shortly after a U.S.-led military exercise in the Gulf that Iran branded as “adventurist.” Iran remains locked in dispute with the West over its nuclear program, which Washington says is geared to producing atomic weapons but Tehran says is only for generating electricity.

On Thursday, Iran test-fired dozens of missiles, including the Shahab-3, which can reach Israel.

Rice: Iran trying to show it's 'tough'
Asked about Thursday’s maneuvers, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she thought the Iranians “are trying to demonstrate that they are tough.”

“The Iranians also I think are not unaware that the security environment is one in which if they actually were to do something Iran would suffer greatly and so I think they probably understand that,” Rice said on the Bill Cunningham radio show on WLW Cincinnati.

“They are trying to say to the world you are not going to keep us from getting a nuclear weapon,” she said. “The world has to say to them, yes, we will.”

Iranian state television reported that several kinds of missiles were tested, and broadcast footage of them being fired from mobile launchers.

“We want to show our deterrent and defensive power to trans-regional enemies, and we hope they will understand the message,” the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, said in a clear reference to the United States, Britain and France, who were among the six nations that took part in the Gulf maneuvers this week.

Iranian state radio said: “The maneuver is aimed at providing security in the region without the intervention of trans-regional powers, which are trying to justify their presence by portraying the region as convulsive.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15524966/

Testing of Missiles Intended to Force U.S. Out of Region, Iranian Navy Chief Says

Friday , November 03, 2006

TEHRAN, Iran — The test-firing of three new models of sea missiles in the Gulf should send a strong message to the U.S. to cease military maneuvers in the zone, an Iranian navy chief said Friday.

"Our enemies should keep their hostility off the Persian Gulf," said Adm. Sardar Fadavi, the deputy navy chief of the elite Revolutionary Guard, hours after his troops tested the new missiles.

"They should not initiate any move that would make the region tense," he said of the US.

The Iranian military chief was answering a question on Iran's state-run radio about whether the new Iranian maneuvers were a response to a U.S.-led military exercise in the zone earlier this week.

The two-day U.S.-led naval maneuvers that finished Monday focused on surveillance, with warships from six nation including the United States, Britain and France tracking a vessel suspected of carrying nuclear components or illegal weapons.

Iranian state television on Friday showed footage of Revolutionary Guards firing the missiles from mobile launching pads on the shore, and from warships.

Iranian forces have previously test-fired missiles in the crowed Gulf waters, but the new maneuvers, which began on Thursday, apeared to be geared at showing Iran's discontent that U.S. and western warships had held an exercise so close to its territorial waters.

"The maneuvers are not a threat to any neighboring country," said Gen. Ali Fazli, the spokesman for the Iranian war-games.

Iran nonetheless insisted the new sea missiles enhanced its military muscle in the Gulf, where most of the world's oil is extracted. The weapons are "suitable for covering all the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian gulf and the sea of Oman" said Fadavi, the deputy navy chief.

Some 20 percent of the world's oil supply passes every day through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

The three new types of missiles, named Noor, Kowsar, and Nasr, have a range of about 106 miles and were built for naval warfare, TV reported. Iranian sea missiles previously had a range of 75 miles, TV quoted Fadavi as saying.

The new tests demonstrate Iran's military capacities at sea, the admiral said.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_st...,227239,00.html

Messianic leaders in Iraq, Iran

Professors at Haifa University discuss extremist leaders in Persian Gulf who believe in increasing chaos to facilitate judgement day

Ahiya Raved Published: 11.06.06, 05:33

On the same day that the story of a major dictator came to an end in Iraq, experts on the Persian Gulf region posited a disturbing and imminent next chapter.

According to these experts, Shiites in Iraq and Iran are becoming more extreme, under young and charismatic leadership, possessing messianic faith, and unafraid of a struggle with the western world.

In a Haifa University conference on Iran and the Persian Gulf, two experts discussed the personalities of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Shiite leader in Iraq Muqtada al-Sadar.

Both figures are religious extremists who believe in the coming of the mahdi –the Shiite equivalent of the messiah.

The conference's first speaker, Dr. Soli Shahvar, analyzed the personality of the Iranian president, who only a year ago was a relatively unknown mayor of Tehran and is now a dominant international figure.

According to Shahvar, Ahmadinejad's relationship with Iran's spiritual leader Ali Khameini, is complicated and charged, with many ongoing struggles about questions of the country's leadership.

Waiting for the messiah

"The president of Iran implements the decisions of the spiritual leader. That's how it always was," Shahvar explains.

"But now Ahmadinejad, a leader with an agenda, is on the scene, attacking the west and ruining the efforts of other leaders to break Iran's isolationism.

"He attacks Israel ceaselessly. Granted, there were always such attacks, but not with such intensity," Shahvar continued. He stated that the charged relationship between Khameini and the president was a warning sign.

The president has both reformist and conservative critics, but enjoys mass support for now, primarily among the poor from whom he originated and among the military, which he entered during the Iran-Iraq war and served to the rank of Lt. Col.

"He is supported by a religious sect called hujedieh. They believe that everything must be prepared for the coming of the mahdi, and he will arrive when exploitation and poverty increase, in order to do justice," said Shahvar.

One approach to bring about the mahdi is a 'Judgement Day war' – an attempt at chaos and regional warfare, which Ahmadinejad seems to have adopted, the professor said.

In this context, he explains, we can understand the Iranian president's recent statements, for he believes that they have a direct connection to God.

Shahvar stated further that Ahmadinejad's victory in the presidency race was unexpected and, thus, interpreted by him as a divine sign.

According to Shahvar, the most dangerous possible scenario in Iran would be a military coup, in which Ahmadinejad would capture the role of supreme leader.

"The Islamist revolution is at a crossroads. Since 1979, the ideals of the revolution have been diluted, and (the president) believes that he came along to save the revolution and the people. This belief should frighten us," he concluded.

Muqtada al-Sadar: Messiah of the downtrodden

World renowned Iraq expert Prof. Amatzia Baram sketched an image of the anticipated future leader of the Shiite faction in Iraq – Muqtada al-Sadar.

Young al-Sadar, somewhere between 28 to 32 years of age, is the son of an ayatollah who was murdered – most likely at the hands of Saddam Hussein's guard – but has no religious position. His power is derived from the militia that he heads.

"He created this militia from the poorest people in Iraq. These are young people, ages 15 to 30, who have nothing else – no education, no finances, no future outside of the militia."

"They were outcasts. Even in Iraq they were considered garbage. But this rabble goes after him in hordes, ready to die for him," Baram explained.

According to the professor, al-Sadar encourages xenophobic ideas – not only against Jews and Christians, but also against non-Shiite Muslims.

He appears to have inherited an extensive financial reserve from his father, including schools, religious centers and welfare centers.

"In addition, he gave people hope about the coming of the mahdi. He even calls his militia the 'mahdi army'.

"He tells people that the mahdi is coming soon and in one of his sermons said that the reason that the US is intensifying operations in Iraq is 'to wait and catch (the mahdi), to decapitate him," Baram said.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3324216,00.html

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

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Iran vows to help Iraq with security
By Edmund Blair
REUTERS NEWS AGENCY
Published November 28, 2006

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TEHRAN -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran would do whatever it could to help provide security to Iraq amid warnings the country was on the brink of civil war.
Mr. Ahmadinejad made the pledge at the start of a visit to Iran by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, whose trip was delayed for two days because of a curfew imposed after bombings Thursday that killed 202 persons in a Shi'ite Muslim stronghold. The curfew was lifted yesterday.
The United States is facing calls to engage Tehran in direct talks to help end the bloodshed, which U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said had pushed Iraq closer to civil war.
"The Iranian nation and government will definitely stand beside their brother, Iraq, and any help the government and nation of Iran can give to strengthen security in Iraq will be given," Mr. Ahmadinejad said, Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reported.
"We have no limitation for cooperation in any field," he said.
Mr. Ahmadinejad was speaking shortly after Mr. Talabani's arrival and just before the two presidents held formal talks.
Mr. Talabani said he would discuss improving ties between the neighbors, which fought an eight-year war in the 1980s.
"In this trip, we will also talk about Iraq's security file because Iraq needs the comprehensive assistance of Iran to fight terrorism and create stability," ISNA quoted Mr. Talabani as saying.
Political analysts said Iran might try to use talks with Mr. Talabani to show off its influence to the United States and bolster its position ahead of any talks with its old enemy. They also said Iran's ability to stem the bloodshed was limited.
U.S. officials have said the violence is being spurred by Iran's backing for Shi'ite groups and its weapons exports. Iran dismisses the charges.
Mr. Annan, making a rare comment on the Iraq situation, said he thought the country was nearly in civil war -- something Iraqi and U.S. politicians have refused to say despite mounting deaths.
"Given the developments on the ground, unless something is done drastically and urgently to arrest the deteriorating situation, we could be there. In fact, we are almost there," Mr. Annan told reporters in response to a civil war question.
Earlier, King Abdullah II of Jordan, who will host a summit in Amman between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and President Bush this week, said "something dramatic" must come out of it because Iraq was "beginning to spiral out of control."
The New York Times said a draft report to be debated by the Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, would urge an aggressive regional diplomatic initiative to include direct talks with Iran and Syria.
The group's recommendations will be sent to the White House, which is considering a change in strategy in Iraq to allow the U.S. to start pulling out some of its 140,000 troops.
Britain, the United States' main ally in Iraq, said yesterday it hoped to withdraw thousands of troops by December 2007, while Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said the last Italian troops would leave next month.
But Poland appeared to push back the deadline for withdrawal of its 900 troops from Iraq, saying the force would leave by the end of 2007, not by mid-2007 as previously stated.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/p...28-120350-4705r

Iran tells Talabani that US-led forces must leave Iraq
Nov 28 8:36 AM US/Eastern

Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei told visiting Iraqi President Jalal Talabani that US-led forces had to leave Iraq if security was to be restored in the violence-riven country.
"The first step to solve the security issue in Iraq is the exit of the occupiers from this country and leaving the security issues to the people-based Iraqi government," Khamenei was quoted as saying by state television.

"Americans will absolutely not succeed in Iraq and the continuation of Iraq's occupation is not a mouthful that Americans can swallow," Khamenei said Tuesday during a meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

"The main reason for the current situation in Iraq is the US policies that are being carried out by some intermediaries," the Iranian leader said.

He put the blame for Iraq's insecurity on "some US agents in the region who are mediators of these policies".

"Reinforcing terrorist groups and inflaming the wave of insecurity and killings in Iraq will be very dangerous for the US agents and the region," Khamenei said.

He also pledged that the Islamic republic would come to Iraq's assistance if requested.

"If the Iraqi government asks, Iran will not refrain from any action to establish stability and security in this country."

"Americans will absolutely not succeed in Iraq and the continuation of Iraq's occupation is not a mouthful that Americans can swallow," Khamenei told him.

Talabani, paying a three-day official visit to the Shiite-dominated neighbouring country, has acknowledged he came to seek Tehran's help in curbing bloodshed which is increasingly being perceived as civil war.

During his trip to Tehran, Talabani also received fresh vows of assistance from his counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to stem the violence in war-torn Iraq.

Washington and London, whose forces are battling insurgents in Iraq, accuse Tehran of fomenting the sectarian conflict.

Iran has strongly denied meddling in Iraq, insisting repeatedly that the Iraqi conflict will be resolved if the occupation forces pull out of Iraq.

At a meeting with Talabani on Monday, Ahmadinejad promised to do all his country could. "We will help our Iraqi brothers with all that we can to implement and reinforce security in Iraq," the Iranian president said.

Talabani told reporters as he arrived in Tehran: "We need Iran's comprehensive help to fight terrorism, restore security and stabilize Iraq."

The Iraqi president, whose Patriotic Union of Kurdistan has in the past been backed by Iran, made a landmark visit to Tehran in November 2005. He said at the time he had won Iran's promise of support for his government's battle with insurgents.

His latest plea for help came as a fresh outbreak of violence left dozens dead across Iraq. The bodies of at least 40 people bearing torture marks were recovered after being dumped in various parts of the capital.

The Iran visit coincides with a flurry of diplomatic activity to try to resolve the worsening situation in Iraq, with US President George W. Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki set to meet Wednesday in the Jordanian capital Amman.

Washington's staunch ally Britain on Monday condemned what it called Iran's behaviour in inciting violence in Iraq.

British Defence Secretary Des Browne warned the Islamic republic against seeing Iraq as a "tool in a wider confrontation" -- a reference to US-led efforts to force Tehran to curb its nuclear plans which the West suspects hide ambitions for nuclear weapons.

Tehran insists its atomic plans are only for civilian use.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/11/28/0...1.quf2hdf5.html

Iraqi Ambassabor Accuses Iranian Minister of Hipocrisy Over U.S. Criticisms

Thursday , December 07, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's ambassador to the Netherlands confronted Iran's foreign minister during a speech Wednesday, accusing his country of hypocrisy in its rhetoric against the United States.

It was a rare exchange between officials of the neighboring states, which fought an eight-year war against one another in the 1980s.

The incident occurred after Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki complained during an address to scholars and diplomats at the Clingendael Institute, an international relations think-tank, that it would be a double standard if the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program.

Iran has insisted on its right to enrich uranium for what it says is a peaceful energy program.

"The U.S. administration so often refers to Iran's nuclear capability as a threat against regional and international peace," Mottaki said. But "it is the U.S. that ... invaded without any endorsement of the U.N. Security Council, another member of the United Nations, namely Iraq, and so has set off the most dangerous security challenge in the Middle East."

Mottaki said the endless cycle of violence in Iraq is being fueled by the continued U.S. troop presence in the country.

"The terrorist group in Iraq says, 'Because of the continuation of the occupation of this country, we are fighting,"' he said. "The American says, 'Because of terrorist groups, we continue our staying in Iraq."'

Iraqi Ambassador Siamand Banaa then rose to contradict him, saying that Iran had benefited from the war in Iraq.

"It would strengthen your case and give it much more depth if you tried to avoid cynicism and hypocrisy," Banaa said. "The removal of the worst enemy of the Iraqi people and the Iranian people, Saddam Hussein, who caused the death and destruction of hundreds of thousands and almost the bankruptcy of your country, has been, I think, a great advance for you."

Banaa said Mottaki's analysis was wrong, and that without American troops in his country, "it would be a free-for-all, and in fact real civil war."

He urged Mottaki to get off "the 'America always wrong' brigade."

