US-Iran Relations

The tension is building between the US and Iran, and Iraqi officials are understandably concerned that a deterioration of relations between the US and Iran will aggravate problems in Iraq. How far will the US go in stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions, and how will it affect Iraq? What will the Iraqi government's reaction be if the US strikes Iranian nuclear facilities?

I watched a History Channel special on Iran (Iran: The Next Iraq?) last night and I was shocked to learn that Iranians chant 'death to America' every Friday after prayers. It has been 27 years since the Islamic Revolution, and Iranian grievances against the US are not without legitimacy, but death to America every Friday after prayer? I can understand why US officials would be so concerned about Iranian intentions. When discussing US-Iranian relations, Americans must note US culpability in creating enemies in Iran. How long did the US government and the Shah believe that Iranians would be obedient and mostly poor while the Shah and his entourage lived lavishly and bought billions of dollars in US weapons? The History Channel special I watched last night reviewed the Iran-Iraq war and explained that Khomeini believed that the US alone was the reason Iran had not been able to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein, and they did a good job of briefly reviewing the glory of the Persian Empire, but they did not discuss the CIA's activities in overthrowing the popularly elected Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953.


Iraqi Shiite Calls for U.S.-Iran Talks

By NAZILA FATHI
Published: February 6, 2007

TEHRAN, Feb. 5 — A senior Iraqi Shiite leader said Monday that his country had urged Iran to hold talks with the United States and that such talks were important for the security of the region.

“Given the special conditions in the region, talks between the United States and Iran are of the utmost importance,” Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, said at a news conference in Tehran after meeting with the chief of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani according to the ISNA news agency.

“Negotiations between Iran and the United States are useful for the whole region,” added Mr. Hakim, who lived in exile in Iran during Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq and who has close ties with Iranian leaders. But Mr. Hakim said he did not have any specific messages on the subject.

Other Iraqi officials have also urged Iran to hold talks with the United States. Iran has said it is open to the idea. The United States has refused to hold direct talks with Iran over Iraq or over Iran’s nuclear program.

Is Bush Admin Lying About Iran?

This is interesting. Apparently Dick Cheney and his pals have been spreading rumors that Iran is arming the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iran arming Al Qaeda type groups doesn't make sense. Last week Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeil, finally denied the allegations. Kudos to Gates and McNeil - I respect honesty. I love a country where Generals and Defense Secretaries are free to contradict the Vice President. Saddam Hussein would have had his General's arms broken, or worse.

Cheney’s Iran-Arms-to-Taliban Gambit Rebuffed
by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - A media campaign portraying Iran as supplying arms to the Taliban guerrillas fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, orchestrated by advocates of a more confrontational stance toward Iran in the George W. Bush administration, appears to have backfired last week when Defence Secretary Robert Gates and the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeil, issued unusually strong denials.

The allegation that Iran has reversed a decade-long policy and is now supporting the Taliban, conveyed in a series of press articles quoting “senior officials” in recent weeks, is related to a broader effort by officials aligned with Vice President Dick Cheney to portray Iran as supporting Sunni insurgents, including al Qaeda, to defeat the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

An article in the Guardian published May 22 quoted an anonymous U.S. official as predicting an “Iranian-orchestrated summer offensive in Iraq, linking al Qaeda and Sunni insurgents to Tehran’s Shia militia allies” and as referring to the alleged “Iran-al Qaeda linkup” as “very sinister”.

That article and subsequent reports on CNN May 30, in the Washington Post Jun. 3 and on ABC news Jun. 6 all included an assertion by an unnamed U.S. official or a “senior coalition official” that Iran is following a deliberate policy of supplying the Taliban’s campaign against U.S., British and other NATO forces.

In the most dramatic version of the story, ABC reported “NATO officials” as saying they had “caught Iran red-handed, shipping heavy arms, C4 explosives and advanced roadside bombs to the Taliban for use against NATO forces.”

Far from showing that Iran had been “caught red-handed”, however, the report quoted from an analysis which cited only the interception in Afghanistan of a total of four vehicles coming from Iran with arms and munitions of Iranian origin. The report failed to refer to any evidence of Iranian government involvement.

