| Author | Message | | Phoenix | | Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 7:45 am Post subject: The Secret War Against Iran |
| The Secret War Against Iran
April 03, 2007 5:25 PM
Brian Ross and Christopher Isham Report:
A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/abc_news_exclus.html | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 8:16 am Post subject: |
| Phoenix,
I just finished watching this on ABC in the US and was going to look for the link to it and was pleasantly surprised that you beat me to it yet again!:) Thank you... | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 8:41 am Post subject: |
| The above stinks of arch (war for Israel) neocon Elliott Abrams who was involved with Nicaragua as well:
It stinks of arch (war for Israel) neocon Elliott Abrams who was involved with similar in Nicaragua as well:
The Return Of Elliott Abrams
Israel's Likud Scores Big With White House Appointment
Jim Lobe writes for Inter Press Service, an international newswire, and for Foreign Policy in Focus, a joint project of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and the New Mexico-based Interhemispheric Resource Center.
Neo-conservative hawks in the administration of President George W. Bush have won a major battle against the State Department in the fight for control of United States Mideast policy with the surprise appointment of Iran-Contra figure Elliott Abrams to the region's top policy spot in the National Security Council (NSC).
The appointment, leaked to reporters by the White House, would for the first time place someone in a top Mideast policy spot who has publicly assailed the "land-for-peace" formula that has guided U.S. policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict since the 1967 war.
Abrams, who first came to national prominence as a controversial political appointee in the Reagan administration who later pleaded guilty to lying to Congress regarding the Iran-Contra scandal, has also opposed the Oslo peace process and called for Washington to "stand by Israel," rather than act as a neutral mediator between Israel and the Palestinians.
"Yet another American Likudnik is moving to a position where they control Washington's agenda in the Mideast," said Rashid Khalidi, a Mideast historian at the University of Chicago. "This is a tragedy for the Israeli and American people." Likud is the rightwing Israeli party headed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Currently the NSC staff chief for Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations, Abrams will become Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the NSC for Southwest Asia, Near East and North African Affairs.
As such, he will be in charge of presenting policy papers and options for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, whose own opinions have proven decisive in cases where the president receives conflicting views from hawks, represented by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, and the more-dovish Secretary of State, Colin Powell, who is often backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the uniformed military. Rice, a Russia specialist, had no experience with Mideast issues until her current job. Abrams will replace Zalmay Khalilzad, a prominent foreign-policy strategist whose views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are considered much more neutral than Abrams'. Khalilzad succeeded Clinton holdover Bruce Reidel early last year but was quickly consumed with his native-borne Afghanistan after being named special envoy to the interim president, Hamid Karzai. Khalilzad will now become "ambassador-at-large for free Iraqis" and is expected to play a key role in sorting out internal conflicts among the Iraqi opposition.
Beloved by right-wingers who hail him as both a hero for his championship of the Nicaraguan contras during the 1980s, Abrams first gained prominence as a leading neo-conservative when he served as Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights in the early 1980s and then as Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs.
In both positions, he clashed frequently and angrily with mainstream church groups and human rights organisations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who often accused him of covering up horrendous abuses committed by U.S.-backed governments, such as El Salvador and Guatemala, and rebel forces, such as the Contras and Angola's Unita, while, at the same time, exaggerating abuses by U.S. foes.
He was indicted by the Iran-Contra special prosecutor for giving false testimony about his role in illicitly raising money for the Contras but pleaded guilty to two lesser offenses of withholding information to Congress in order to avoid a trial and a possible jail term. He was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush along with a number of other Iran-Contra defendants in 1992.
His credibility for truth-telling was so low that at one point he was required to take an oath before testifying before Congressional committees. Most analysts here believe that he was given an NSC post by the new Bush administration because any other position would have required Senate confirmation.
After Reagan left office in 1989, Abrams, like a number of other prominent neo-conservatives, was not invited to serve in the Bush Sr. administration. Instead, he worked for a number of think tanks and eventually became head of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) where he wrote widely on foreign-policy issues, including the Middle East, and the threats posed by U.S. secular society to Jewish identity. He also remained an integral part of the tight-knit neo-conservative foreign-policy community in Washington that revolved around one of his early mentors, Richard Perle and former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
Then-House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich furthered his public rehabilitation by appointing him to the new U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in 1999 for which he also served as chairman in 2000-01. Muslim groups here have complained about his refusal to criticise Israeli practices in the occupied territories and Jerusalem, such as sealing off Muslim holy sites, as violations of religious freedom.