Mottaki responded by assuring that Iran supports the territorial integrity of Iraq and wants it to return to peace. "Stability in Iraq is stability for Iran, and all its neighboring countries and all the region," he said.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_st...,234997,00.html

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

WND AT THE WHITE HOUSE
Kyl: ISG may worsen Iranian nuclear threat
President agrees with senator who says appeasement dangerous

Posted: December 13, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

President George W. Bush continues to be concerned over the stability in Iran and its potential to acquire nuclear weapons, and will work to oppose that result even if it means not adopting a recommendation of the new Iraq Study Group report to try diplomacy, according to spokesman Tony Snow.


Sen. Jon Kyl

Les Kinsolving, WND's correspondent at the White House, asked Snow yesterday whether the president agrees with the sentiments of a letter from Sen. John Kyl, R-Az., and former Central Intelligence Agency chief James Woolsey.

"Republican Sen. Jon Kyl and former CIA Director James Woolsey have written the president: 'The Iranian regime is working to acquire nuclear arms and long-range missiles. When combined with Ahmadinejad's repeated threats to wipe Israel off the map and bring about a world without America, we face the prospect that Iran will have the means to carry out their apocalyptic intentions.' … Has the president responded to these two? And does he disagree with their statement?"

"He agrees," said Snow.

"If you've noted in recent months we've made it very clear that we do not believe that Iran should have any nuclear capability," Snow continued. "It does, in fact, have long-range missile capability … and it has tested long-range missiles recently."

"I don't handle his correspondence, so I will not respond to a particular letter," he said. "But I think you understand the clear contours of the policy, which is why even now we're working within the U.N. Security Council on a resolution noting that Iran should suspend its nuclear enrichment and reprocessing activities, period."

The new letter from Kyl and Woolsey cited the bipartisan Iraq Study Group report and its 79 recommendations for policy changes, force redeployments and other changes in Iraq.

"Members of our Council (the bipartisan National Security Advisory Council of the Center for Security Policy) on both sides of the aisle strongly disagree with what is, arguably, the Baker-Hamilton commission's most strategically portentous recommendation," the letter said.

That recommendation, the letter said, is that "the United States should immediately launch a New Diplomatic Offensive to build an international consensus for stability in Iraq and the region."

The letter from Kyl noted that the recommendation includes reaching out to Iraq's neighbors, Iran and Syria. But he said that would be unwise.

"As the ISG's own report documents, far from being proponents of stability, the Islamic Republic of Iran and its de facto colony, Syria, have gone to great lengths to destabilize the Middle East and, in particular, to prevent Iraq from becoming a free, democratic and peaceful nation," the letter said.

"Islamofascists" from those nations are the ones now killing Americans in Iraq, the letter said.

"At the same time, the Iranian regime is working to acquire nuclear arms and long-range ballistic missiles with which to deliver them. When combined with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeat threats to 'wipe Israel off the map' and bring about 'a world without America,' we face the prospect that, in due course, the mullahs running Iran will have the means to carry out their apocalyptic intentions."

That, the letter suggested, is not good.

The two authors said discussions also would legitimatize an "increasingly dangerous regime" which should be discredited and undermined instead. It also would embolden enemies who believe now "they are sapping our will to resist them."

Such a move also would give Iranian mullahs more time to prepare their weapons of mass destruction, and finally, it would "create the illusion that we are taking useful steps to contend with the threat from Iran – when, in fact, we would not be," the letter said.

Such concern is being raised even as Ahmadinejad is holding a conference in Tehran advertised as a worldwide "free speech" conference but in actuality focusing on those who agree with his goal of destroying Israel.

"Mr. President, we encourage you to follow your better instincts. By all means, review, assess and, as appropriate, adopt the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and those of the executive branch agencies you have commissioned. We urge you, however, to continue to reject any course of action that would signal that America has become a country that, to quote the scholar Bernard Lewis, is 'harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend,'" the letter said.

One of the speakers at Ahmadenijad's conference was former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who told audience members that the U.S. is controlled by "Zionists" who are responsible for the killing of Americans in Iraq.


Kofi Annan

Kinsolving also asked whether the president had any reaction to outgoing United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan's newest criticisms of America.

"No," was Snow's response.

According to The Times Online, Annan addressed an audience in Independence, Mo., birthplace of Harry Truman, who oversaw the creation of the U.N. in 1945.

There, he took exception to the United States' focus on its security and said those nationalistic urges must be repressed for the betterment of the world.

"Americans, like the rest of humanity, need a functioning global system through which the world's peoples can face global challenges together. And in order to function, the system still cries out for far-sighted American leadership, in the Truman tradition," he said.

Annan and the Bush Administration have been at odds over a number of issues, ranging from Annan's description of the war in Iraq as "illegal" to American criticism of the role Annan played in the Oil-for-Food scandal with Iraq, in which his son had lobbied to win a lucrative U.N. contract.

"The (U.N.) Security Council is not just another stage on which to act out national interests," Annan said. "It is the management committee, if you will, of our fledgling collective security system."

http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53346

'Captured Iranians were members of elite force'


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Dec. 29, 2006

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Two Iranians detained by US forces in Iraq were senior members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards and had coordinated attacks against coalition troops and Iraqi civilians, the head of an Iranian opposition group said.

The White House said earlier this week that US troops had caught a group of Iranians in a raid on suspected insurgents in Iraq. Two of the men had diplomatic immunity and were released to Iran, but the other two were kept in custody.

Maryam Rajavi, who heads the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an anti-regime umbrella group based in Paris, said Thursday that the two men being held were senior members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Qods force and were responsible for sectarian attacks in Iraq.

She cited the group's intelligence officials as the source of the information.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid...Article/Printer

Iraq jihadis claim 'chemical rockets'

Al-Ayoubi Brigades release video showing preparation, firing of rockets claimed to contain chemical agent
Yaakov Lappin

A jihadi propaganda video released on Wednesday by the Salah al-Din al-Ayoubi Brigades, part of the Islamic Iraqi Resistance Front (also known as JAMI), purports to show members preparing and launching "chemical rockets" at a US target in Iraq.

In the video, men wearing gas masks can be seen pouring a black fluid, resembling crude oil, into the rockets as they are being assembled, although there is no evidence to suggest that the substance is actually a harmful agent.

The footage has been made available by the Jihad Unspun website, which reproduces a number of jihadi statements and videos.

The Site Institute , which monitors Islamist communications, said a communiqué was released with the clip, "calling this a 'unique operation,'" and added that "JAMI fired these rockets at an American base in Samara."

The message also claimed the rockets struck their targets accurately.

In a separate message, released earlier in January, the leader of the "Islamic state of Iraq," declared by al-Qaeda in Iraq , was reported to say that the US "is only beginning to realize its role as a means for Iran to gain control in Iraq with minimal losses."

In the past few months, al-Qaeda in Iraq has begun releasing increasingly hostile rhetoric against Iran and Shiite Muslims in Iraq.


http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLa...3351350,00.html

Bush Orders 'Force Protection' Raids Against Iranians in Iraq

Saturday , January 13, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq —

Iraqi foreign minister says detained Iranians were working at liaison office

Five Iranians detained by U.S.-led forces were working in a decade-old government liaison office that was in the process of being upgraded to a consulate, the Iraqi foreign minister said Friday.

U.S. President George W. Bush issued an order several months ago that authorized a series of U.S. raids against Iranians in Iraq as part of a broad military offensive, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The New York Times.

Click here to read the New York Times report.

Rice said the president acted "after a period of time in which we saw increasing activity" among Iranians in Iraq "and increasing lethality in what they were producing."

The State Department said Friday that U.S.-led forces entered the Iranian building in the Kurdish-controlled northern city of Irbil because information linked it to Revolutionary Guards and other Iranian elements engaging in violent activities in Iraq. There was no truth to reports that Iran was carrying out legitimate diplomatic activity at the site, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.

Tehran condemned the raid in the Kurdish-controlled northern city of Irbil and urged Iraq to push for the Iranians' release.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the building where the Iranians were detained Thursday had operated with Iraqi government approval for 10 years.

"We are now in the process of changing these offices to consulates," he said. "It is not a new office. This liaison office has been there for a long time."

He also echoed concerns the U.S. and Iran were dragging Iraq into their fight.

"We don't want Iraq to be a battleground for settling scores with other countries," Zebari, a Kurd, told CNN.

The diplomatic tussle came at an unwelcome time for the United States as President Bush faces criticism over his new strategy for ending the violence in Iraq. Bush also vowed to isolate Iran and Syria, which the U.S. has accused of fueling attacks in Iraq.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani plans a trip to Syria on Sunday, the highest-level Iraqi visit to the country in more than 24 years. The neighbors restored diplomatic relations in December that were cut in 1982 amid ideological disputes between Damascus and the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's office, meanwhile, rejected Bush's plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq as part of an effort to curb sectarian attacks.

"We reject Bush's new strategy and we think it will fail," said Abdul-Razzaq al-Nidawi, a senior official in al-Sadr's office. He said Iraq's problems were due to the presence of U.S. troops and called for their withdrawal.

Local leaders of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which has been blamed for much of the sectarian violence, said they were bracing for an attack and avoiding appearing in public with their weapons.

Zebari's Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, called on the Iraqi government to secure the release of the five Iranians, Iranian state television reported. "Such illegal and adventurous acts by the U.S. should be stopped," the broadcast quoted Mottaki as saying.

Mottaki condemned the raid, saying it contravened the Vienna Convention. "This behavior by the United States contradicts its claims of providing security in Iraq," he was quoted as saying.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin also harshly criticized the detentions, calling them a "flagrant violation" of international conventions.

"It's absolutely unacceptable when the military storms a foreign consular office on the territory of another state," Kamynin said. "The unlawful actions by the U.S. servicemen mark an open abuse of a mandate issued to the multinational forces in Iraq."

The 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations says consular premises are "inviolable," but it was not clear how that would apply as the building was not a consulate.

Zebari also said U.S. forces tried to seize more people at the airport in Irbil, 220 miles north of Baghdad, prompting a confrontation with Kurdish troops.

A Pentagon official in Washington said that after troops detained the Iranians, they learned another person might have escaped and fled to the airport. An American team went to the airport, where they "surprised" Kurdish forces, who apparently had not been informed they were coming, said the Defense Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the incident.

Meanwhile, sectarian violence persisted. Suspected Shiite militiamen attacked a Sunni mosque in a religiously mixed neighborhood of Baghdad, prompting clashes that wounded two guards, police said.

Attackers later blew up a Shiite mosque that was under construction in the northern city of Kirkuk, police Col. Anwar Hassan said. No casualties were reported.

At least 19 people were reported killed or dead nationwide, including 10 bullet-riddled bodies found in Baghdad and an Iraqi journalist who was killed in a drive-by shooting in the northern city of Mosul.

Khudr Younis al-Obaidi was the second journalist killed this year. Associated Press staffer Ahmed Hadi Naji was found shot in the back last week.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the attack.

"Authorities must do more to bring those responsible to justice, or journalists will remain vulnerable to attacks," CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said in a statement.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_st...,243560,00.html

U.S. military: Arrested Iranians linked to arming insurgents in Iraq

BAGHDAD (AP) — Five Iranians arrested in northern Iraq last week were connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard faction that funds and arms insurgents in Iraq, the U.S. military said Sunday.
The statement provided the first details from the military on the five people detained by U.S.-led forces Thursday in a raid on what the Iraqis and Tehran said was an Iranian liaison office in Irbil, a city in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq about 220 miles north of Baghdad.

The military said the Quds Force faction of the Revolutionary Guard, the military pillar of Iran's Islamic Revolution, is "known for providing funds, weapons, improvised explosive device technology and training to extremist groups attempting to destabilize the Government of Iraq and attack Coalition forces."

"Quds" is the Arabic name for Jerusalem, and a frequent name for political or military factions across the Muslim world. The Quds Force is the branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard responsible for training and funding with Islamic militant groups in the Arab world, and has been linked to Shiite Muslim militias in Iraq, as well as the guerrilla group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Iran's government denied the five detainees had been involved in financing and arming insurgents and called for their release along with compensation for damages.

"Their job was basically consular, official and in the framework of regulations," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Sunday. "What the Americans express was incorrect and hyperbole against Iran in order to justify their acts."

The detentions came as President Bush vowed to isolate Iran and Syria, which the U.S. has accused of fueling attacks in Iraq, as part of his new war strategy. The position has raised concerns in Iraq that tensions among the three countries were hurting Iraq's interests.

The arrests were made Thursday, the same day Bush delivered a speech outlining a new strategy for Iraq, in which he accused Iran and Syria of not doing enough to block terrorists from entering Iraq over their borders.

"We will disrupt the attacks on our forces," Bush said Wednesday. "We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."

On Sunday, Bush's national security adviser said the U.S. had the authority to pursue Iranians in Iraq because they "put our people at risk."

"We are going to need to deal with what Iran is doing inside Iraq," national security adviser Stephen Hadley said.

Vice President Dick Cheney added: "Iran is fishing in troubled waters inside Iraq."

Hadley was interviewed on "This Week" on ABC while Cheney was on "Fox News Sunday."

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was expected to visit Syria on Sunday, becoming the first Iraqi president to travel to the country in nearly three decades. Mahmoud Othman, an Iraqi lawmaker close to Talabani, said the Syria trip was not intended as a snub to Bush. It has been planned for nearly a year, but its date was finalized about two weeks ago, he said from Baghdad.

Hosseini said the United States was resorting to "hostility and conflict toward neighbors of Iraq" because it did not want to acknowledge it had failed to stabilize Iraq.

A standoff already exists between the U.S. and Iran over Tehran's atomic program. Iran has rejected all allegations that it is trying to make nuclear arms.

There has been debate over whether the Irbil office where the men were arrested had diplomatic status, and would therefore be protected by international treaties.

Both Hosseini and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, described it as a liaison office that had government approval and was in the process of being approved as an Iranian consulate. In Iran, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the U.S. raid constituted an intervention in Iranian-Iraqi affairs.

The United States has repeatedly denied the office was a consulate and the State Department has said no legitimate diplomatic activity was being carried out at the site.

At least 20 people were reported killed or found dead on Sunday. A roadside bomb exploded near a police patrol in a commercial area of Baghdad, killing a civilian and wounding six. A mortar attack killed another civilian in the capital, and a beheaded body was discovered in Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, police said.

Seven bodies with signs of torture were discovered across Baghdad, police said.

Three other people — a civilian, a 20-year-old student and a Shiite dairy store owner — were shot dead in separate attacks in the northern city of Mosul, police there said.