Both Gates and McNeill denied flatly last week that there is any evidence linking Iranian authorities to those arms. Gates told a press conference on Jun. 4, “We do not have any information about whether the government of Iran is supporting this, is behind it, or whether it’s smuggling, or exactly what is behind it.” Gates said that “some” of the arms in question might be going to Afghan drug smugglers.

The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. McNeill, implied that the arms trafficking from Iran is being carried out by private interests. “[W]hen you say weapons being provided by Iran, that would suggest there is some more formal entity involved in getting these weapons here,” he told Jim Loney of Reuters June 5. “That’s not my view at all.”

Continued

The ties that bind Iraq and Iran

'Iran and Iraq also have a unique relationship with each other. The neighbors hold regular security meetings, underlining their ongoing ties. Meanwhile, the Pentagon accuses Iran of supplying militias in Iraq with improvised explosive devices — particularly the especially lethal armor-piercing variety.

Given that Iran is predominantly Shiite and now ruled by a theocratic government, in contrast to Iraq where Sunnis, until the U.S. invasion, long ruled the Shiite majority, the schism between the major branches of Islam has played a major role in relations between the countries. This split dates back to disputes over the succession to the Prophet Mohammed. For the Shiites, Mohammed's son-in-law Ali was the rightful heir to the Prophet, while the Sunnis followed his father-in-law Abu Bakr, who became the first Caliph.

And while ethnically and linguistically distinct — Iran’s population is predominantly Persian and Farsi-speaking, while Iraq’s is dominated by Arabic-speaking Arabs — the two share an intertwining history and a border spanning about 1,000 miles.

Different but next door

The history of Iran, formerly known as Persia, spans many centuries. Its rulers battled the ancient Greeks and its series of empires have stretched as far as western and central Asia and the Caucasus Mountains.

In contrast, Iraq as part of the larger Arab "nation" has been a recognized and distinct country for a much shorter time. Even so, the area known for centuries in Europe as Mesopotamia has in the region been referred to as al-‘Iraq — the shore of a great river and the grazing land around it — since about the eighth century.

Sunni vs. Shiite

It has been Iraq’s fate to be caught in the middle between Persia and subsequent competing powers, according to Middle East expert Dr. Jubin Goodarzi, the author of the "Syria and Iran: Diplomatic Alliance and Power Politics in the Middle East."

“Both during the Romans and the Ottomans, Iraq became a battleground of empires," he says.

An important turning point for both came in 1501 when Shiite Islam became the state religion in Persia (Shiite Islam is distinct from the religion’s other major branch, Sunni Islam). Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, two of Shiite Islam’s most important centers, for which Iran pays for much of the upkeep, are still visited by thousands of Iranian pilgrims and clerics every year, as well as local Iraqi Shiites.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, Iraq became part of the Sunni Ottoman Empire, which stood in contrast to Persia’s Shiite one. Ottoman control over Iraq waxed and waned over the centuries but was finally relinquished in the years following the end of World War I in 1918 and the empire’s subsequent dismantlement. While Iraq was considered a backwater province during Ottoman times, Sunnis were elevated as the local ruling class. The British followed suit.

The victorious European powers carved up Ottoman holdings, with the British occupying the cities of Baghdad, Mosul and Basra in Iraq. In 1920, the League of Nations granted the United Kingdom the mandate for Iraq, and borders were drawn between the countries with little consideration to the communities being split up by them. Subsequent revolts were suppressed and Prince Faisal bin Husain al-Hashemi was placed on the throne within two years.

In 1932, the League of Nations granted Iraq its independence, although Britain left Iraq’s Sunnis very much in charge.

Path to revolution

During World War I, Persia was the scene of intense fighting despite having declared its neutrality, and the decades between the wars were also defined by great political tumult. By 1941, by which time it had changed its name to Iran, the country had sided with the Axis powers, leading to a brief Anglo-Russian occupation of the country at the end of the war.

Its great size, natural resources and, especially, its strategic position on the Caspian Sea ensured that Iran would be a battleground between the Soviet Union and the United States early on in the Cold War.

In 1950, nationalist Mohammad Mossadeq became prime minister of Iran, which led to tension with pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who fled the country to Iraq in 1953. Later that same year, the intelligence services of Britain and the United States, which feared that Tehran might turn toward Moscow during that crucial stage of the Cold War, helped engineer a coup that deposed Mossadeq and reinstalled the shah.