He is not known as an Arab-Israeli specialist but has long favoured Likud positions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and even assailed former Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for caving into U.S. pressure to respect the Oslo peace process. Shortly after the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifida at the end of September 2000, he criticised mainstream Jewish groups for calling for a resumption of peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, as well as a halt to the violence.
Like Perle, as well as Rumsfeld's civilian advisers like Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and Cheney's top deputy, I. Lewis Libby, he has favoured a Mideast strategy based on the overwhelming military power of both the United States and Israel and on a military alliance between Israel and Turkey against hostile Arab states, particularly Syria and Iraq, in order to create a "broader strategic context" that would ensure whatever state might emerge on Palestinian territory would be friendly to United States and Israeli interests and that could force Syria to withdraw from Lebanon. He has long favoured forceful action to oust Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
He has accused Palestinian Authority leader Yassir Arafat of being an untrustworthy partner under the Oslo process and is believed to have used his previous NSC Democracy position to push for his ouster from power as part of a thorough reform process. That view, which was strongly backed by Rumsfeld and Cheney's offices, was eventually accepted by Bush last June, over strenuous objections by the State Department and senior aides for Bush's father, notably his former national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft.
In his new position, according to John Prados, a historian who has written about the National Security Council, Abrams should be in an excellent position to influence U.S. policy on the Mideast, particularly in "delaying and/or halting policy on the 'roadmap'" that is being developed by the "Quartet" -- the United States, European Union, Russia, and the United Nations -- on resuming political negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Indeed, it already appears that British hopes for a major meeting of the Quartet on the roadmap before the end of the year are fading quickly.
Abrams is expected to support Israel's recent requests both to put off discussion of the 'roadmap' until after Israel's elections at the end of next month and for some 14 billion dollars in military aid and loan guarantees to help the country cope with economic hard times.
Abrams' influence on policy is already clear. For the first time ever the Bush administration voted against a U.N. General Assembly resolution last week that called on Israel to repeal the Jerusalem law that declares that "Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel."
In the past, Washington has abstained on the issue, insisting that the the status of Jerusalem must be determined by negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. Abrams has in the past assailed that vote, as well as Washington's refusal to recogize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, on the grounds that that such a position "tantalizes the Palestinians with the prospect of forcing the Jews to abandon Jerusalem."
As you might expect, Arab-Americans responded to the appointment with a mix of resignation and foreboding.
James Zogby, the director of the Arab-American Institute (AAI) here said Abrams' appointment sends "a very dangerous message to the Arab world" and adds to the "lock that the neo-con set now has on all the major instruments of decision-making except for the State Department."
Khalidi also pointed to Abrams' history as being less than forthcoming with information that may contradict his own views. "He will be yet another filter blocking reality from reaching the president," he said. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 8:44 am Post subject: |
| Subverting Iran
Washington's Covert War inside Iran
by Gregory Elich
Global Research, March 23, 2007
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070323&articleId=5165
Much attention has been given to the Bush Administration’s preparations for possible war against Iran as well as its drive to impose sanctions. Meanwhile, a less noticed policy has been unfolding, one that may in time prove to have grave consequences for the region. There is a covert war underway in Iran , still in its infancy, but with disturbing signs of impending escalation. In the shadowy world of guerrilla operations, the full extent of involvement by the Bush Administration has yet to be revealed, but enough is known to paint a disturbing picture.
The provision of aid to anti-government forces offers certain advantages to the Bush Administration. No effort needs to be expended in winning support for the policy. Operations can be conducted away from the public eye during a time of growing domestic opposition to the war in Iraq , and international opinion is simply irrelevant where the facts are not well known. In terms of expenditures, covert operations are a cost-effective means for destabilizing a nation, relative to waging war.
There is nothing new in the technique, and it has proven an effective means for toppling foreign governments in the past, as was the case with socialist Afghanistan and Nicaragua . In Yugoslavia , U.S. and British military training and arms shipments helped to build up the secessionist Kosovo Liberation Army from a small force of 300 soldiers into a sizable guerrilla army that made the province of Kosovo ungovernable. The very chaos that the West did so much to create was then used as the pretext for bombing Yugoslavia .