Separately, the British Ministry of Defense confirmed that a British soldier was killed Saturday in fighting in the southern city of Basra.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/20...detainees_x.htm

US warns Iran on Iraq 'meddling'

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has warned Iran not to interfere in Iraq.
The US government thought it was very important that the Iranians should "keep their folks at home", he said.

His comments come after US forces detained several Iranians in northern Iraq on suspicion of aiding insurgents, accusations rejected by Tehran.

Mr Cheney is the latest member of the Bush administration to warn that the US will take steps against those trying to destabilise the situation in Iraq.

US officials say five Iranian nationals arrested in Irbil on Thursday are linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, accused of training and arming Shia insurgents in Iraq.

Iran's foreign ministry says the men are diplomats and were working at the Iranian liaison office in Irbil. It has demanded their immediate release.

Washington has often accused Iran, or factions within the Iranian government, of aiding Shia groups in Iraq militarily and politically, but has offered little proof of Tehran's alleged activities.

'Geographical reality'

President George W Bush has warned that the US would take a tough stance towards Iran and Syria, which he accused of destabilising Iraq.

But Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said on Sunday that Iraq was treading a "thin line", warning that neighbours are beginning to use it as battleground in which to settle scores with the US.

"We fully respect the views, policies and strategy of the United States, which is the strongest ally to Iraq, but the Iraqi government has national interests of its own," Mr Zebari said.

"We can't change the geographical reality that Iran is our neighbour. This is a delicate balance and we are treading a very thin line."

Speaking to Fox News, Mr Cheney said Iran was "fishing in troubled waters" by aiding attacks on US forces and backing Shia militias involved in sectarian violence.

"I think the message that the president sent clearly is that we do not want (Iran) doing what they can to try to destabilise the situation inside Iraq.

He added that the Iranian threat was growing, multi-dimensional and of concern to everybody in the region.

Mr Cheney's television interview formed part of attempts by the Bush administration to promote the new drive to improve security in Iraq, which involves sending an extra 21,500 US troops.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates is in the UK for a brief visit, meeting Prime Minister Tony Blair and Defence Secretary Des Browne for talks on Afghanistan and Iraq.

US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley appeared on Sunday morning TV, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has publicly warned Iran and Syria not to destabilise Iraq.

'Illegal action'

Tehran vehemently denies the charges of interference and says the men detained on Thursday were "involved in consulate affairs".


The outside of the Iranian liaison office raided by US forces

"Their activities were legal and in the framework of the law," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said in response to the allegations.

The Iranian government has demanded compensation for damage to the building where the men were seized, saying the office and the staff inside should have had diplomatic protection and that the US action was illegal.

"The Americans want to radicalise the atmosphere in Iraq to justify their occupation, but we will act wisely," Mr Hosseini said.

Last month several Iranians were arrested by the US in Baghdad, among them two senior Revolutionary Guard officers. They were released after huge pressure from the Iraqi government.

The Revolutionary Guard, known locally as the Pasdaran, is a parallel military force with its own army, air force and navy.

It was set up to enforce and defend the principles of the 1979 Islamic revolution and answers directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6261355.stm

Saturday, April 26, 2003

FROM JOSEPH FARAH'S G2 BULLETIN
Iranian-trained army in Iraq
40,000 ex-POW Shiites armed, prepared for Islamic revolution


Posted: April 26, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Editor's note: Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin is an online, subscription intelligence news service from the creator of WorldNetDaily.com – a journalist who has been developing sources around the world for the last 25 years.


© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Iran has armed and trained some 40,000 Shiite Iraqi fighters – most of whom are former prisoners of war captured during the Iran-Iraq war – and sent them to Iraq to foment an Islamic revolution, Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin reports.

The online intelligence newsletter says this small army represents the vanguard of Iran's effort to subvert the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq and use the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime for its own ends.

"Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Khakim is on record pledging more than once to his followers a plan to impose Islamic rule over Iraq with the help of Iran," reports G2 Bulletin. "The Tehran ayatollahs, or the Pasadran, the powerful revolutionary guard, repeatedly have been telling the Iraqis they would be their legitimate allies and partners. In such a scenario, there is no room for the U.S. The coalition that liberated Iraq is seen by the Iraqi Shiite militants and their Iranian sponsors as a tool for handing Iraq over to them without the need to use a massive force of their own."

The report says U.S. war planners were caught off-guard last week by a massive rally of as many as 1 million Shiites in southern Iraq cities – some celebrating the demise of Hussein, others protesting the continued presence of U.S. troops.

G2 Bulletin quotes a CIA source as saying the role of the Iranian security apparatus in Iraq was identified in the mid-1990s as a force to compete fiercely with the U.S. should the Hussein regime collapse.

Shiites represent some 60 percent of the Iraqi population. Neighboring Iran is the only Shiite-governed nation in the world.

Meanwhile, the report says, U.S. military officials like Lt. Gen. David McKiernan are attributing the massive Shiite uprising in Karbala and elsewhere "as part of democracy in work."

"Right now the Shiite and any Iranian-influenced Shiite actions are not an overt threat to coalition forces," said McKiernan. "We're watching all these competing interests."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer last week said the goal of the U.S. in Iraq is to establish "an Islamic democracy."

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32256

Report: Bush authorizes targeting Iranians in Iraq

US president authorizes military to kill, capture Iranian agents in Iraq, counterterrorism officials tell Washington Post, adding that move aimed at weakening Islamic Republic’s influence in region, force it to abandon nuclear program; skeptics in intelligence community fear Iranians may try to kidnap or kill US personnel in Iraq as payback, report says
Reuters

President George W. Bush has authorized the US military to kill or capture Iranian agents active inside Iraq, The Washington Post reported on Friday, citing government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the plan.

The move, approved last fall, is aimed at weakening Iran's influence in the region and forcing Tehran to abandon its nuclear program that the West believes is for nuclear weapons and not energy, the newspaper said, citing the unidentified officials.

For more than a year, US forces have held dozens of Iranians for a few days, taking DNA samples from some as well as photographs and fingerprints from all those captured, the report said.

Several Iranian officials have been detained in three US raids over the last month. Outgoing US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters on Wednesday that details of accusations against them would be made public in the coming days.

He said they were "going after networks" of security agents, which he said were a mainstay of Iran's involvement in Iraq. The United States has accused Iran of helping arm, train and fund Iraqi militants, notably fellow Shi'ite Muslims.

Iran has long been at odds with the United States, pushing ahead with plans to enrich uranium as part of what Tehran calls a peaceful energy program. The West has feared that Iran instead has been trying to develop nuclear weapons.

The new policy applies to Iranian intelligence operatives and members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard thought to be working with Iraqi militias, but not civilians or diplomats, the newspaper said.

'Our forces have standing authority'

No deadly force was known to have been used by US troops against any Iranians, but administration officials have been pushing military commanders to exercise that authority, it said.

The newspaper said there were skeptics in the intelligence community, State Department and Pentagon, including CIA Director Michael Hayden who said Iranians may try to kidnap or kill US personnel in Iraq as payback.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice backed the plan to help pressure Iran on the nuclear issue, but raised concerns about the risk for mistakes and demanded there be some oversight, the Post reported.

The newspaper said the Defense and State Departments referred inquiries to the White House National Security Council, which declined to comment on specifics of the plan.

But in response to questions about the "kill or capture" authorization, NSC spokesman Gordon Johndroe told the Post: "The president has made clear for sometime that we will take the steps necessary to protect Americans on the ground in Iraq and disrupt activity that could lead to their harm. Our forces have standing authority, consistent with the mandate of the UN Security Council."

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLa...3357247,00.html

Washington Soon to Release Evidence of Hostile Iranian Activity in Iraq

From DEBKA-Net-Weekly Jan. 19 Updated by DEBKAfile

January 25, 2007, 10:36 AM (GMT+02:00)


Iran's "liaison center" in Irbil

US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad and State department spokesman Sean McCormack said the US would soon present evidence of Iran’s hand in the violence besetting Iraq. The spoke as US-Iran military tensions over Iraq continued to rise. The ambassador stressed too that the charges against the Revolutionary Guards al Quds Brigade agents detained at the Iranian “liaison center” in Irbil on Jan 11 would be made public. The detainees are still in custody. McCormack spoke of “solid evidence” that Iranian agents sent by the Iranian government are working with individuals and groups in Iraq. He quoted President Bush who vowed to confront the networks and individuals “trying to harm our troops.”

Eight days after the US raid on Irbil, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 286 exclusively revealed some of the evidence referred to by the two US officials of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’s direct involvement in terrorist operations in Iraq.

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1250

NYT: Iran says plans to expand role in Iraq

Islamic Republic’s ambassador to Baghdad tells New York Times Tehran prepared to offer Iraqi government forces training, equipment and advisers for ‘security fight’; senior Iraqi banking says Iran received license to open national bank in country
Ynetnews

Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad told the New York Times on Sunday that Tehran plans to expand its economic and military ties with Iraq.

According to the Times, the plan carries the potential to bring Iran into further conflict with the United States, which has detained a number of Iranian operatives in recent weeks and says it has proof of Iranian complicity in attacks on American and Iraqi forces.

The ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, was quoted by the American newspaper as saying that Iran was prepared to offer Iraqi government forces training, equipment and advisers for “the security fight.”

According to the report, Qumi said that Iran was ready to assume major responsibility for the reconstruction of Iraq.

During the 90-minute interview at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, Qumi told the Times that “We have experience of reconstruction after war,” referring to the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

“We are ready to transfer this experience in terms of reconstruction to the Iraqis.”

According to the Times, Qumi also acknowledged, for the first time, that two Iranians seized and later released by American forces last month were security officials, as the United States had claimed.

However, the report said, he added that they were engaged in legitimate discussions with the Iraqi government and should not have been detained,

President George W. Bush has said the American military is authorized to take whatever action necessary against Iranians in Iraq found to be engaged in actions deemed hostile, according to the Times.

The political and diplomatic standoff that followed the Dec. 21 raid until the Iranians were released nine days later has contributed, along with a dispute over the Iranian nuclear program, to greatly increased tensions between the United States and Iran.

This month, American forces detained five more Iranians in a raid on a diplomatic office in the northern city of Erbil.

While providing few details, the United States has said that evidence gleaned in the Baghdad raid, made on an Iraqi Shiite leader’s residential compound, proves the Iranians were involved in planning attacks.

He ridiculed the evidence that the American military has said it collected, including maps of Baghdad delineating Sunni, Shiite and mixed neighborhoods — the kind of maps, American officials have said, that would be useful for militias engaged in ethnic slaughter. Qumi said the maps were so common and easily obtainable that they proved nothing.

'Iran tied to sectarian attacks'

Qumi also told the Times that Iran would soon open a national bank in Iraq. The report said a senior Iraqi banking official, Hussein al-Uzri, confirmed that Iran had received a license to open the bank, which he said would apparently be the first “wholly owned subsidiary bank” of a foreign country in Iraq.

“This will enhance trade between the two countries,” Uzri was quoted by the Times as saying.

Qumi said during the interview that the bank was just the first of what he said would be several in Iraq — an agricultural bank and three private banks also intend to open branches.

Other elements of new economic cooperation, he told the Times, include plans for Iranian shipments of kerosene and electricity to Iraq and a new agricultural cooperative involving both countries.

According to the Times, the Iranian ambassodor would not provide specifics on Iran’s offer of military assistance to Iraq, but said it included increased border patrols and a proposed new “joint security committee.”

Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, said Sunday that the United States had a significant body of evidence tying Iran to sectarian attacks inside Iraq, the Times said.

“There is a high degree of confidence in the information that we already have, and we are constantly accumulating more,” McCormack was quoted by the Times as saying.

The Times report said Qumi also warned the United States against playing out tensions in what he called “the nuclear file” in Iraq.

“We don’t need Iraq to pay the cost of our animosity with the Americans,” the Times quoted Qumi as saying.

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLa...3358199,00.html

Bush Warns Iran Against Action in Iraq

Jan 29, 8:51 PM (ET)

By TERENCE HUNT

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush said Monday the United States "will respond firmly" if Iran escalates military action in Iraq and endangers American forces. But Bush emphasized he has no intention of invading Iran.

Bush also acknowledged skepticism concerning U.S. intelligence about Iran, because Washington was wrong in accusing Iraq of harboring weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. "I'm like a lot of Americans that say, 'Well, if it wasn't right in Iraq, how do you know it's right in Iran,'" the president said.

The president, in an interview with NPR, said the United States was "constantly evaluating and answering this legitimate question by always working to get as good intelligence as we can."

Sharply at odds over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program, Washington and Tehran increasingly are arguing about Iraq, where both countries are seeking influence. The White House said last week that American troops in Iraq have been authorized to kill or capture Iranian agents deemed to be a threat. Iran's ambassador followed up by telling The New York Times that Tehran plans to greatly expand its economic and military ties with Iraq and open an Iranian national bank branch in Baghdad.

The United States accuses Iran of supplying terrorists and insurgents in Iraq with improvised explosive devices that have become the most lethal threat to U.S. forces. The Bush administration says it decided to take a tougher line with Tehran after months of evidence showing Iran was assisting anti-U.S. forces.

"If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly," the president said. "It makes common sense for the commander in chief to say to our troops and the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government that we will help you defend yourself from people that want to sow discord and harm. And so we will do what it takes to protect our troops."

Bush said it was important to distinguish the nuclear standoff with Iran from the quarrel over Tehran's involvement in Iraq. He said he believed the dispute over Iran's nuclear program could be resolved diplomatically.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said Bush does not have authority to launch military action in Iran without first seeking congressional authorization.

Bush told NPR he had no intention of going into Iran. "This is the kind of thing that happens in Washington," the president said. "People ascribe, you know, motives to me beyond a simple statement - 'Of course we'll protect our troops.' I don't know how anybody can then say, 'Well, protecting the troops means that we're going to invade Iran.'"

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070130/D8MVA9NO0.html

General says U.S. has proof Iran arming Iraqi militias
Posted 1/30/2007 11:06 PM ET

By Jim Michaels, USA TODAY
BAGHDAD — Iran is supplying Iraqi militias with a variety of powerful weapons including Katyusha rockets, the No. 2 U.S. general in Iraq said Tuesday.
"We have weapons that we know through serial numbers … that trace back to Iran," Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said in an interview with USA TODAY.

His comments came as the Bush administration has been taking an increasingly tough stance against what it alleges is Iranian meddling in sectarian violence in Iraq. Last week, the White House confirmed that the president had authorized U.S. troops to take action against Iranian agents in Iraq who present threats.