While there was some tension between Iran and Iraq in the 1940s and 1950s, the countries were mostly governed by conservative, pro-Western regimes.

That changed dramatically in 1958 when a military coup deposed Iraq’s monarchy and established a republic. The secular Sunni government became a center of Arab nationalism, and in the following years struggled to grapple with and suppress its Kurdish minority and largely disenfranchised Shiite majority. Iran maintained ties to both restive groups during this time.

1979: A catalyst

The year 1979 was momentous for both Iraq and Iran. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein consolidated his rule of the Baath Party in a bloody putsch that eliminated possible competitors.

It was also the year that the shah and his family were forced into exile and the Iranian revolution installed a theocratic state led by Khomeini. Following the abduction of 52 American hostages in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the country found itself largely isolated internationally. (The hostages were released after 444 days.)

The toppling of the shah’s secular, pro-Western regime had a major impact not only on Iran’s standing in the world but also its relations with Iraq.

“The Iranian revolution was a catalyst, and it changed the equation overnight,” says Goodarzi. Saddam benefitted by convincing the West that he was a follower of the foreign policy doctrine that "my enemy’s enemy is my friend" and shored up support for his rule internationally.

From that time on the relationship between the two countries was defined by Iraq's Baathist secular Sunni government versus Iran's theocratic Shiite one, he says, although several events paved the way to hostilities breaking out.

In 1980, an Iran-backed militant Shiite group tried to kill Iraq's foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, and was suspected of trying to kill the minister of culture and information. The response was swift and ruthless: more than 40,000 Shiites of Iranian origin were deported. The government later executed Shiite religious leader Ayatollah Sayyid Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr, and his sister, Bint al-Huda.

During this time, Saddam tried and failed to sever the close ties between the religious hubs of Najaf and Karballah in Iraq and Qom in Iran.'

Are US Officials lying about who's killing US troops?

Juan Cole's take (thanks AfghanShia!) on US allegations that high tech bombs supplied to Shia militias by Iran have been responsible for a quarter of US troop deaths between October and December 2006:

Sunday, February 11, 2007

NYT Falls for Bogus Iran Weapons Charges
Completely Implausible Numbers are Thrown Around
Repeat of Judy Miller Scandal

This NYT article depends on unnamed USG sources who alleged that 25 percent of US military deaths and woundings in Iraq in October-December of 2006 were from explosively formed penetrator bombs fashioned in Iran and given to Shiite militias:

' In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military officials say.'

This claim is one hundred percent wrong. Because 25 percent of US troops were not killed fighting Shiites in those three months. Day after day, the casualty reports specify al-Anbar Province or Diyala or Salahuddin or Babil, or Baghdad districts such as al-Dura, Ghaziliyah, Amiriyah, etc.--and the enemy fighting is clearly Sunni Arab guerrillas. And, Iran is not giving high tech weapons to Baathists and Salafi Shiite-killers. It is true that some casualties were in "East Baghdad" and that Baghdad is beginning to rival al-Anbar as a cemetery for US troops:

Robert Burns of AP observes,

"The increasingly urban nature of the war is reflected in the fact that a higher percentage of U.S. deaths have been in Baghdad lately. Over the course of the war through Feb. 6, at least 1,142 U.S. troops have died in Anbar province, the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency, according to an AP count. That compares with 713 in Baghdad. But since Dec. 28, 2006, there were more in Baghdad than in Anbar - 33 to 31."

Over all, only a fourth of US troops had been killed Baghdad (713 or 23.7 percent of about 3000) through the end of 2006. But US troops aren't fighting Shiites anyplace else-- Ninevah, Diyala, Salahuddin--these are all Sunni areas. For a fourth of US troops to be being killed or wounded by Shiite EFPs, all of the Baghdad deaths would have to be at the hands of Shiites!

The US military often does not announce exactly where in Baghdad a GI is killed and so I found it impossible to do a count of Sunni versus Shiite neighborhoods. But we know that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was running interference for the Mahdi Army last fall, and it seems unlikely to me that very many US troops died fighting Shiites in Baghdad. The math of Gordon's article does not add up at all if this were Shiite uses of Iran-provided EFPs.