According to a former CIA official, funding for armed separatist groups operating in Iran is paid from the CIA’s classified budget. The aim, claims Fred Burton, an ex-State Department counter-terrorism agent, is “to supply and train” these groups “to destabilize the Iranian regime.” (1)
The largest and most well known of the anti-government organizations is Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), operating out of Iraq . For years MEQ had launched cross-border attacks and terrorist acts against Iran with the support of Saddam Hussein. Officially designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in 1997, and disarmed of heavy weaponry by the U.S. military six years later, Washington has since come to view MEK in a different light. Three years ago, U.S. intelligence officials suggested looking the other way as the MEK rearmed and to use the organization to destabilize Iran , a recommendation that clearly has been accepted. (2)
Accusing MEK of past involvement in repressive measures by former president Saddam Hussein, the current Iraqi government wants to close down Camp Ashraf , located well outside of Baghdad , where many of the MEK fighters are stationed. But the camp operates under the protection of the U.S. military, and American soldiers chauffeur MEK leaders. The Iraqi government is unlikely to get its way, as the MEK claims to be the primary U.S. source for intelligence on Iran . (3)
U.S. officials “made MEK members swear an oath to democracy and resign from the MEK,” reveals an intelligence source, “and then our guys incorporated them into their unit and trained them.” Reliance on the MEK began under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the direction of Vice President Dick Cheney, and soon MEK soldiers were being used in special operations missions in Iran . “They are doing whatever they want, no oversight at all,” said one intelligence official of the MEK’s American handlers. (4)
The Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), is another organization that conducts cross-border raids into Iran . Israel provides the group with “equipment and training,” claims a consultant to the U.S. Defense Department, while the U.S. gave it “a list of targets inside Iran of interest to the U.S. ” Aid to guerrilla groups, the consultant reports, is “part of an effort to explore alternative means of applying pressure on Iran .” (5) It has been noted that PJAK has recently shown an impressive gain in capability during its operations, both in terms of size and armament, a fact that can surely be attributed to Western support. (6)
Jundallah (God’s Brigade) is an extremist Sunni organization operating in Sistan-Balochistan province that has been launching armed attacks, planting explosives, setting off car bombs, and kidnapping. Based in Pakistan , it is unclear if this group is connected with the Pakistani organization of the same name, which has ties with Al-Qaeda. (7) Jundallah denies that it has any links to either Al-Qaeda or to the U.S. But Iranian officials claim that a recently arrested Jundallah guerrilla has confessed that he was trained by U.S. and British intelligence officers. There is no way to verify that such a confession has actually taken place, nor its reliability as it may have come as a result of coercion, but the claim would not be inconsistent with U.S. policy elsewhere in Iran. (8)
It is probable that in the coming months the Bush Administration will expand support for anti-government forces in order to more effectively destabilize Iran and gather intelligence. Already U.S. Special Forces are operating in Iran collecting data, planting nuclear sensors, and electronically marking targets. Separatist forces have cooperated in those efforts. “This looks to be turning into a pretty large-scale covert operation,” comments a former CIA official. U.S. and Israeli officials are establishing front companies to help finance that covert war. (9) To fully capitalize on ethnic discontent along Iran ’s periphery, the U.S. Marine Corps has commissioned a study from defense contractor Hicks and Associates on Iran and Iraq ’s ethnic groups and their grievances. (10)
That these separatist organizations clearly engage in terrorism hasn’t deterred the Bush Administration from backing them. The potential for baneful consequences is considerable. CIA support for the anti-Soviet and anti-socialist Mujahedin in Afghanistan spawned a worldwide movement of Islamic extremism. Western support for ethnic secessionists shattered Yugoslavia and the invasion of Iraq fired the flames of ethnic discord and made a shared life impossible. It remains to be seen if the Bush Administration can succeed in achieving its goal of effecting regime change in Iran . That process could have devastating consequences for the people of Iran . Those officials in the Bush Administration who advocated and implemented covert operations “think in Iran you can just go in and hit the facilities and destabilize the government,” explains a former CIA official. “They believe they can get rid of a few crazy mullahs and bring in the young guys who like Gap jeans, [and] all the world’s problems are solved. I think it’s delusional.” (11)
Gregory Elich is the author of Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit. Gregory Elich is a frequent Global Research contributor.
http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Liberators-Militarism-Mayhem-Pursuit/dp/1595265708
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTES
1 William Lowther and Colin Freeman, “ US Funds Terror Groups to Sow Chaos in Iran ,” Sunday Telegraph ( London ), February 25, 2007.
