US troops raid Iranian consulate in Northern Iraq

Seymour Hersh, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

"Don't bet against him." Investigative journalist Sy Hersh on why we should take Bush's stated desire to attack Iran seriously, despite the superficial craziness of the plan.

US troops raided the Iranian consulate in Northern Iraq. The Americans are holding six Iranian officials for questioning. [CNN]

The U.S. official would not identify the Iranian officials or say why they were being questioned.

In an earlier statement, the U.S. military said the individuals were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraqi and coalition forces" and that their arrests came "without incident."

It's surely not a coincidence that Bush railed against Iranians and Syrians who were allegedly helping Iraqi insurgents. Iran is a convenient dual scapegoat for the debacle in Iraq. First of all, Iranian interference helps explains why Iraq is such a disaster. Second, the alleged problem of Iranian interference suggests a solution near and dear to Bush's heart: Attacking Iran. It's too soon to tell, but I really wonder if Bush isn't determined to go double or nothing.

Comments

[Doyle Saylor]

If a regional war is started, some people think Turkey and Pakistan are likely to be pulled in. The U.S. needs allies in this all against all scenario. So, India? That is tantamount to world war.

So it seems to me this time, we have a little bit of time before things are beyond redemption. This is the moment to build a movement if there ever was one. Being anti-war is just a part of the price to pay for Bush's ambition. There are consequences that require the political defeat of the right so that civil national policies can reflect the good of the people of the United States. That means a movement is not about stopping a vast escalation of war, it is about a very serious movement coming into being. Now.
Doyle

[Paul Hooson]

Iran and the U.S. have been involved in a low level war for some time in the MidEast since the Iraq War. The U.S. has been using a terrorist organization based in Iraq called the Mujahedine-e-Khalq(MEK) for information on the Iranian nuclear program. This organization has been offered support from both Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, but Condoleezza rice is very wary of this organization.

MEK was started as a Marxist/Islamist organization, but the U.S. has reportedly urged members to change their organization name and pledge support for democratic principles. But whether MEK members will really adhere to this or are just using the U.S. for their political goals remains to be seen. U.S. political use of Communist units is nothing new. In the the 1940's the U.S. backed the Vietminh Communists of Ho Chi Minh in the battle against the Japanese, and expected U.S. support against the French in the 1950's, but the U.S. then opposed the Communists. The French Resistance of WWII was heavily comprised of members of the French Communist Party, and was heavily supported by the U.S. and Britain. In Iraq, the Secretary Of The Iraqi Communist Party, an economist was made a junior partner by the U.S. in the temporary group of Iraqi leaders until a more permanent government of Ayad Allawi was formed until elections were held.

The U.S. has apparently armed these MEK forces. They are intended to be used as ground forces in the event of a U.S. attack on Iran. There was also a $92 million dollar covert program also begun by Bush in 2002 that trained and armed insurgent fighters to fight Saddam Hussein done through a military base in Hungary.Many of the Iraqi Shiite militia groups are some outgrowth of this, but Iran now is the main backer of some of these Shiite forces. The Shiite cleric Ali al-Sistani, the leader of the main Shiite coalition of candidates and parties was a long time resident of Iran and still has strong ties to the state.

By comparison, Iran is also well known for using their Iranian Embassy missions to direct terrorism. In NY for example, Iranian embassy staff photographed targets with high numbers of American civilians such as landmarks and supplied terrorist sleeper cells they have in the U.S. to strike against American civilians in retailiation for any U.S. attack on Iran. Iran has failed to maintain neutrality for their embassy staffs, and instead used these for direction of U.S. terrorism as an Iranian military weapons. In Iraq, Iranian backed fighters who were trained in Iranian military camps have planted IEDs that have taken many lives. Iranian troops have assisted Hezbollah in Lebanon as well, and Iranian soldiers fired a antiship missile that badly damaged an Israeli ship.

With mutual low level warfare between Iran and the U.S., about all this is missing is a formal declaration of war against the other. Hundreds of lives have been lost on both sides so far, making peaceful negotiations very difficult.

[Doyle Saylor]

some analysis by Juan Cole:
The most strident complaints about Iranian aid to Peshmerga and Badr come from the Sunni Arab political leaders. One wonders if this is a last gift to them by Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad before he goes out, and a sign that the US is trying to get them back to the negotiating table?

Doyle,
apparently this Kurdistan region is allied to Iran. And that Iran funnels money from there to the SCIRI in Iraq known as the BADR army as opposed to Sadr's army.

The tone of Cole's comments are cool. He isn't hopping around about the Consulate invasion. But he does give details about what it means that the NYTimes is not giving out.
Doyle

[Doyle Saylor]

Paul writes;
The U.S. has apparently armed these MEK forces.

Doyle;
The MEK is interesting because most of their soldiers are females.

Low intensity warfare in the background is not the same as breaching a consulate. The international community will recognize it for what it is: A very serious war provocation by the U.S. You seem to think declaring war is just a triviality since it's been going on for awhile. That's ignoring what Lindsay quoted Sy Hersh point. The provocation is meant to make war overt, but if ignored in the national media (lacking an anti war constituency) can make Iran look aggressive if Iran responds.

If this doesn't lead to a war escalation it would be strictly because Iran was somehow able to keep back from doing something that could be made a reason to retaliate against Iran by the U.S. military. The U.S. is probably looking for even the tiniest retaliation against U.S. troops to signal overt war.
Doyle

[Eric Jaffa]

re "US troops raided the Iranian consulate in Northern Iran." It's northern Iraq.