So the unnamed sources at the Pentagon are reduced to implying that Iran is giving sophisticated bombs to its sworn enemies and the very groups that are killing its Shiite Iraqi allies every day. Get real!

Moreover, there is no evidence of Iranian intentions to kill US troops. If Iran was giving EFPs to anyone, it was to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its Badr Corps paramilitary, for future use. SCIRI is the main US ally in Iraq aside from the Kurds. I don't know of US troops killed by Badr, certainly not any time recently.

It is far more likely that corrupt arms merchants are selling and smuggling these things than that there is direct government- to- militia transfer. It is possible that small Badr Corps stockpiles were shared or sold. That wouldn't have been Iran's fault.

Some large proportion of US troops being killed in Iraq are being killed with bullets and weapons supplied by Washington to the Iraqi army, which are then sold by desperate or greedy Iraqi soldiers on the black market. This problem of US/Iraqi government arms getting into the hands of the Sunni Arab guerrillas is far more significant and pressing than whatever arms smugglers bring in from Iran.

We now know that Iran came to the US early in 2003 with a proposal to cooperate with Washington in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and that VP Richard Bruce Cheney rebuffed it. The US could have had Iran on its side in Iraq!

The attempt to blame these US deaths on Iran is in my view a black psy-ops operation. The claim is framed as though this was a matter of direct Iranian government transfer to the deadliest guerrillas. In fact, the most fractious Shiites are the ones who hate Iran the most. If 25 percent of US troops are being killed and wounded by explosively formed projectiles, then someone should look into who is giving those EFPs to Sunni Arab guerrillas. It isn't Iran.

Finally, it is obvious that if Iran did not exist, US troops would still be being blown up in large numbers. Sunni guerrillas in al-Anbar and West Baghdad are responsible for most of the deaths. The Bush administration's talent for blaming everyone but itself for its own screw-ups is on clear display here.

For more skepticism, see this column at Huffington.

Would Iran feel threatened by tripling of oil output from Iraq?

By Michael Christie and Simon Webb

BAGHDAD/DUBAI, Dec 9 (Reuters) - The geopolitical power balance in the Middle East faces upheaval if Iraq succeeds in tripling oil output, and fellow Shi'ite power Iran will feel more threatened than rival Sunni oil giant Saudi Arabia.

Iraq's potential leap into the ranks of the top three global oil producers could result in a strengthened Shi'ite Muslim front within OPEC if Baghdad aligns supply policy with Tehran.

That would rattle Riyadh, already suspicious of the rise to political supremacy of Iraq's Shi'ite majority since the fall of Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein. Disunity within OPEC could increase, undermining efforts to present an image of harmony.

But oil development in Iraq is more likely to feed tensions with Iran, draw away potential foreign investment from Iraq's neighbour and fuel social discord by depriving Tehran of much-needed money should it result in lower oil prices.

Revenue from the additional 4.5 million or more barrels per day that Iraq is hoping to pump could also give it the economic might to challenge Iran's influence over the Shi'ite world.

"Iraq's development is inevitable," said analyst Gala Riana of IHS Global Insight. "The changes in the balance of power won't be immediate, they are longer term and bring difficulties that Iraq and surrounding countries will need to deal with."

OIL INVESTMENT

Both Iraq and Iran need huge investment in their dilapidated oil industries. Iraq's opening to global energy firms, albeit on tough terms, gives it the edge in attracting the billions it needs to execute oilfield development of an unprecedented scale.

That would make it harder for Tehran to attract the cash it needs at a time when the Iranian state is already under enormous social and political pressure following the contested re-election of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Even worse, Chinese state energy giants are participating in Iraq, leaving them less resources for elsewhere. Tehran has turned to Asian state firms for money and technology as Western companies have shunned it due to politics and sanctions.

"Why would you want to invest in Iran? It's very risky. You have the sanctions and the politics. If you're in Iraq, you would want to limit your exposure to another risky country in the region," said a senior western oil executive.

Iran could well become the destination for those that lose out in Iraq's oil auctions, he added.

If all of the contracts Baghdad is offering are signed, Iraq could boost its output capacity to 10 million bpd - rivalling Saudi Arabia's 12.5 million bpd and Russia's 10 million bpd, and leapfrogging over Iran, which says it can pump 4.2 million bpd.