2 “Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK or MKO), Global Security.org Syed Saleem Shahzad, “Sleeping Forces Stir in Iran,” Asia Times, June 26, 2003.Gian Marco Chiocci and Alessia Marani, “Iranian Mujaheddin Gather Funds in Italy,” Il Giornale (Milan), October 2, 2006.
3 Ernesto Londono and Saad al-Izzi, “Iraq Intensifies Efforts to Expel Iranian Group,” Washington Post, March 14, 2007.
4 Larisa Alexandrovna, “On Cheney, Rumsfeld Order, US Outsourcing Special Ops, Intelligence to Iraq Terror Group, Intelligence Officials Say,” The Raw Story, April 13, 2006.
5 Seymour Hersh, “The Next Act,” New Yorker, November 27, 2006.
6 James Brandon, “PJAK Claims Fresh Attacks in Iran ,” Global Terrorism Analysis, March 6, 2007.
7 Ali Akbar Dareini, “Explosion Kills 11 Members of Iran’s Elite Revolutionary Guards,” Associated Press, February 14, 2007.
8 Broadcast, Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (Teheran), February 17, 2007.
9 Richard Sale , “Cat and Mouse Game Over Iran ,” UPI, January 26, 2005.
10 Guy Dinmore, “US Marines Probe Tensions Among Iran’s Minorities,” Financial Times ( London ), February 23, 2006.
11 Julian Borger and Ian Traynor, “Now US Ponders Attack on Iran ,” The Guardian ( London ), January 18, 2005.
Global Research Articles by Gregory Elich | | | | smallaxe | | Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 9:39 am Post subject: |
| Although some of us had connected the dots the ABC report is timely and proves what has been said by Hersh, Global Research etc, but why release this information at this point when the UK and Iran are involved in sensitive negotiations? Interesting? No?
| Quote: |
Financial Times
US marines probe tensions among Iran’s minorities
By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Published: February 23 2006 19:07 | Last updated: February 23 2006 19:07
The intelligence wing of the US marines has launched a probe into Iran’s ethnic minorities at a time of heightened tensions along the border with Iraq and friction between capitals.
Iranian activists involved in a classified research project for the marines told the FT the Pentagon was examining the depth and nature of grievances against the Islamic government, and appeared to be studying whether Iran would be prone to a violent fragmentation along the same kind of fault lines that are splitting Iraq.
The research effort comes at a critical moment between Iran and the US. Last week the Bush administration asked Congress for $75m to promote democratic change within Iran, having already mustered diplomatic support at the UN to counter Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons programme.
At the same time, Iran has demanded that the UK withdraw its troops from the southern Iraqi city of Basra which lies close to its border. Iran has repeatedly accused both the US and UK of inciting explosions and sabotage in oil-rich frontier regions where Arab and Kurdish minorities predominate. The US and UK accuse Iran of meddling in Iraq and supplying weapons to insurgents.
US intelligence experts suggested the marines’ effort could indicate early stages of contingency plans for a ground assault on Iran. Or it could be an attempt to evaluate the implications of the unrest in Iranian border regions for marines stationed in Iraq, as well as Iranian infiltration.
Other experts affiliated to the Pentagon suggest the investigation merely underlines that diverse intelligence wings of the US military were seeking to justify their existence at a time of plentiful funding.
Lieutenant-Colonel Rick Long, a marines spokesman, confirmed that the marines had commissioned Hicks and Associates, a defence contractor, to conduct two research projects into Iraqi and Iranian ethnic groups.
The purpose was “so that we and our troops would have a better understanding of and respect for the various aspects of culture in those countries”, he said. He would not provide details, saying the projects were for official use only.
Marine Corps Intelligence defines its role as focusing “on crises and predeployment support to expeditionary warfare”. It also provides threat and technical intelligence assessments for the Marines.
The first study, on Iraq, was completed in late 2003, more than six months after marines spearheaded the US invasion. About 23,000 marines are still in Iraq. The Iran study was finished late last year.