On Tuesday, President Bush vowed to crack down on those who supply Iraqi insurgents with arms, though he denied any plans to invade Iran.

"We'll deal with it by finding their supply chains and their agents and … arresting them. … In other words, we're going to protect our troops," Bush told ABC News.

Odierno did not provide further details on how weapons were linked to Iran. The Iranian government has denied providing weapons to Iraqi militias.

Most weapons supplied by Iran end up in the hands of Shiite extremists, Odierno said.

He said the weapons include:

•The RPG-29, a rocket-propelled grenade that can fire armor-piercing rounds. It is larger and more sophisticated than the RPG-7 more commonly found in Iraq.

•Katyusha rockets, so large they are generally fired from trucks.

•Powerful roadside bombs, known as explosively formed projectiles, which can pierce armor. The technological know-how and "some of the elements to make them are coming out of Iran," Odierno said.

Several Iranians have been detained in raids inside Iraq, and some remain in custody. The arrests have provided clues about Iranian operations, Odierno said.

"Every time you pick up individuals you learn about how they facilitate themselves within a country," he said.

He did not specify whether the Iranians in custody are cooperating, or whether evidence was seized during the arrest.

Iran's ambassador to Iraq told The New York Times this week that Iran was taking steps to expand military and economic ties with Iraq.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...iraq-iran_x.htm

US fighter jets to patrol Iran-Iraq border, report says

Pentagon official tells LA Times aggressive new tactics designed to deter Iranian assistance to Iraqi militants may include more forceful patrols by fighter planes along Iran-Iraq border to counter smuggling of bomb supplies from Islamic Republic; ‘For every improvised explosive device that goes off in Iraq, a bomb should go off in Iran,’ retired Air Force lieutenant general says
Yitzhak Benhorin

The US Air Force is preparing for an expanded role in Iraq that could include aggressive new tactics designed to deter Iranian assistance to Iraqi militants, senior Pentagon officials were quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying on Wednesday.

According to the LA Times report, a said the efforts could include more forceful patrols by Air Force and Navy fighter planes along the Iran-Iraq border to counter the smuggling of bomb supplies from Iran.

Such missions also could position the Air Force to strike suspected bomb suppliers inside Iraq to deter Iranian agents that US officials say are assisting Iraqi militias, outside military experts were quoted by the LA Times said.

President George W. Bush warned two weeks ago that US forces would take a harder line against Iranians in Iraq, vowing to "seek out and destroy" weapons supply networks that endanger US troops, the report said.

"Air power plays major roles, and one of those is as a deterrent, whether it be in border control, air sovereignty or something more kinetic," the senior Pentagon official told the LA Times.

'Targets in Iran susceptible to Air Force weapons'

The LA Times said some Pentagon officials worry that an escalation of military pressure that included strikes on Iranian territory could prompt Iran to go after targets it could easily hit, such as oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.

"We need to be very careful about getting into one-to-one trades," a senior Pentagon official was quoted by the newspaper as saying. "That can very quickly get out of control."

Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who advocates military strikes in Iran, told the LA Times that US planes along the border could be better used to keep bomb-making materials out of Iraq.

"We know they are doing this. Why do we accept it?" McInerney was quoted by the Times as saying. "For every (improvised explosive device) that goes off in Iraq, a bomb should go off in Iran."

Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, told the newspaper that many military targets in Iran were susceptible to Air Force weapons.

"Iran is precisely the type of enemy they know how to deal with," Thompson told the LA Times.

"Having the ability to attack Iranian military targets and political targets is not just a deterrent. It may actually be used if we feel the Iranians are trying to subvert democracy in Iraq."

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLa...3359545,00.html

Iran militia threatens to kidnap Americans

Week after Bush orders US soldiers in Iraq to target Iranian agents, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards publishes article threatening American soldiers and civilians in Middle East, Europe and South America
Dudi Cohen

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards threatened to kidnap American soldiers and hinted at intentions to kidnap American citizens in Europe and South America as well.

The threat was apparently in response to President George W. Bush’s instruction to American soldiers in Iraq last week to target Iranian agents.

“The kidnapping of American citizens in the Middle East, Europe and South America is not difficult and can happen at any moment,” siad an article printed in the weekly Subah Sadak, which is considered the mouthpiece of the Revolutionary Guards in Iran.

The article, entitled “Easier and cheaper than Chinese merchandise”, was printed in response to the United Nations Security Council’s Resolution 1737, setting sanctions on Iran due to its refusal to suspend its nuclear program.

The threat may also be linked to the operation in which American forces kidnapped five Iranians from the Consulate General in Erbil in northern Iraq.

“The US prepared a most-wanted list, which includes senior Iranian officials whom they intend to kidnap to learn details about national, nuclear and military operations,” the article claimed.

'Current Iranian regime has offensive strategy'

The article further claimed that America had the names of 35 Iranian diplomats working at various embassies, who the White house suspects hold senior intelligence and security positions and have information on Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities.

Ali Saidi, a spokesperson for the Revolutionary Guards, noted, “Our enemies have many weak points, and we can cause them problems.”

In an interview with an Iranian news agency, Saidi said that contrary to the policy of previous governments, who employed passive and defense foreign policy, “The current Iranian regime has an offensive strategy.”

Meanwhile, the Iranian Embassy in Moscow denied the recent report in the Daily Telegraph that Iran was secretly cooperating with North Korea in nuclear weapons testing.

The embassy issued a notice saying that “Iran denies the rumors of cooperation with North Korea regarding nuclear experimentation.” North Korea denied the report as well.

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLa...3359485,00.html

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

The president is right
By Ilan Berman
Published February 1, 2007

What was the most important message of President Bush's State of the Union address?
It wasn't prosperity, even though the president took pains to emphasize that economic indicators — from dwindling unemployment to the low rate of inflation to steady job growth — suggest that the economy is strong and getting stronger. Nor was it energy security, despite the administration's ambitious plan to reduce gasoline usage by 20 percent over the next decade. It was not even immigration, although the president's new approach balancing better border security with a temporary guest-worker program is sure to be controversial.
Rather, the most significant signal of the Jan. 23 speech had to do with the war on terror and the adversaries that America is fighting.
"Al Qaeda and its followers are Sunni extremists, possessed by hatred and commanded by a harsh and narrow ideology," the president told the nation. "Take almost any principle of civilization, and their goal is the opposite." In and of itself, these comments were hardly news; in the five-and-a-half years since September 11, U.S. officialshave consistently reminded the American people about the danger they face from al Qaeda and its ideological fellow travelers.
This time, however, the commander in chief went further. "In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shi'ite extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East," the president said. "Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah — a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken."
Mr. Bush's remarks were as momentous as they were little-noticed. They signal a major evolution of administration thinking about the war on terror.
Up until now, America has been fighting the war on terror chiefly on the Sunni side of the religious divide within Islam. The principal targets have been al Qaeda and its affiliates, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan and Sunni insurgents in Iraq.
But the vision articulated Jan. 23 by the president is substantially broader. It involves defanging Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist powerhouse currently engaged in a slow-motion coup against the pro-Western government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora in Lebanon. It also consists of marginalizing the radical, rejectionist Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group now active in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Most of all, however, a wider war on terror requires that Washington resolutely confront the Islamic Republic of Iran. Already, Iran's nuclear ambitions — and its persistent effortsto acquirea nuclear capability — have begun to fundamentally alter the balance of power in the Persian Gulf. The Islamic republic's enduring support forregional radicals such as Hezbollah, meanwhile, is expanding the threat these groups pose to America and its allies. And in Iraq, the Iranian regime has assumed an increasingly destabilizing role, simultaneously providing arms and technology to anti-coalition Shi'ite insurgents and political support to pro-Iranian elements within the country's fragile government.
Doing so will certainly not be easy. But Mr. Bush's comments leave little doubt that, in the eyes of the White House, a successful counterterrorism strategy increasingly revolves around confronting both Sunni and Shi'ite extremism. Washington's allies, and its adversaries, have been put on notice.

Ilan Berman is vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council.

http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.p...31-093853-6050r

Baghdad: Gunmen kidnap Iranian Embassy secretary


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Feb. 6, 2007

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Gunmen wearing Iraqi army uniforms seized a senior Iranian diplomat as he drove through a central Baghdad neighborhood, officials said Tuesday.

One Iraqi government official said the diplomat was detained by a special Iraqi army unit that reports directly to the US military. But a military spokesman denied any US troops or Iraqis that report to them were involved.

"We've checked with our units and it was not an MNF-I (Multi-National Forces - Iraq) unit that participated in that event," military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said, adding he could not confirm the diplomat was seized.

An official with the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad said the diplomat was heading to check on the planned opening of an Iranian bank in Karradah when he was seized by men wearing Iraqi army uniforms.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid...Article/Printer

Gates: Bombs tie Iran to Iraq extremists

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
Sat Feb 10, 7:21 AM ET

MUNICH, Germany - Serial numbers and other markings on bombs suggest that Iranians are linked to deadly explosives used by Iraqi militants, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday in some of the administration's first public assertions on evidence the military has collected.

While the Bush administration and military officials have repeatedly said Iranians have been tied to terrorist bombings in Iraq, they have said little about evidence to bolster such claims, including any documents and other items collected in recent raids in Iraq.

National security officials in Washington and Iraq have been working for weeks on a presentation intended to provide evidence for Bush administration claims of what they say are Iran's meddlesome and deadly activities.

Officials say the materials — which in their classified form include slides and some two inches of documents — provide evidence of Iran's role in supplying Iraqi militants with highly sophisticated and lethal improvised explosive devices and other weaponry. Among the weapons is a roadside bomb known as an "explosively formed penetrator," which can pierce the armor of Abrams tanks with nearly molten-hot charges. One intelligence official said the U.S. is "fairly comfortable" it knows where the explosives came from.

The Iran dossier also lays out alleged Iranian efforts to train Iraqis in military techniques.

Yet, government officials say there is some disagreement about how much to make public to support the administration's case. Intelligence officials worry the sources of their information could dry up.

Among the evidence the administration will present are weapons that were seized in U.S.-led raids on caches around Iraq, one military official in Washington said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Other evidence includes documents captured when U.S.-led forces raided an Iranian office Jan. 11 in Irbil in northern Iraq, the official said. Tehran said it was a government liaison office, but the U.S. military said five Iranians detained in the raid were connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard faction that funds and arms insurgents in Iraq.

The assertions have been met with skepticism by some lawmakers still fuming over intelligence reports used by the administration to propel the country to war with Iraq in 2003. Gates' comments came as a new Pentagon inspector general's report criticized prewar Defense Department assertions of al-Qaida connections to Iraq.

Speaking with reporters in Seville, Spain, on Friday before traveling to Munich, Gates told reporters that markings on explosives provide "pretty good" evidence that Iranians are supplying either weapons or technology for Iraqi extremists.

"I think there's some serial numbers, there may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found" that point to Iran, he said.

Gates' remarks left unclear how the U.S. knows the serial numbers are traceable to Iran and whether such weapons would have been sent to Iraq by the Iranian government or by private arms dealers.

Explosives have been a leading killer of U.S. forces in Iraq, where more than 3,000 U.S. troops have died in the nearly four-year-old war.

The U.S. military reported Saturday that three soldiers were killed in an explosion Friday northeast of Baghdad, raising to 36 the number of American troop deaths so far this month.

Separately, U.S. helicopters targeting insurgents mistakenly killed at least five allied Kurdish militiamen in the northern city of Mosul early Friday.

Last week, Gates said that U.S. military officers in Baghdad had been planning to brief reporters on what was known about Iranian involvement in Iraq but that he and other senior officials had delayed the briefing to assure the information was accurate.

On Friday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said such information would come from U.S. officials in Iraq, though she did not say when.

"There has been discussion about how to detail out some of that evidence," she told reporters. "Decisions on that are being made out of Baghdad."

State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Friday that officials hoping to publicly release the information face another problem as well.

"Under the circumstances and given the attention that this has gotten, we want to make sure that we provide you the best information possible but do so in a way that doesn't compromise sources and methods, that doesn't make it harder for us to deal with the situation that's there," Casey said.

Gates also told reporters that he was surprised that raids last month by coalition and Iraqi forces in Iraq swept up some Iranians.

"I don't think there was surprise that the Iranians were actually involved, I think there was surprise we actually picked up some," he said.

He and other U.S. officials have said for some time that Iranians, and possibly the government of Iran, have been providing weapons technology and perhaps some explosives to Iraqi fighters.

Gates, who attended his first NATO defense ministers meeting in Seville this week before flying to Munich for a security conference, said Iran is "very much involved in providing either the technology or the weapons themselves for these explosively formed projectiles."

He acknowledged the Iranian weapons are not a large percentage of the roadside bombs used in Iraq, but he said, "They're extremely lethal."

Gates said the recent raids combined with the movement of an additional U.S. aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf have created a stir, but he said the Bush administration had no intention of attacking Iran.

Asked about the Defense Department inspector general's report criticizing the Pentagon's use of prewar intelligence, Gates said he hadn't yet read it.

But, he added, "based on my whole career, I believe that all intelligence activities need to be carried on through established institutions, and where there is appropriate oversight. And if the intelligence isn't adequate, then changes need to be made in these institutions to improve the intelligence."

___

Associated Press writers Pauline Jelinek and Katherine Shrader in Washington contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070210/ap_on_...rFNU6lX8l2s0NUE

U.S.: Iranian Government Ordering Sophisticated Bomb Parts to Iraq
Monday , February 12, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq —

U.S. military officials charged on Sunday that the highest levels of the Iranian leadership ordered Shiite militants in Iraq to be armed with sophisticated armor-piercing roadside bombs that have killed more than 170 American forces.

The military command in Baghdad denied, however, that any newly smuggled Iranian weapons were behind the five U.S. military helicopter crashes since Jan. 20 — four that were shot out of the sky by insurgent gunfire.

A fifth chopper crash has tentatively been blamed on mechanical failure. In the same period, two private security company helicopters also have crashed but the cause was unclear.

The deadly and highly sophisticated weapons the U.S. military said were coming into Iraq from Iran are known as "explosively formed penetrators," or EFPs.

The presentation of evidence was the result of weeks of preparation and revisions as U.S. officials put together a package of material to support the Bush administration's claims of Iranian intercession on behalf of militant Iraqis fighting American forces.

Senior U.S. military officials in Baghdad said the display of evidence was prompted by the military's concern for "force protection," which, they said, was guaranteed under the United Nations resolution that authorizes American soldiers to be in Iraq.

Three senior military officials who explained the evidence said the "machining process" used in the construction of the deadly bombs had been traced back to Iran.