Iran is more dependent than top oil exporter Saudi Arabia on high oil prices to finance social spending programmes. Higher output from Iraq would be bearish in the long term for the oil price and could also claw away market share from others.

"Another price downturn like that of last winter would really put the squeeze on the Iranian government, already suffering unpopularity from economic mismanagement, as well as the obvious political problems stemming from the election," said David Mack, a former U.S. envoy to the Middle East.

UNDER SWAY OF ARCH-FOE?

Saudi Arabia will watch the rise of Iraqi oil power and its relationship with Tehran with caution. Dominated by the puritanical Wahhabi sect, many of whose adherents view Shi'ites as apostates, Riyadh regards Persian Iran as its arch-foe.

But analysts say the view that post-Saddam Iraq is under the sway of Iran is often overstated.

Many of Iraq's Shi'ite leaders sought shelter in Tehran under Saddam, but Iraqi nationalism runs strong, as do memories of the 8-year Iran-Iraq war that killed a million people.

Even if a general election next year ushers in an overtly pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, the impact that increased Iraqi oil output might have on economic and political tensions inside Iran may drive the two neighbours apart, analysts say.

Ultimately, staunch U.S. ally Saudi Arabia would rather see a developing and prosperous Iraq than a country that serves as a base for al Qaeda. The kingdom has become entangled in neighbour Yemen's internal conflict and deepening instability.

"It's in our interest that Iraq emerges stable, we don't want another Yemen," said one Saudi official. "If Iraq becomes a regional economic power, that will help the Saudi economy." (Additional reporting by Rania El Gamal in Kuwait; editing by James Jukwey)

The Islamic Revolution in the Middle East

The BBC World Service has concluded a three part documentary titled Iran and the West: From Khomeini to Ahmedinejad. It is a very informative documentary. Part 3 reveals that Iran under Khatami and the US worked together to set up a new government in Afghanistan in late 2001. After this cooperation, George Bush labeled Iran as part of the "Axis of Evil" in January, 2002, which damaged relations between the two countries. In 2003 Khatami again offered to cooperate with America, this time with Iraq and Hizballah. But Bush's conservative administration did not want to do business openly with the Islamic Republic, whose conception was marked by the Iranian students' taking hostage of 53 Americans for more than a year.

It has been more than 30 years since Iranians voted to become an Islamic Republic. Khomeini and his crew of Islamic scholars reversed the Shah's westernization of Iran and ended 2,500 of monarchy in Iran. Clerics in Qum began imposing their version of the hijab on all Iranian women, including in Tehran, where women had enjoyed many years of secular law. Many gay Iranians have been sentenced to death and hung in public. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians have fled Iran over the three decades.

One would think the Arab world, especially Saudi Arabia and other religious Gulf countries would embrace the new Islamic Republic. But the opposite happened, and a war between Saddam's Iraq and Khomeini's Iran would be funded by the oil-rich Sunni Arab Gulf states and would result in the deaths of a million people. The influence of Islam, however, would spread beyond Iran, and the relationship of each Arab country with the US would take a different and unique direction.

The governments of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia would cozy up to the US government and pay for American protection from Iran, and later from Saddam, and then from Iran again. Sunni Arab rulers have feared Iran's Islamic Revolution and have purchased billions of dollars in US weapons to defend themselves and have portrayed the Shia as infidels.

Despite their human rights record, the relationship between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the US government has been relatively stable since the end of the oil embargo in 1974, and the two governments worked together to fund and adequately weaponize the mujahideen in Afghanistan in order to expel the Soviet invaders. The Saudis also funded the building of hundreds of Wahhabi mosques and madrasas in Afghanistan and Pakistan throughout the 80s and 90s.

In 1992, angered by the presence of infidel American soldiers in the birthplace of Islam, bin Ladin moved to Sudan and from there he began planning attacks on American soldiers. Al Qaeda was born.

'On December 29, 1992, al-Qaeda's first terrorist attack took place as two bombs were detonated in Aden, Yemen. The first target was the Movenpick Hotel and the second was the parking lot of the Goldmohur Hotel.