Hicks and Associates is a wholly owned subsidiary of Science Applications International Corp, one of the biggest US defence contractors and deeply involved in the prewar planning for Iraq.
The Strategic Assessment Center of Hicks and Associates advertises one of its current projects as the “Impact of Foreign Cultures on Military Operations”. SAIC confirmed it completed the confidential studies for the Marine Corps.
While most analysts would agree that Iran has a far stronger sense of national identity than Iraq, its ethnic mix is even more complex than its neighbour.
Different in language and divided between followers of Sunni and Shia Islam, the ethnic minorities have little coherence. At times tensions among themselves are greater than with Tehran. Iran’s strongly centralised government does not release statistics on the ethnic groups that mainly inhabit sensitive border regions with Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Farsi-speaking Persians who dominate the central government are generally believed to make up a slim majority, followed by Azeris and Kurds in the north and west, Arabs in the oil-rich southwest and Baluch in the southeast.
A patchwork of Turkmen, Christian Armenians and Assyrians, Jews and tribal nomads are among many groups scattered across a country of some 68m people.
Diplomats in Washington expressed shock at the possible implications of the Marine Corps research.
The Financial Times interviewed several Iranians in the US who were invited to help. Some refused, seeing it as part of an effort to break up Iran. However several exiled politicians representing minority groups opposed to the Islamic regime did agree to take part, although they said they wanted a peaceful transition to a democratic, federal Iran and were opposed to any US military action.
Mauri Esfandiari, US representative of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan which ended its armed struggle in 1997 and is based mostly in northern Iraq, said he believed the Pentagon was acting on its long-standing distrust of CIA and State Department analysis. He thought the Pentagon was looking to counter the prevailing administration view that US support for Iran’s minorities would create a disastrous backlash.
“They want to study and see if the State Department’s chaos theory is a valid hypothesis,” he told the FT. The US could not look to the Kurds to support an invasion as they did in Iraq, he said. “Iran will become democratic only if it is built by the Iranians. The democracy movement is strong enough to find its way without military struggle,” he said.
Karim Abdian, head of the Ahvaz Human Rights Organisation which campaigns on behalf of Iranian Arabs in the south-west, said his meeting with SAIC was video-taped. He was told the report would be made public.
Questions put to him were wide-ranging -- on the ethnic breakdown of Khuzestan province on the Iraq border, populations in cities, the level of discontent, the percentage of Arabs working in the oil industry, how they were represented in the central government, and their relations and kinship with Iraqi Arabs next door.
Mr Abdian said he did not know the motives behind the survey, whether the Marines were seeking a better understanding of the region that directly affects them, or were forming a contingency plan in case they had to “enter” Iran. They were learning from the lessons of Iraq where they had not understood the ethnic dynamics, he suggested.
Mr Abdian, who says his organisation has no government funding, accused Iran of using the threat of a US invasion as a pretext to suppress ethnic grievances rather than address what he called the root causes of land confiscation and discrimination.
Exiled Iranians from various ethnic groups held a “Congress” of nationalities in London a year ago. They issued a “manifesto” for a federal, democratic Iran with separation of mosque and state. Seven organizations included Baluch, Azeris, Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen.
Iran has recently experienced some of the worst unrest and violence among its Kurdish and Arab populations in recent years.
Although the root causes of the unrest -- economic and cultural grievances -- are long standing, analysts in the US believe that events in Iraq – where the new constitution has embraced the concept of federalism and a Kurd has become president -- are serving as a catalyst.
Last month two bombs exploded in Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan province close to Iraq. Eight people were killed on the same day that President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad had been due to visit. Six people were killed in bombings last October. Oil installations have been attacked. Iran has repeatedly accused the UK and US of being behind the violence, using separatist Arab groups in southern Iraq to foment instability inside Iran.
“We are very suspicious of British forces’ involvement in terrorist activities,” Mr Ahmadi-Nejad was quoted as saying last October. He accused British troops in Iraq of “hiring terrorists for sabotage”.
London and Washington have strongly denied Iran’s allegations.
Tehran cannot afford to dismiss minority grievances out of hand and seeks to blame the violence on outside forces, says Bill Samii, an Iran analyst with Radio Free Europe.