The experts, who spoke to a large gathering of reporters on condition that they not be further identified, said the supply trail began with Iran's Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, which also is accused of arming the Hezbollah guerrilla army in Lebanon. The officials said the EFP weapon was first tested there.

The officials said the Revolutionary Guard and its Quds force report directly to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The so-called Iran dossier, a small portion of which was revealed in Baghdad on Sunday, was revised heavily after officials decided it was not ready for release as planned last month. U.S. military officials in Baghdad had even scheduled a briefing for reporters only to cancel it a day later.

Senior U.S. officials in Washington — gun-shy after the drubbing the administration took for the faulty intelligence leading to the 2003 Iraq invasion — had held back because they were unhappy with the original presentation.

The display of evidence appeared to be part of the White House drive that has empowered U.S. forces in Iraq to use all means to curb Iranian influence in the country, including killing Iranian agents.

It included a power-point slide program and a handful of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades which the military officials said were made in Iran.

The centerpiece of the evidentiary display, however, was a gray metal pipe about 10 inches long and 6 inches in diameter, the exterior casing of what the military said was an EFP, the roadside bomb that shoots out fist-sized wads of nearly molten copper that can penetrate the armor on an Abrams tank.

The EFPs, as well as Iranian-made mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades, have been supplied to what the military officials termed "rogue elements" of the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He is a key backer of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The U.S. officials glossed over armaments having reached the other major Shiite militia organization, the Badr Brigade. It is the military wing of Iraq's most powerful Shiite political organization, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose leaders also have close ties to the U.S.

Many key government figures and members of the Shiite political establishment have deep ties to Iran, having spent decades there in exile during Saddam Hussein's rule. The Badr Brigade was formed and trained by Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

The U.S. officials said there was no evidence of Iranian made EFPs having fallen into the hands of Sunni insurgents who operate mainly in Anbar province in the west of Iraq, Baghdad and regions surrounding the capital.

"We know more than we can show," said one of the senior officials, when pressed for more evidence that the EFPs were made in Iran.

An intelligence analyst in the group said Iran was working through "multiple surrogates" — mainly in the Mahdi Army — to smuggle the EFPs into Iraq. He said most of the components are entering the country at crossing points near Amarah, the Iranian border city of Meran and the Basra area of southern Iraq.

The analyst said Iraq's Shiite-led government had been briefed on Iran's involvement and Iraqi officials had asked the Iranians to stop. Al-Maliki has said he told both the U.S. and Iran that he does not want his country turned into a proxy battlefield.

Last week, U.S. officials said they were investigating allegations that Shiite lawmaker Jamal Jaafar Mohammed was a main conduit for Iranian weapons entering the country. Mohammed has believed to have fled to Iran.

U.S. officials have alleged for years that weapons were entering the country from Iran but had until Sunday stopped short of alleging involvement by top Iranian leaders.

During the briefing, a senior defense official said that one of the six Iranians detained in January in the northern city of Irbil was the operational commander of the Quds Force.

He was identified as Mohsin Chizari, who was apprehended after slipping back into Iraq after a 10-month absence, the officer said.

The Iranians were caught trying to flush documents down the toilet, he said. They had also tried to change their appearance by shaving their heads. Bags of their hair were found during the raid, he said.

The dates of manufacture on weapons found so far indicate they were made after fall of Saddam Hussein — mostly in 2006, the officials said.

In a separate briefing, Maj. Gen. Jim Simmons, deputy commander of Multinational Corps-Iraq, said that since December 2004, U.S. helicopter pilots have been shot at on average about 100 times a month and been hit on an average of 17 times in the same period.

He disclosed a previously unknown shootdown, a Blackhawk helicopter hit by small arms fire near the western city of Hit. The craft crash-landed but there were no casualties. Simmons was on board.

The major general said Iraqi militants are known to have SA-7, SA-14 and SA-16 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles but none of the most recent five military crashes were caused by those weapons. He said some previous crashes had been a result of such missiles but would not elaborate.

As road travel has become unacceptably dangerous in Iraq, U.S. forces increasingly have turned to helicopters for transportation of troops and supplies. Simmons said U.S. helicopters were in the air for 240,000 hours in 2005 and he estimated the total figure this year would reach 400,000 hours.

North of Baghdad, a homicide truck bomber crashed into a police station, killing at least 30 policemen. A total of 73 people were killed or found dead across Iraq. The U.S. military said Sunday a soldier was shot and killed the day before in volatile Diyala province northeast of the capital.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_st...,251345,00.html

Military: Iran ships weapons to Shiite extremists
Updated 2/12/2007 7:49 AM ET

By Jim Michaels, USA TODAY
BAGHDAD — The U.S. military said Sunday that armor-piercing roadside bombs sent by Iran to Shiite extremists have killed 170 American and coalition troops in Iraq.
U.S. military officials, who declined requests to be identified, said shipments of weapons and ammunition to Iraq's Shiite militias were being directed at the highest levels of the Iranian government.

Iran on Monday rejected the accusations. "Such accusations cannot be relied upon or be presented as evidence. The United States has a long history in fabricating evidence. Such charges are unacceptable," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters.

FROM THE U.S. MILITARY: Pictures, descriptions of Iranian support to insurgents (PDF)

In a briefing, U.S. officials showed reporters part of a device they described as a sophisticated roadside bomb, along with mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades they said were made in Iran. Later, one of the officials, an intelligence analyst, said it would be impossible to find a "smoking gun" conclusively proving Iranian government involvement.

Sunday's briefing by the three military officials was the most detailed attempt to show that Iran supports militants in Iraq. It followed similar remarks Friday by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Gates said serial numbers and markings found on explosives provide "pretty good" evidence that Iran is supplying either weapons or expertise to extremists in Iraq.

U.S. and coalition forces have not captured any Iranian agents in possession of the armor-piercing roadside bombs. The U.S. officials at the briefing said Iraqis are usually used to transport the explosives from Iran.

The Mahdi Army militia is among the Shiite extremist groups that have obtained the powerful bombs. The Mahdi Army is aligned with anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose political organization is part of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.

Al-Maliki has moved to distance himself from al-Sadr in recent weeks and has said he does not want Iraq to become a proxy battlefield for the United States and Iran.

U.S. commanders have been increasingly vocal about allegations of Iranian support for Shiite militias and extremists in Iraq. Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, said recently that Iran was providing training, weapons, ammunition and money to militants in Iraq.

The military said sophisticated weapons from Iran give militants an edge in their fight against American and Iraqi forces.

The Iranian Embassy in Baghdad could not be reached for comment, but Tehran has denied the allegations in recent statements.

Sunday's military briefing had been delayed several times, as higher-ups in Washington vetted the evidence, the U.S. officials said. The Bush administration was widely criticized after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq for flawed intelligence alleging Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The officials said that among several Iranians picked up in recent raids was an operations officer from Iran's al-Quds Brigade, a unit in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards responsible for training insurgents and terrorists. The U.S. military identified him as Mohsin Chizari.

The Revolutionary Guards and al-Quds force report to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

U.S. forces raided a compound in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil last month, detaining five Iranians, all of whom were al-Quds members, the U.S. military said. Those captured tried to flush documents down the toilet and alter their appearance by shaving their heads, the U.S. officials said.

American officers are particularly worried about the armor-piercing bombs that can shoot a large slug of molten metal through the thick armor of a Humvee or Abrams tank.

Unlike many roadside bombs in Iraq that are cobbled together from artillery shells, so-called explosively formed penetrators are machined in factories.

"It is not just technology you can crank off the street," Lt. Col. Steven Miska, deputy commander of a U.S. brigade in Baghdad, said in an interview last week.

The military officials said the number of explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, used in Iraq increased dramatically last year after first being detected there in 2004. The number of EFP attacks nearly doubled last year. EFPs also have been used against Israeli forces in Lebanon by Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants, who fought a 34-day war with Israel last summer.

The U.S. military says it has also discovered conventional weapons and ammunition in Iraq tied to Iran. In an interview last week, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said U.S. forces have discovered mortar rounds that were Iranian-made. They're distinctive because most tail-fins on 81mm mortars screw off, but Iranian-made shells do not, he said.

The U.S. officials said Sunday that much of the Iranian weaponry found in Iraq was manufactured last year, indicating the munitions were recently shipped into Iraq and were not Saddam-era weapons.

Odierno said in a recent interview that the Iraqi government has been confronted with U.S. allegations of Iranian support for militants in Iraq.

Contributing: Associated Press

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/20...iraq-iran_x.htm

Iraqi insurgents using Austrian rifles from Iran
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent
Last Updated: 7:05pm GMT 13/02/2007

Audio: [url=java script: var newWin2 = window.open('/ETHtml/content/promotions/podcast/130207hardingguns.jhtml;jsessionid3JVPDXYO4ZNYZQFIQMGCFF4AVCBQUIV0','newWin2','height=350,width=260,noscrollbars')]Revelation makes US action against Iran more likely, says Thomas Harding[/url]

Austrian sniper rifles that were exported to Iran have been discovered in the hands of Iraqi terrorists, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

More than 100 of the.50 calibre weapons, capable of penetrating body armour, have been discovered by American troops during raids.

The Steyr HS50 is a long range, high precision rifle
The guns were part of a shipment of 800 rifles that the Austrian company, Steyr-Mannlicher, exported legally to Iran last year.

The sale was condemned in Washington and London because officials were worried that the weapons would be used by insurgents against British and American troops.

Within 45 days of the first HS50 Steyr Mannlicher rifles arriving in Iran, an American officer in an armoured vehicle was shot dead by an Iraqi insurgent using the weapon.

Over the last six months American forces have found small caches of the £10,000 rifles but in the last 24 hours a raid in Baghdad brought the total to more than 100, US defence sources reported.

advertisementThe find is the latest in a series of discoveries that indicate that Teheran is providing support to Iraq's Shia insurgents.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, yesterday denied that Iran had supplied weapons to Iraqi insurgents. But on Sunday US officials in Baghdad displayed a range of weapons they claimed had originated in Iran.

They said 170 American and British soldiers had been killed by such weapons.

The discovery of the sniper rifles will further encourage those in Washington who want to see Iran's uranium-enriching facilities destroyed before a nuclear weapon is produced.

The Foreign Office expressed "serious concerns" over the sale of the rifles last year and Britain protested to the Austrian government.

A Foreign Office spokesman said last night: "Although we did make our worries known the sale unfortunately went ahead and now the potential that these weapons could fall into the wrong hands appears to have happened."

The rifle can pierce all body armour from up to a mile and penetrate armoured Humvee troop carriers.

It is highly accurate and fires a round called an armour piercing incendiary, a bullet that the Iranians manufacture.

The National Iranian Police Organisation bought the rifles allegedly to use them against drug smugglers in an £8 million order placed with Steyr in 2005.

The company was given permission to export them by the Austrian government, which is not a Nato member.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../13/wiran13.xml

U.S., Iran could be starting new `proxy war,' experts say
By Bay Fang

Chicago Tribune

(MCT)

WASHINGTON - During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union avoided fighting each other directly, with both great powers fearing direct battles could escalate into a nuclear war. Instead, they supported opposing sides in conflicts in Afghanistan, Angola, Korea, Vietnam and other hotspots around the world.

Analysts now say that the U.S. and Iran could be at the start of the same sort of "proxy war" in Iraq, perhaps the first such conflict in the new era of warfare since the end of the Cold War.

The latest verbal shot was fired Sunday when U.S. military officials in Baghdad accused "the highest level" of Iran's government of supplying Iraqi militants with armor-piercing roadside bombs called "explosively formed penetrators," or EFPs, that have been responsible for the deaths of 170 members of the U.S.-led coalition.

When President Bush recently accused Iran of providing weapons and training to militias attacking U.S. troops in Iraq, he said U.S. forces would kill or capture Iranian operatives in Iraq, but would not attack Iran directly.

"We've known for a while that Iran was providing lethal aid to the insurgents, we're just finally pushing back," a senior administration official said last week in an interview. "Iran has to understand that it is not getting a free pass anymore."

In turn, Tehran's ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, accused the U.S. in a column Thursday in The New York Times of "trying to make Iran its scapegoat and fabricating evidence of Iranian activities in Iraq."

With the ratcheting up of tensions, analysts say the potential for a misstep looms large.

"The worst case is that there's an accidental war," said Robert Malley, Middle East program director for the International Crisis Group, an independent research organization. "Neither side may think it's in their best interest, but they have to hit back to show they're not doing nothing."

Along with the recent verbal sniping have come a number of armed confrontations.

Last month, U.S. soldiers raided an Iranian office in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, detaining five Iranian officials. The U.S. also moved a second aircraft carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf, and positioned more Patriot anti-missile batteries in the region.

On Jan. 20, militants kidnapped and killed four American soldiers in an ambush at a U.S. military base in the southern Iraqi city of Karbala. U.S. military officials in Baghdad are investigating whether Iranian agents were involved, surmising that it could have been payback for the Irbil raid.

The administration says it has known for about six months about Iranian "networks" providing aid and weaponry to Shiite militants, such as renegade offshoots of Muqtada al-Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, but only recently decided to go after them in a more systematic way.

Iran has responded with more rhetoric, though Iran-watchers say that the response has been milder than in previous times, and that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to be in a weak position domestically. Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a Thursday speech broadcast on state television, "The enemy knows well that any invasion would be followed by a comprehensive reaction to the invaders and their interests all over the world."

The growing face-off has put Iraqi officials in a difficult situation. Historically, Iran has maintained strong relationships with top Shiite Arabs and Kurdish leaders. During part of the long regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Iran served as a haven for such political leaders as current Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Abdul Aziz Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Iran also armed Kurds led by Jalal Talabani, who is now Iraq's president, in the midst of internecine fighting between Kurds in the mid-1990s.

Some analysts of Iran argue that it has no interest in inflaming a sectarian war in Iraq, because of the potential for a huge refugee crisis in Iran. "Iran doesn't want a failed Iraq but a weak Iraq," one Iraqi official said.

In the Irbil raid, U.S. forces seized computers and files from a purported intelligence office. But some Iraqi officials, including the foreign minister, have accused U.S. forces of taking a heavy-handed approach against the Iranians inside Iraq.

"Iran has the choice now of going underground and being less active, or accelerating its efforts to hurt the Americans where they can," said Qubad Talabany, who represents the Kurdistan Regional Government in the U.S. "We're worried that America will do something without assessing the situation. The last thing we want is two powerful countries fighting a war on our turf, but maybe it's inevitable."

A U.S. military news conference Sunday, in which Iran was accused of supplying EFPs to Iraqi militants, was an example of the new American policy of directly challenging what it views as improper Iranian influence in Iraq.

The EFPs, which can penetrate Abrams tanks and Humvees, have accounted for a small number of attacks on U.S. troops but have caused a disproportionate number of casualties.

Sunday's news conference was the most extensive effort yet to link Iran directly to EFPs, but the explosives were also cited Friday by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. At the same time that Gates was accusing Iran of supplying insurgents, however, he gave assurances that the U.S. has no intention of attacking Iran.

Some in Congress have been skeptical of the U.S. evidence against Iran and have accused the administration of ignoring a 2003 diplomatic overture from Iran, which offered a broad, direct dialogue with the United States. In that proposal, Iraq was high on the list of issues to be discussed, with Tehran proposing "active Iranian support for Iraqi stabilization."

Allies in the region, increasingly anxious that they will be drawn into the conflict if it spreads beyond Iraq's boundaries, have also advocated diplomatic discussions between the U.S. and Iran.

Some diplomatic alliances have been formed with Washington's blessing. During a visit to the region last month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with an informal group of Arab allies made up of Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf Cooperation Council, which represents some Persian Gulf countries.

But the fear of spillover has also caused such traditional rivals as Iran and Saudi Arabia to start cooperating with each other, most recently in a joint effort to defuse a general strike called by the Shiite militant group Hezbollah in an effort to topple Lebanon's government.

"We're scared Iraq might turn into a war, not only between the U.S. and Iran, but drawing in people from all over the world who want to fight," one Arab diplomat in the U.S. who spoke on condition of anonymity said in an interview. "Thousands went to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, got trained, and spread throughout the world - and that's how we ended up with al-Qaida."

---

© 2007, Chicago Tribune.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews...cs/16679876.htm

Iran’s Quds Force enmeshed in Iraq
Accused of backing Iraqi militias, elite Quds corps deeply enmeshed in Iraq
The Associated Press
Updated: 9:34 p.m. MT Feb 15, 2007
CAIRO, Egypt - Iran’s secretive Quds Force, accused by the United States of arming Iraqi militants with deadly bomb-making material, has built up an extensive network in the war-torn country, recruiting Iraqis and supporting not only Shiite militias but also Shiites allied with Washington.

Still unclear, however, is how closely Iran’s top leadership is directing the Quds Force’s operations — and whether Iran has intended for its help to Shiite militias to be turned against U.S. forces.

Iran likely does not want a direct confrontation with American troops in Iraq but is backing militiamen to ensure Shiites win any future civil war with Iraqi Sunnis after the Americans leave, several experts said Thursday.

The Quds Force’s role underlines how deeply enmeshed Iran is in its neighbor — and how the U.S. could face resistance even from its allies in Iraq if it tries to uproot Iran’s influence in the country.

The Quds (pronounced “KOHds”) Force — the name means “Jerusalem” in Farsi and Arabic — is the most elite and covert of Iran’s military branches. Over the past two decades, the corps is believed to have helped arm and train the Hezbollah guerrilla group in Lebanon, Islamic fighters in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and even Sudanese troops fighting in south Sudan.

The force is part of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, which are separate from the regular military, report directly to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and are tasked with protecting the Islamic government. The Quds Force, formed in the 1980s and picked from the very best of the Guards, is its special branch for operations outside Iran.

“What Quds does is very specialized, the most dangerous work, operating underground,” said Mahan Abedin, an Iran expert and the research director at the London-based Center for the Study of Terrorism.

U.S. leveling accusations
Now the Bush administration is accusing the force of stirring up turmoil in Iraq.

Its key piece of evidence: “explosively formed projectiles,” sophisticated roadside bombs that fire a slug of molten metal that can penetrate armored vehicles. The U.S. military says the Quds Force provided the materials to Iraqi Shiite militias, which used them to attack Americans.

To make their case, U.S. military officials this week showed reporters in Baghdad pieces of EFP equipment, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades that they said were directly traceable to Iranian manufacture.

President Bush told reporters Wednesday he could “say with certainty” that the Quds Force was providing the equipment to militants.


“What we don’t know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds Force to do what they did,” Bush said.

What is Tehran's involvement?
Iran has denied the U.S. accusations. But the question of what the Quds Force and other Iranian operatives are doing in Iraq and how much direction they receive from Iran’s top leadership has become a key issue.

The Bush administration has increasingly blamed Iran for Iraq’s chaos and taken a more confrontational stance, vowing to stop any intervention. That has raised worries among some Democrats in Washington that the administration is building a case for military action against Iran, a claim Bush denies.


The chief U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, said Iranian and Iraqi detainees in U.S. custody said in interrogations that “the Quds Force provides support to extremist groups here in Iraq both in the forms of money and in weaponry.”

U.S. forces arrested six Iranians in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil in January, one of whom military officials say is the Quds Forces’ operational commander in Iraq, Mohsin Chizari.

“All of these efforts in which we have picked up these Quds Force officers are part of these efforts in which to disrupt these supply networks,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday at a Pentagon briefing.

U.S. military officials have said the Quds Force is supplying “rogue elements” of the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia led by an anti-American cleric.

A role beyond insurgency
But the Quds Force’s help appears to go beyond militiamen attacking U.S. troops. It supplies training and some weapons to the Badr Brigade — a militia linked to Iraq’s biggest Shiite political party — and smaller Shiite factions in the south, an official with a Shiite political party in Iraq who has close knowledge of militia activity told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.

The Badr Brigade is linked to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the party headed by cleric Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful politicians, who met with Bush at the White House in December.

America’s Kurdish allies also have past links with the Quds Force, which helped them against Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1990s. Notably, the six Iranians seized by U.S. troops were in Kurdish-controlled Irbil.

In addition to supplying weapons to Iraqi militias, the Quds Force has been recruiting Iraqi Shiites, giving them up to $150 a month and sending some to Iran for training, the Shiite political party official told the AP.

Concern over offensive weapons
Caldwell acknowledged that prisoners had said, under interrogation, that Quds operatives were supplying weapons to factions in the U.S.-backed Iraqi government. He said U.S. officials had asked political parties and government officials about the material.

“Some explained that there is a need for certain weaponry to come in for protection purposes,” he told a Baghdad news conference Wednesday. “The concern we had ... is that on that list were sniper rifles, mortars and some elements that are clearly offensive in nature.”

At most, Iran’s entire Quds Force probably numbers only about 2,000 — only about 800 of whom are core operatives, according to Abedin, the expert at the London-based think tank.

Abedin doubted the Quds Force was directly giving militias weapons, arguing that militias have their own domestic networks for building and obtaining weapons. But he said Quds was undoubtedly was providing intelligence and other organizational help.

“It would be very incriminating and dangerous for Iran to directly supply weapons to the militias, and it’s not a part of Iranian policy to directly confront the Americans,” he said.

Instead, the goal is likely “to enable these armed formations ... to gain an advantage over their Sunni rivals” in the battle for power that Iran expects could erupt later.

“They are looking to beyond, when the Americans withdraw,” he said. “They see the Shiite militias as natural allies.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17175714/

Iran's elite and mysterious fighters
Does the government control the Quds Force? Experts aren't sure.
By Borzou Daragahi and Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writers
February 15, 2007

BAGHDAD — Among the myriad military and intelligence agencies that make up Iran's security forces, none has the skill and reach of the Quds Force, an elite unit nominally within the command structure of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Like the Revolutionary Guard, the Quds Force and its predecessors were among the semiofficial militias, charities and centers of clerical power born of the paranoia and zeal of the tumultuous years after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, which brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power.

Originally, the Revolutionary Guard played a defensive role. In the 1980s, Iran's Shiite revolutionaries faced a war against Iraq as well as the hostility of Iranian secular nationalists, the West and Sunni-dominated regimes of the Middle East.

The Revolutionary Guard was entrusted to protect Khomeini's theocracy. But the revolutionaries also were inspired to spread their vision abroad.

The Quds Force and its predecessors consisted of the Guard's most skilled warriors. Experts said they were highly secretive commando units sent abroad to help Shiites usurp monarchies in the Persian Gulf, gun down enemies and battle Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. They also reportedly have run operations in Sudan, South Asia and Western Europe.

Their plans sometimes coincided with U.S. interests, as when they supported Afghans fighting the Soviet Union in the 1980s and Bosnian Muslims battling Serbs in the 1990s.

The Quds Force also has been involved in Iraq. It assisted Kurdish rebels fighting Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and Shiites battling his regime in the 1990s. Even Ahmad Chalabi's expatriate Iraqi National Congress had Quds Force help, experts say.

At most, the force numbers 2,000, said Mahan Abedin, director of research at the Center for the Study of Terrorism, a London think tank.

"It's a remarkably efficient organization, quite possibly one of the best special forces units in the world," he said.

The extent to which the Quds Force is controlled by the government has been hotly debated in U.S. foreign policy circles.

"This has been a topic of debate among Iran experts inside and outside the government for 25 years," said Kenneth M. Pollack, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. "There are people who believe the Quds Force does not move a muscle without getting explicit orders from [supreme leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei; there are other people who believe they are rogues. The weight of evidence is somewhere in the middle."

There are signs that Quds Force-linked operatives have taken orders from Tehran for overseas missions.

Most notable, Pollack said, were the 1992 killings of an Iranian Kurdish separatist leader and three associates in Berlin by four gunmen led by an Iranian agent. In 1997, a German court found that the slayings had been ordered by a government committee in Tehran that included Khamenei and then-President Hashemi Rafsanjani.

There has been evidence of rifts between Iran's government and the Revolutionary Guard and Quds Force. The Revolutionary Guard occasionally has tried to push the government into more extremist positions.

In 1998, for example, thousands of Guard troops gathered on the border with Afghanistan in what appeared to be a move against the Taliban regime. There was suspicion that the Revolutionary Guard was working independently. The government later sent conventional forces to "keep a watch" on the Guard, Pollack said.

"We do have evidence here and there, circumstantial in many ways, that the Quds Force guys and other people in the Revolutionary Guard like to push the edge of the envelope," Pollack said, speculating that the Quds Force could be freelancing in Iraq.

"Tehran almost certainly told the Quds Force to go into Iraq," he said. "What we don't know is: Did they say something as vague as, 'Protect our interests in Iraq without actually going to war with the Americans'? Or did they say something very specific: 'Do this, do that, don't do this.'

"We don't know."

Daragahi reported from Baghdad and Spiegel from Washington.

*

(INFOBOX BELOW)

A look at Iran's military

Iran has two military branches: the armed forces and the specialized Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Each has a navy and air force. The Revolutionary Guard has a special forces unit called the Quds Force, which U.S. officials say is aiding Iraqi militants. Al Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem, a city considered holy to Islam. Some U.S. analysts say the two military branches are in competition for resources and influence in the government.

Islamic Republic of Iran Regular Forces

Ground troops: 350,000

Navy: 18,000

Air force: 30,000

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Ground troops: 100,000

Navy: 20,000

Air force: Unspecified

Quds Force: 2,000

Basij paramilitary force: 2 million

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
daragahi@latimes.com

peter.spiegel@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wo...ewed-storylevel

Officials: Iranian patrol boats probe Iraqi waters
POSTED: 7:26 p.m. EST, February 19, 2007

From Barbara Starr
CNN Pentagon Correspondent

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Iranian patrol boats have increased attempts in the last week to assess defenses near Iraqi offshore oil terminals, U.S. military officials said Monday.

The Iranian actions at the northern end of the Persian Gulf have been a subject of operational briefings for U.S. military personnel in recent days, the officials said.

The officials -- who said they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter -- said that the United States does not see the Iranian moves as aggressive or provocative. The assessment is that the probes are part of an Iranian effort to raise its military presence in the gulf. (Watch boats scoot in and out of Iraqi waters )

Officials said that for several months they have seen Iranian flagged vessels attempt to approach oil terminals in the area, but activity rose last week.

On at least two days, Iranian patrol boats crossed into Iraqi waters at the northern end of the Persian Gulf, the officials said.

The boats stayed inside Iraqi waters for several minutes before Iraqi security forces told them to leave. The Iranian boats did not approach the oil terminals.

Iraqi security forces recently took over the main responsibility for guarding the terminals, although U.S. naval forces remain nearby.

A senior U.S. Navy officer said he thinks Iran is trying to see what response its actions get from Iraqi and U.S. naval forces. The Navy officer said that in the last several months Iranian naval forces have expanded their area of operations inside the gulf, often increasing activity in offshore areas for training and exercises.

The U.S. Navy has encountered Iranian ships and small fishing vessels in several cases, but there have been no hostilities, the officer said.

The intelligence assessment is that in many cases the Iranians are watching the U.S. Navy to see how it operates. The officer confirmed to CNN that the Navy has increased its security precautions when dealing with Iranian entities on the water to ensure there are no miscommunications or miscalculations.

U.S. ships will continue to render assistance to stranded mariners, including Iranians, the officer said, but will be cautious in approaching any Iranian boats seeking U.S. naval assistance.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/02/19/...iraq/index.html

Officials: Iranian patrol boats probe Iraqi waters
POSTED: 0026 GMT (0826 HKT), February 19, 2007

From Barbara Starr
CNN Pentagon Correspondent

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Iranian patrol boats have increased attempts in the last week to assess defenses near Iraqi offshore oil terminals, U.S. military officials said Monday.

The Iranian actions at the northern end of the Persian Gulf have been a subject of operational briefings for U.S. military personnel in recent days, the officials said.

The officials -- who said they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter -- said that the United States does not see the Iranian moves as aggressive or provocative. The assessment is that the probes are part of an Iranian effort to raise its military presence in the gulf. ([url=java script:cnnVideo('play','/video/world/2007/02/19/starr.iran.gulf.cnn','2007/03/05');]Watch boats scoot in and out of Iraqi waters[/url] )

Officials said that for several months they have seen Iranian flagged vessels attempt to approach oil terminals in the area, but activity rose last week.

On at least two days, Iranian patrol boats crossed into Iraqi waters at the northern end of the Persian Gulf, the officials said.

The boats stayed inside Iraqi waters for several minutes before Iraqi security forces told them to leave. The Iranian boats did not approach the oil terminals.

Iraqi security forces recently took over the main responsibility for guarding the terminals, although U.S. naval forces remain nearby.

A senior U.S. Navy officer said he thinks Iran is trying to see what response its actions get from Iraqi and U.S. naval forces. The Navy officer said that in the last several months Iranian naval forces have expanded their area of operations inside the gulf, often increasing activity in offshore areas for training and exercises.