“The regime can crush dissent when it is localised and relatively small,” he commented.”But if sporadic incidents of ethnic unrest occurred across the country simultaneously, or if such troubles coincided with labour troubles and student demonstrations then the regime would have its hands full.” Given these developments, the question of Iran’s minorities has aroused interest across Washington.
State Department officials met representatives of the London “Congress” in the first such talks between the Bush administration and a coalition claiming to represent Iran’s minorities, participants told the FT.
Last October, the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) held a conference chaired by Michael Ledeen, a proponent of regime change in Iran. It triggered uproar among exiled opposition groups, especially Persian nationalists. Mr Ledeen called the conference “Another case for Federalism?” and denied that AEI was seeking to foment separatism.
Reuel Gerecht, also with AEI and a former CIA specialist on the Middle East, says the State Department under Condoleezza Rice, and not the Pentagon, is running Iran policy. He said State was “several steps removed” from discussing covert action and “nowhere near the point” of trying to use separatist tendencies among minorities as traction against the Tehran regime. No one knew whether that would work, he added.
However, he complimented the Pentagon for “looking down the road”.
A former intelligence officer said the Marines’ probe reflected the “contingency planning” mindset of the US military. Nonetheless, he said, it was important to note that the ultimate purpose of the intelligence wing was “to support effective ground military operations by the Marine Corps”. [/url] |
The Sunni Muslim Jundallah group was blamed for the attack by Iranian officials at the time. "A video seized from the rebels confirms their attachment to opposition groups and some countries' intelligence services such as America and Britain."USUK strenuously denied the allegations at the time! Naturally! | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Phoenix | | Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 12:02 pm Post subject: |
| | Quote: | The US and British naval build up in the Gulf is just one element of the US administration’s provocative stance against Iran, which included the imposition of tougher UN sanctions last Saturday. In January, President Bush declared that US forces in Iraq would “seek out and destroy” Iranian networks providing arms and other support to Shiite militias inside Iraq. On the same day, US special forces conducted an early morning raid on an Iranian diplomatic office in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil. The US military has detained five Iranian officials without charge for more than two months despite calls by the Iraqi government for their release.
The Irbil raid was a calculated US provocation which, as Washington was well aware, could produce a reaction. The British-based Telegraph confirmed this week that the CIA warned British intelligence chiefs that the arrests could result in reprisals, possibly against British troops in southern Iraq. “Although the CIA alert led to the United States raising its official security threat throughout the Middle East and elsewhere, Britain did not follow suit,” the article explained.
Several commentators have speculated that Iran may link the fate of the British sailors to the release of its officials held in Iraq—a claim that Iranian officials have denied. While the British and international media generally assume that the detention of the sailors is a calculated plot by Tehran, it cannot be ruled out that the incident was engineered in London or Washington. Veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh, among others, has alleged that US and Israeli intelligence agents are actively operating inside Iran.
The US-based Stratfor think tank, which has close links to the American intelligence and military establishment, headlined its article on the incident “Another step in the US-Iranian Covert War”. While uncertain about the motive for detaining the British sailors, the article indicated that it may be linked to Western intelligence operations inside Iran. It pointed to the alleged defection of a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard general Ali Reza Asghari earlier this year. He is reportedly being interrogated by US intelligence, including over Tehran’s knowledge of Western agents operating inside Iran.
According to Stratfor, “With this in mind, there have been recent indications from US and Israeli intelligence sources that the British MI6 was engaged in an operation to extract one of its agents from Iran, but a leak tipped MOIS [Iranian intelligence] off to the plan. According to an unconfirmed source, the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps] nabbed the British [MI6] personnel, as well as the agent, to use as a bargaining chip to secure the release of the five detained Iranians. If these negotiations go poorly for Iran, the Britons could very well be tried for espionage.”
Whatever the exact reasons for the seizure of the British sailors, the chief responsibility for their predicament rests with the Blair government and the Bush administration. The only reason for the presence of the British warships in waters disputed by Iraq and Iran is the illegal US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Far from pulling out of Iraq, the White House is now menacing neighbouring Iran as part of broader US ambitions to dominate the oil-rich region.
It is in this dangerous political hothouse that a small incident involving the detention of British sailors can spiral out of control. |
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/iran-m29.shtml | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 5:07 pm Post subject: |
| Analysis
Baluchistan and the coming war on Iran
By Luciana Bohne
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Aug 31, 2006, 01:08
Akhbar Khan, a nationalist/independence leader in Baluchistan has recently been killed by the Pakistani military, in a massive operation that is seriously destabilizing military dictator Pervez Musharraf's regime [1].