The U.S. Navy has encountered Iranian ships and small fishing vessels in several cases, but there have been no hostilities, the officer said.

The intelligence assessment is that in many cases the Iranians are watching the U.S. Navy to see how it operates. The officer confirmed to CNN that the Navy has increased its security precautions when dealing with Iranian entities on the water to ensure there are no miscommunications or miscalculations.

U.S. ships will continue to render assistance to stranded mariners, including Iranians, the officer said, but will be cautious in approaching any Iranian boats seeking U.S. naval assistance.

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/02/19/iran.iraq/

U.S.: Large Cache of Weapons Discovered in Iraq Traceable to Iran
Monday , February 26, 2007

BAQOUBA, Iraq —

U.S. and Iraqi forces have seized a large weapons cache that includes parts for sophisticated roadside bombs that are believed to originate in Iran, U.S. military investigators said.

Details of the find were expected to be announced Monday at a news conference in Baghdad.

But military officials told The Associated Press that the arsenal is one of the biggest found north of the Iraqi capital and contains components for so-called EFPs — explosively formed projectiles that fire a slug of molten metal that can penetrate armored vehicles.

The U.S. military has said elite Iranian corps are funneling EFPs to Shiite militias in Iraq for use against American troops. The area where the cache was found is dominated by Sunni insurgents but also includes pockets of Shiites.

Earlier this month, U.S. officials showed reporters in Baghdad pieces of EFPs they said were directly traceable to Iran.

An informant tipped off Iraqi police to the weapons stash Saturday, the military said in a statement to the AP. It was discovered near Baqouba, the provincial capital of Diyala province, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Along with the EFPs, the weapons cache contained more than two dozen mortars and 15 rockets. There were enough metal disks to make 130 EFPs, the military said.

The origin of the weapons seized Saturday was being investigated, said Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, spokesman for Multinational Division-North.

"This local tip led to what is the most potentially lethal IED cache seized in northern Iraq in the past eight months," Donnelly said.

Last week, U.S. troops found a suspected Shiite weapons hideout in the southern city of Hilla that also included parts to make the lethal roadside bombs. The New York Times reported that the stash included a bomb-rigged fake boulder made of polyurethane that was apparently ready to be placed for an attack.

A statement from the U.S. military Monday said that 63 weapons caches have been discovered during major U.S.-Iraqi security sweeps around Baghdad that began Feb. 14. The arsenals included anti-aircraft weapons, armor-piercing bullets, bomb components and mortar rounds, the statement said.


http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_st...,254600,00.html

Iran considering invitation to Baghdad conference of Iraq's neighbors
Updated 2/28/2007 9:55 AM ET

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran said Wednesday it is considering whether to participate in a Baghdad-organized conference of Iraq's neighbors, which its top rival the United States plans to attend.
Washington's willingness to attend the conference, to which Baghdad invited Iran, marked a diplomatic turnabout after months of refusing dialogue with Tehran over calming the situation in war-torn Iraq.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a day earlier that the United States would join the meeting, planned for mid-March, and said Washington supported the Iraqi government's invitation to Iran and Syria.

CHANGE?: U.S. agrees to sit-down

Ali Larijani, the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari contacted Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to discuss the conference.

"We are reviewing the proposal," Larijani said Wednesday, quoted by the state TV website.

"We support solving problems of Iraq by all means and we will attend the conference if it is expedient," Larijani said. "We believe Iraq's security is related to all its neighboring countries, and they have to help settle the situation."

Larijani suggested that the American presence at the meeting was not a problem for Iran. Asked by reporters if Iran was running a risk by attending the conference alongside the Americans, he replied, "One should not commit suicide because one is afraid of death" — meaning Iran should not hurt itself just to avoid possible negative results.

Many Iranians feel resentful over the last major diplomatic dialogue with the United States — when officials from both sides met before the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, whom Tehran also opposed. Iran backed the invasion — only to see Bush name the country past of the "Axis of Evil" later.

Larijani did not say what level delegate Iran would send if it chose to attend the conference. Rice said Tuesday that the March gathering would be at a sub-ministerial level, which would be followed by a full ministerial meeting, possibly in early April.

Iran has said in past months that it is willing to meet with the United States to discuss how to calm the violence in Iraq. But tensions have increased dramatically between the two countries recently.

President George W. Bush has stepped up accusations that Iran is backing anti-U.S. Shiite militants in Iraq, a number of Iranians in Iraq have been seized by U.S. forces and the American military presence in the Gulf has been beefed up.

At the same time, Washington has led a push for stronger sanctions against Iran over the country's nuclear program. The United States accuses Iran of seeking to build nuclear weapons, a claim Tehran denies. The United Nations has demanded Iran suspend uranium enrichment before any negotiations over its nuclear program can be held, a condition Tehran has rejected.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-02...onference_x.htm

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

Iran's covert war in Iraq
By Rick Brennan
Published March 16, 2007

Americans and people around the world have expressed understandable skepticism about the claim by U.S. military officials in Baghdad that Shi'ite militias in Iraq are receive financing, equipment, arms, munitions and training from elite units of the Iranian special forces.
After all, we remember how key elements of U.S. intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proved to be inaccurate, and we remember how those inaccurate reports provided the rationale for the American invasion of Iraq. So why should we believe intelligence reports about Iranian involvement in the fighting in Iraq today -- especially if such a belief could potentially lead to fighting between the United States and Iran in the future?
There are four critical differences between the case against Iran today and the WMD estimates involving Iraq in 2003. All these differences combine to build an overwhelming case for the accuracy of the reports about Iranian involvement in Iraq.
(1) The source of the information used by the U.S. intelligence community today about Iranian involvement in Iraq isn't provided by Iraqis who have an axe to grind against their abusive leader, as was the case with WMD reports. Rather, the intelligence comes from American privates, sergeants, lieutenants and captains. They have no reason to distort the information provided.
(2) Rather than rely on the type of circumstantial evidence about WMD that existed in 2003, today the U.S. military possesses a wealth of physical evidence demonstrating Iran's role in the fighting in Iraq. A very small portion of this evidence was recently shown to reporters by officers assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division in Baghdad. This evidence included captured rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and rockets. All these weapons had Iranian markings, serial numbers and dates of production -- some as late as 2006.
(3) One of the weapons displayed to reporters in Baghdad -- the so-called explosively formed projectile -- is made from components only known to be produced by Iranian manufacturers in Tehran, working under contract for the Iranian government. This particular form of improvised explosive device was first used in 2004 in Lebanon by the Shi'ite terrorist organization Hezbollah, which also receives support from Iran.
Gen. William Caldwell, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Baghdad, says the explosively formed projectiles were shown to the media because, while few in number, they have a particularly lethal affect against U.S. and coalition forces. Since January 2006, use of this weapon by Iran-backed Shi'ite militias has increased 150 percent and it has emerged as the single largest killer on the battlefield. These are military-grade weapons that require advanced machine work not available in Iraq.
(4) The U.S. military has captured senior members of the elite Iranian special forces unit known as the Qods Force operating inside Iraq. This force reports directly to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamenei.
For example, during a January operation in Irbil, Iraq, American troops captured Iranian Gen. Mohsen Chizari -- the No. 3 in the Qods force -- and four other senior members of the organization. According to the American military, the captured Qods officers possessed falsified identification cards, disguises and sensitive Iranian documents, providing further evidence of Iranian involvement within Iraq.
It is also widely known that the United States has a broad range of advanced capabilities to gather intelligence within a war zone. And we know the military has captured a number of Iranian operatives and Shi'ite militia members who have provided detailed information relating to Iranian involvement, which U.S. forces are not disclosing for security reasons.
The one thing the U.S. military cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt is that the Iranian government's highest levels have authorized this covert war in Iraq. However, a review of all the evidence publicly released leaves no doubt that Iranian special forces are actively arming and training Shi'ite militia groups within Iraq. The only thing missing is the equivalent of a signed "Presidential Finding" from either Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or the Ayatollah Khamenei authorizing Qods Force operations inside Iraq. This type of proof will never be available.
While we may never have the smoking gun, it is hard to believe such a large-scale covert action could take place by Iranian forces in Iraq without both the direct knowledge and at least tacit approval of the Iranian government's highest officials.

Rick Brennan served in the Office of the Defense Secretary during the Clinton administration is now a senior political scientist at the Rand Corp.

http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.p...15-082220-8308r

The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com

Iran training Iraqi death squads?
By Claude Salhani
Published March 23, 2007

"Loose lips sink ships" was a popular slogan during World War II, a reminder that misplaced words could help the enemy. But the reverse is also true: Purposely placed words can sink the enemy's ships.
At a time when President Bush keeps reminding Iran that "all options are on the table," a group opposed to the regime reveals new information on the Islamic republic's involvement in Iraq.
An Iranian opposition group says Iran's al-Quds force is heavily involved in training Iraqi death squads and militias. The latest reports from the Mujaheedin-e-Khalq, or the MeK, accuse the Iranian regime of secretly engaging in "the organization and training of large Iraqi terrorist networks in Iran and sending them back to Iraq."
The group opposed to the ruling clergy in Tehran says Iran's ultimate goal is to destabilize Iraq, forcing U.S. troops to leave the country, thus paving the way for the establishment of an Islamic republic in Iraq.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, an Iranian opposed to the current regime in Tehran, divulged in New York Tuesday information he received from sources inside Iran -- mainly from the MeK -- with which he enjoys close ties. The MeK is lobbying hard to get off Washington's list of terrorist organizations and recently released a list of nearly 32,000 Iraqis on Tehran's payroll, including senior Iraqi government officials.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force has allocated several bases in the cities of Tehran, Karaj, Qom, Isfahan, as well as provinces near Iraqi borders, such as Kermanshah, Ilam, Kurdistan and Khuzestan -- using veteran commanders -- to train death squads and terrorist networks, the Iranian dissident said.
These individuals travel to Iran in different groups, under different covers and use various legal and illegal borders, and go back to Iraq after their training is complete. According to information obtained by the MeK, since February 2006 Iraqi militias affiliated with the Quds Force, such as the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq -- SCIRI -- the Badr Corps, Hezbollah, Islamic Revolution Mujahideen, and Seyyed-ol-Shohada Movement have traveled to Iran in groups and are trained in various camps of the Quds Force.
The training includes urban guerrilla warfare, instruction on using light and semi-heavy weapons, mortars, missiles, sniping techniques, explosives and shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles.
Still, Mr. Jafarzadeh says, the Iraqi militias are trained under the command of IRGC Brig. Gen. Mohammad Shahlaei, a Quds Force veteran commander in the Ramezan base. Information from the MeK in Iran indicates the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operates a number of secret bases where Iraqi terrorists are trained.
Among them are the Imam Ali Base in northern Tehran's Alborz-kooh Street, north of Saad-abad Palace. South of this base is another IRGC base called "Al-Zahra," designed to train women. The MeK says: "There are many veteran instructors in Imam Ali base, with extensive experience in terrorist activities. The base is under the command of a Revolutionary Guard officer named Hossein Lotfi."
Trainees are divided into small groups of eight. Each group has two trainers, an Iranian and a Lebanese member of Hezbollah. The training lasts 20 days. The personnel are instructed not to speak to anyone about training Arabs.
Several groups from SCIRI traveled from Sadr City near Baghdad to train in October 2006, according to Mr. Jafarzadeh. This base has been the IRGC's main location for training foreign terrorists. In the past, the Imam Ali base was used to train terrorists; it is now reserved exclusively to train Iraqi militias.
Hezbollah Base in Jalilabad, Varamin, has been used by al-Quds Force to prepare Iraqi volunteers. An al-Quds Force commander named "Fouad" is the liaison officer. Two of the foreign trainers are named "Khalili" and "Vajih," Iraqis who lived in Iran for years and are employed by the Quds Force. On Jan. 2, a group of 50 Iraqis from Sadr City completed their training and returned to Iraq.
The MeK reports that Abu Ahmad al-Ramisi, a former commander of the Badr Corps, has infiltrated the Iraqi government. He also goes by the Iranian name Muhammad Ali Hessani. Employed by the IRGC since 1986, he was dispatched in April 2003 to Iraq, where he became commander of the Badr forces in Al-Muthanna Province. He is presently governor of Al-Muthanna Province.
The list goes on: Bahonar Base in Karaj is another site for training Iraqi militias sent to this base in groups of 50 from Tehran. Their training lasts 30 days. Several groups have been trained in this camp since October 2006.
Bahonar Base is one of the most important training bases for foreign fighters. The operations and information about the trainees are strictly confidential. The training is organized so the trainees have the least possible information about each other. In this base are taught the principles of urban guerrilla warfare, deception and coverup, methods and tactics for collecting intelligence, various weapons training, body-building and working with explosives.
The MeK network inside Iran has proven accurate in the past, exposing Iran's clandestine nuclear weapons program by revealing the nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak in 2002.
It is still worth remembering the reverse logic of the famous WWII slogan. In other words, proceed with care. Those rooting for a U.S.-Iranian military confrontation may end up sinking both ships.

Claude Salhani is international editor for United Press International.

http://www.washtimes.com/functions/print.p...22-084333-2462r

Exclusive: Iranians Had Showdown With U.S. Forces
By Anna Mulrine
Posted 3/23/07

As the British government demanded the immediate release of 15 of its sailors whose boats were seized by Iranian naval vessels in the Persian Gulf on Friday, U.S. News has learned that this is not the first showdown that coalition forces have had with the Iranian military.

According to a U.S. Army report out of Iraq obtained by U.S. News, American troops, acting as advisers for Iraqi border guards, were recently surrounded and attacked by a larger unit of Iranian soldiers, well within the border of Iraq.

The report highlights the details: A platoon of Iranian soldiers on the Iraqi side of the border fired rocket-propelled grenades and used small arms against a joint patrol of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers east of Balad Ruz. Four Iraqi Army soldiers, one interpreter, and one Iraqi border policeman remain unaccounted for after the September incident in eastern Diyala, 75 miles east of Baghdad.

During a joint border patrol, both American and Iraqi soldiers saw two Iranian soldiers run from Iraq back across the Iranian border as they approached. The patrol then came upon a single Iranian soldier, on the Iraqi side of the border, who did not flee.

While the joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol was speaking with the soldier, according to the report, the patrol was "approached by a platoon-size element of Iranian soldiers." An Iranian border captain then told the U.S. and Iraqi soldiers that "if they tried to leave their location, the Iranians would fire upon them." During this conversation with the Iranian captain, Iranian forces began firing and continued when U.S. troops tried to withdraw.

Iraqi and American forces returned fire "to break contact and left the area to report the incident," the report noted. "The Iranian forces continued to fire indirect fire well into Iraq as Coalition Force soldiers withdrew; for reasons unknown at this time, the Iraqi Army forces remained behind."

No American soldiers were wounded in the incident.

It is possible that Iranians thought they were in Iranian territory, according to U.S. military officials. Such border confusions and disputes happen routinely.

In the British naval incident on Friday, Iran claimed it seized the vessels because they were in its territorial waters. U.S. military officials tell U.S. News that the Iranian forces very likely belong to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which tend to be far more aggressive than regular Iranian naval forces, which U.S. military officials routinely describe as "extremely professional."

Iranian and Iraqi forces continue to clash in Iraq. U.S. special operations forces have been tasked with nabbing Iranian members of the Revolutionary Guards' al-Quds Brigade, the foreign operations arm of the Iranian military, which also supports Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.

U.S. forces grabbed six Iranians with alleged ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil in January, reportedly using stun bombs, seizing computers, and taking down an Iranian flag from the raided building's roof. Iran said the building was a consulate and the men were diplomats–and continues to demand their release. One of Iraq's most powerful Shiite politicians condemned the raid, calling it an attack on Iraq's sovereignty.

American forces may soon be getting further insight into recent Iranian attacks. Earlier this month, a former Iranian deputy defense minister who once commanded the Revolutionary Guards–and is thought to have considerable knowledge of Iran's national security network–left the country and is said to be cooperating with western intelligence agencies, sharing information on links between Iran and Hezbollah in south Lebanon, for example. Iranian officials said the official, Ali Rez Asgari, was kidnapped by western agents.

Shortly afterward, Iran threatened to retaliate in Europe for the supposed kidnapping, what it claims to be the most recent in a series of abductions in the past three months. According to the British Sunday Times, in the Revolutionary Guards' weekly newspaper this week, a columnist believed to have close ties to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote: "We've got the ability to capture a nice bunch of blue-eyed, blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks. Iran has enough people who can reach the heart of Europe and kidnap Americans and Israelis."

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070323/23iran.htm

Iranian president lauds suicide bombers as invincible

Ahmadinejad praises Iran for being able to recruit thousands of suicide bombers a day
Dudi Cohen

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad praised his country's ability to recruit "hundreds of suicide bombers a day," saying "suicide is an invincible weapon."

Ahmadinejad made the comments during a visit to a site south Iran used to prepare suicide bombers during the Iraq-Iran war, Iranian state television reported.

He praised Hizbullah fighters for their suicidal spirit during last summer's confrontation with Israel.

Iran recruited thousands of suicide bombers, many of whom were children, and sent them to the frontline to face Saddam Hussein's army.

"Suicide bombers in this land showed us the way, and they enlighten our future," he said.

The Iranian president said the will to commit suicide was "one of the best ways of life."

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLa...3383620,00.html

Iraqi Foreign Minister confirms release of kidnapped Iranian diplomat

By News Agencies

Iraq's foreign minister confirmed on Tuesday that an Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Baghdad two months ago had been released.

Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms seized Jalal Sharafi, second secretary at the Iranian embassy in Baghdad, on February 4. Tehran blamed the U.S. military, which denied any involvement.

"I can confirm that he has been freed and is in good health," Hoshiyar Zebari said.

"We made tremendous efforts to free him. All sides had denied holding him, which made it more difficult. But we kept the pressure up on everybody."

Iran's official IRNA news agency reported Sharafi had already arrived back in Iran.

Asked who had snatched the diplomat, Zebari said: "Only he knows who was holding him."

Zebari said Iraq's government was also trying to secure the release of five Iranians who were detained by U.S. forces during a raid on an Iranian government office in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil on January 11.

Tehran says the five are diplomats. The United States has previously said they were backing militants.

"I am in constant contact with the Americans to release them. We always hear from them good pledges that they will be released," Zebari said.

The abduction took place as tension mounted between Iran and the United States over alleged Iranian support of Shiite extremists in Iraq and U.S. efforts to force Tehran to stop enriching uranium - a process that can produce material for nuclear reactors or bombs.

It also occurred nearly a month after U.S. troops detained five Iranians in northern Iraq and accused them of having links to a network backing armed Shiite groups.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/845057.html

Report: Iranian Envoy to Meet With 5 Iranians Being Held by U.S. in Iraq
Wednesday, April 04, 2007

TEHRAN, Iran —

Iran's state media reported Wednesday that an Iranian envoy will be allowed to meet five Iranians detained by U.S. forces in northern Iraq since January — a possible sign of further progress toward ending a British-Iranian standoff.

The report appeared as Britain and Iran were entering a sensitive phase in the efforts to free 15 British sailors and marines captured by the Iranians last month in disputed waters of the Persian Gulf.

A separate Iranian diplomat seized two months ago by uniformed gunmen in Iraq was released and returned Tuesday to Tehran. Iran had blamed the U.S. for the abduction, a charge American authorities denied.

The detention of the five other Iranians occurred in January in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish self-governing region in northern Iraq. Iraqi Kurds, like the country's Shiites, maintain close ties with Shiite-dominated Iran, despite their warm relationship with the U.S. — and they had been upset over the arrests in their own capital.

Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, himself a Kurd, told The Associated Press that the case of the five detained Iranians had no connection with that of the British sailors and marines.

However, the moves on that case and the release of the Iranian diplomat raised the possibility that a possible swap was in the works.

Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency said an Iranian envoy would be allowed to meet with the five detained Iranians but gave no further details.

In Baghdad, U.S. Embassy spokesman Lou Fintor said he could not comment on the IRNA report but added that Iraq "has asked us to expedite our investigation" into the arrests of the people as well as their status.

U.S. troops detained the five Iranians on Jan. 11, accusing them of links to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard network that was supplying money and weapons to insurgents in Iraq.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said President Bush had approved the strategy of raiding Iranian targets in Iraq as part of efforts to confront the government in Tehran.

Iran denounced the raid and insisted that the five were diplomats who were engaged exclusively in consular work. The Iraqi government said they were arrested at an office that was supposed to become an Iranian consulate.

Zebari said his government had been relaying Iranian requests for a meeting with the five detainees, but could not confirm that the request had been approved.

The British newspaper The Independent reported this week that the Irbil raid had escalated tensions between the U.S. and Iran and may have set the stage for the March 23 seizing of the British naval personnel.

In a commentary, the Iranian news agency said the movement on the Iranian prisoner issue was due in part to "the new American political and military appointments in Iraq."

The agency was referring to Gen. David Petraeus, who assumed command of U.S. forces in February, and Ryan Crocker who began work as the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq this month.

Also Wednesday, a Kuwaiti newspaper quoted Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem as saying Syria was also mediating the case of the 15 Britons.

"This solution needs quiet diplomacy and Syria is now undertaking such quiet diplomacy between the two countries," al-Moallem told the paper Al-Anba. "We hope for a satisfactory solution that will lead to resolving the crisis of the British soldiers held captive in Iran."

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_st...,263866,00.html

Iraq Police: Iranian-Made Bombs Used in Attack that Killed 4 Britons
Friday , April 06, 2007

BAGHDAD —

The Basra police commander on Friday said the roadside bomb used in an attack that killed four British soldiers had not been used in southern Iraq before, and his description of the deadly weapon indicated it was a feared Iranian-designed explosively formed projectile.

Anbar province has been a stronghold of the Sunni insurgency but many tribes in the region recently switched allegiance, with large numbers of military-age men joining the police force and Iraqi army in a bid to expel Al Qaeda in Iraq fighters.

The U.S. military has claimed Iran is supplying Shiite militia fighters in Iraq with explosively formed projectiles, known as an EFP. They hurl a molten, fist-sized copper slug capable of piercing armored vehicles.

The four British soldiers — including two women — were killed Thursday as the American military announced the deaths of eight more U.S. soldiers since Tuesday.

The Basra region police commander, Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Moussawi, said two similar bombs had been discovered Friday morning; one was discovered on the road leading to Basra Palace, the compound that houses a British base and the British and U.S. consulates. A second was uncovered in the western Hayaniyah district where Thursday's attack occurred. The area is known as a stronghold of the Mahdi Army, a militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The reported deaths of the American forces and the bomb attack on the British unit marked the start of the eighth week of the joint U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown in Baghdad and surrounding territory.

Also Thursday, the U.S. military confirmed an American helicopter carrying nine people had been downed south of Baghdad and that four were injured.

An Iraqi army official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of security concerns, said the helicopter went down after it came under fire from anti-aircraft guns near the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Latifiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad. The U.S. military did not confirm that account.

It was the ninth U.S. helicopter to go down in Iraq this year. The U.S. military has studied new evasive techniques, fearing insurgents have acquired more sophisticated weapons or have figured out how to use their arms in new and effective ways.

Prime Minister Tony Blair called the Basra attack an "act of terrorism" and suggested it may have been the work of militiamen linked to Iran. He stopped short of accusing Tehran, however.

"Now it is far too early to say that the particular terrorist act that killed our forces was an act committed by terrorists that were backed by any elements of the Iranian regime, so I make no allegation in respect of that particular incident," Blair said.

He added, however, "This is maybe the right moment to reflect on our relationship with Iran."

One U.S. soldier died and two were wounded in a roadside bombing Thursday in restive Diyala province north of Baghdad, the military said. Four others died Wednesday in two roadside bomb explosions in southern Baghdad and north of the capital, while a fifth was killed by small-arms fire in the eastern part of the city. Two other soldiers were killed by small-arms fire on Tuesday — one in eastern Baghdad and another on foot patrol in the southern outskirts of the capital.

The deadly attack against the British patrol in southern Iraq was the greatest loss of life for Britain in more than four months and it cast a shadow over celebrations marking the return of 15 British sailors seized by Iran two weeks ago in disputed waters in the Persian Gulf.

"Just as we rejoice at the return of our 15 service personnel so today we are also grieving and mourning for the loss of our soldiers in Basra, who were killed as the result of a terrorist act," Blair said.

The British patrol struck a roadside bomb and was hit by small-arms fire early Thursday in the southern city of Basra, British military spokeswoman Capt. Katie Brown said. The explosion created a 9-foot crater in the road. Hours after the attack, a British soldier's helmet was still laying in the street among dozens of spent bullets.

The latest casualties raised to 140 the number of British forces to die in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion — 109 in combat.

Blair has announced that Britain will withdraw about 1,600 troops from Iraq over the next few months and hopes to make other cuts to its 7,100-strong contingent by late summer.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_st...,264471,00.html

Gates: US has no intention of freeing 5 Iranians


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JPost.com Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 6, 2007

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US and Iraqi officials are working to give Iran access to the five Iranians being detained by American forces in Iraq, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday. He did not link the move to the Britons' release.

Gates said the US has no intention of releasing the five.

Gates said a visit from Iranian diplomatic authorities is not required, but that "Iraqi government officials and US officials are discussing if there's some way, perhaps, that there could be some kind of Iranian access to them."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid...Article/Printer

'We Gathered Intelligence'
Updated: 22:05, Thursday April 05, 2007

The captain in charge of the 15 marines detained in Iran has said they were gathering intelligence on the Iranians.

Sky News went on patrol with Captain Chris Air and his team in Iraqi waters close to the area where they were arrested - just five days before the crisis began.

We withheld the interview until now so it would not jeopardise their safety.

And today, former Iranian diplomat Dr Mehrdad Khonsari said if the Iranians had known about it, they would have used it to "justify taking the marines captive and put them on trial".

Captain Air and his team were on an 'Interaction Patrol' where their patrol boats came alongside fishing dhows.

The operation was mainly to investigate arms smuggling and terrorism but Captain Air said it was also to gain intelligence on Iranian activity.

Home after their ordeal - the sailors land back in Britain
He told Sky Correspondent Jonathan Samuels: "Basically we speak to the crew, find out if they have any problems, let them know we're here to protect them, protect their fishing and stop any terrorism and piracy in the area," he said.

"Secondly, it's to gather int (intelligence). If they do have any information, because they're here for days at a time, they can share it with us.

"Whether it's about piracy or any sort of Iranian activity in the area. Obviously we're right by the buffer zone with Iran."

The UK Defence Secretary Des Browne told Sky News it was important to gather intelligence to "keep our people safe".

He said: "Modern military operations all have an element of gathering intelligence.

"We need to understand as much as we can about the environment we operate in and intelligence gathering is an every day part of that."

He added: "The UN mandate would clearly empower the military taskforce to gather information about the environment in which they were working."

Captain Air said that fishing dhows had been robbed by Iranian soldiers on a number of occasions.

"It's good to gather int on the Iranians," he said.

Fifteen sailors and marines were taken captive nearly two weeks ago after the Iranian government claimed they had strayed into their waters.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1259413,00.html

U.S. Military: Iran Training Iraqi Insurgents in Using Roadside Bombs
Wednesday, April 11, 2007

BAGHDAD —

Iran has been training Iraqi fighters in Iran on the assembly of deadly roadside bombs known as EFPs, the U.S. military spokesman said on Wednesday.

"We know that they are being in fact manufactured and smuggled into this country, and we know that training does go on in Iran for people to learn how to assemble them and how to employ them. We know that training has gone on as recently as this past month from detainees debriefs," Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the U.S. military spokesman, said at a weekly briefing.

EFP stands for explosively formed penetrator, deadly roadside bombs that hurl a fist-size lump of molten copper capable of piercing armor.

In January, U.S. officials said at least 170 U.S. soldiers had been killed by EFPs.

Caldwell also said on Wednesday that the U.S. military had evidence that Iranian intelligence agents were active in Iraq in funding, training and arming Shiite militia fighters.

"We also know that training still is being conducted in Iran for insurgent elements from Iraq. We know that as recent as last week from debriefing personnel," he said.

"The do receive training on how to assemble and employ EFPs," Caldwell said, adding that fighters also were trained in how to carry out complex attacks that used explosives followed by assaults with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms.

"There has been training on specialized weapons that are used here in Iraq. And then we do know they receive also training on general tactics in terms of how to take and employ and work what we call a more complex kind of attack where we see multiple types of engagements being used from an explosion to small arms fire to being done in multiple places," Caldwell said.

The general would not say specifically which arm of the Iranian government was doing the training but called the trainers "surrogates" of Iran's intelligence agency.

Caldwell opened the briefing by showing photographs of what he said were Iranian-made mortar rounds, RPG rounds and rockets that were found in Iraq.

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_st...,265244,00.html