Why should the news from Baluchistan interest us? I'll let you connect the dots by presenting a bit of context and concluding with an article from the Carnegie Endowment [2], which, I think, will
underline the significance of the event for the prospected US attack on Iran.
The military dictator's regime is very unpopular in Pakistan. Pervez Musharraf, as Bush's ally on the "war on terror," has had to do unpopular things, like deploying 70,000 troops to the North-West autonomous tribal regions (among them Waziristan) to hunt down "terrorists" and such.
He hasn't been successful, but American aerial attacks from nearby Afghanistan have killed alleged "leaders" and sundry civilians, causing a flood of refuges and displacements. Serious Pakistani military casualties have not increased his popularity and neither has the charge that he's allowing American forces to violate Pakistan's sovereignty. Musharraf's campaign in Waziristan has failed so thoroughly that the region is now virtually off limits to government forces.
Baluchistan is contiguous with the Waziristan region. Baluchistan is a western province of Pakistan, constituting about 40 percent of Pakistan's national surface. Its capital is Quetta, accused by Afghanistan's Karzai (which really means Washington) of being a Taliban stronghold supplying and fueling the Taliban armed resurgence in southern Afghanistan. Musharraf's regime denies it.
Nevertheless, Musharraf has reopened hostility in Baluchistan against the decades-long separatist forces, which he's accused of provoking into taking up arms again. Musharraf has come under intense criticism by British, American, and Afghan officials for not doing enough for the "war on terror." The trouble is that if he complies with his allies in the "war on terror," he comes under attack from domestic critics, of which he has legions, including the majority of the people.
The latest developments in the murder of the Baluch leader, Bugti, is a case in point: Pakistan is in an uproar and calling for his resignation.
Why would the axis-of-evil crusaders want to destabilize a crucial ally? They don't "want" to, but they have bigger plans.
The US has three military bases in Baluchistan. They say they are fighting Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the region. Perhaps. But, Baluchistan borders with Iran to the west. Baluchistan, too, is rich in natural gas and minerals. China is helping the Pakistani government to build a natural gas pipeline from Baluchistan's port of Gwadar to China, a project the Bush administration opposes. The port of Gwadar just happens to be geographically located to overlook the Straits of Hormuz, which the Iranians intend to block if they are attacked. Hormuz is the crucial sea route for internatinal oil distribution.
Coincidence that the US should be interested in "terrorism" in Baluchistan and urging Musharraf to be more zealous at the same time that it is planning an attack on Iran?
An article by the Carnegie Endowment entertains the same thought, albeit to deny it: "The Baluch and the Pakistani think that Washington would like to use Baluchistan as a rear-guard base for an attack on Iran, and Iran is suspected of supporting Baluch [independence] activists in order to counter such a Pakistani-US plot. . . . Some Pakistanis perceive the US using its Greater Middle East initiative to dismantle the major Muslim states and redefine the borders of the region. Some Baluch nationalists charge the US with conspiring with the Pakistani government to put an end to Baluch claims. So far nobody has been able to prove any of these accusations."
No? No matter, the Iranians have been mining their side of the Baluch borders, just in case, and Bugti, Baluch independence leader, has been killed by the diplomatically besieged Musharraf, catapulting the country into a political crisis.
Coincidence? Or are plans for an Iranian attack well on the way?
I remind you that Seymour Hersh, in The New Yorker, has confirmed that US commandos have launched penetration initiatives across Pakistani Baluchistan into Iran.
Notes
[1] Bomb blast damages Pakistani government build amid protests over tribal chief's killing, International Herald Tribune, 27 Aug. 2006
Bugti's killing is like the hanging of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, New Kerala, 27 Aug. 2006
Pak Oppn slams govt. for Bugti killing, The Hindu, 29 Aug. 2006
In the afterlight of the Bugti episode, Dawn, 29 Aug. 2006
[2] Pakistan: The Resurgence of Baluch Nationalism, Carnegie Endowment, 26 Jan. 2006
Luciana Bohne teaches film and literature at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. She can be reached at lbohne@edinboro.edu.
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