The bombings were an attempt to eliminate American soldiers on their way to Somalia to take part in the international famine relief effort, Operation Restore Hope. Internally, al-Qaeda considered the bombing a victory that frightened the Americans away, but in the United States the attack was barely noticed.

No Americans were killed because the soldiers were staying in a different hotel altogether, and they went on to Somalia as scheduled. However little noticed, the attack was pivotal as it was the beginning of al-Qaeda's change in direction, from fighting armies to killing civilians.[88] Two people were killed in the bombing, an Australian tourist and a Yemeni hotel worker. Seven others, mostly Yemenis, were severely injured.'

In March, 2001, in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, the Taliban blew up 1,700-year-old sandstone statues of Buddha, believing them to encourage idol worship, which is forbidden by Islam. On September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda hijacked United Airlines and American Airlines planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing almost 3,000 people. 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi.

Islamic rule in the Arabian peninsula had been the norm for centuries: “The kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] is an authoritarian monarchy in which all political power is held by the royal family and in which the Koran and the Sunna (rules derived from the deeds and sayings of the prophet Mohammed) serve as the country's constitution. All Saudis are required by law to be Muslims, and the government prohibits the public practice of any religions other than Islam. Women, like this one at a trade fair in Riyadh, are forbidden from driving, receive half the inheritance awarded to their brothers, and find their testimony equal to half that of a man's in sharia courts.”

But the wave of modernization throughout the world and the liberalization that swept the Americas and Europe in the 50s and 60s also reached North Africa, the Levant, Baghdad, and Tehran. Few women in Cairo wore hijab in the 60s. The photo below shows how Iraqi women dressed in the late 60s.



The result of the last war between the Arab states and Israel in 1973 compelled many Arabs to turn to Islam. In Iran the belief that Islamic rule would end poverty and outside influence was very popular. A reversal of the trend towards secularization in the Middle East began. Khomeini’s revolution was the catalyst in a reaction that could not be easily reversed. It is as if the Sunni Arabs were competing with Iran in becoming more Islamic. Cairo and Tehran are very different from each other, but both capital cities have become more conservative.

By 2000, most women in Cairo wore some sort of hijab, and Muslim societies, especially in the Middle East, became more conservative, often striving to be fundamentalist. The entrenching of Islam in Iraq was inevitable, given the circumstances during the war with Iran, and then especially during sanctions, when even educated Iraqis struggled to survive. The US meant to punish Saddam, but indirectly punished the Iraqi people instead. The ostensible alliance between the US and KSA and the Gulf states, however, would continue.

Two years ago, at the height of the sectarian violence in Iraq that Saudis participated in, the US offered to sell Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states $20 billion in weapons. With typical ineptitude that made Dubya infamous, "the administration did not seek specific assurances from Saudi Arabia that it would be more supportive of the U.S. effort in Iraq, the officials said.

According to the officials, the plan to bolster the military might of Gulf countries is part of a U.S. strategy to contain the growing power of Iran and to demonstrate that, no matter what happens in Iraq, Washington remains committed to its longtime Arab allies in the region."

And so the irony and hypocrisy continue.

Today the Islamic revolution in the Middle East is in disarray. In Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, those who sought to impose their version of Islam have been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Muslims. Al Qaeda has nothing to offer Iraqis except death and threats of death.

After the fall of Saddam's secular regime, Jaish al Mahdi and the Iranian-influenced Badr seemed only to be competing with Al Qaeda in terms of imposing their respective views of Islam on the Iraqi people, often attacking Iraqi women for not wearing hijab. The more moderate Da3wa party have gained power through democratic elections in Baghdad, but have been unable to pull Iraq from the grips of poverty, war, and sectarianism. The new Iraqi security forces have relied heavily on American military support for their survival. Corruption and murder have plagued Maliki's government.

It seems that nothing good has come out of the Islamic Revolution.

After the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmedinijad, many Iranians protested, and the legitimacy of the Iranian regime appears to be in jeopardy. Iranians shouted "Allah Akbar" every night for weeks after the election, reminding all that God is above Khameini and Ahmedinejad. Shouting "Allah Akbar" also reminds us that Iranians are still pious Muslims. Leaders like Mossavi and Khatami may not be as liberal as westerners would like them to be, but they are more moderate and sensible than Khameini. The Iranian people will continue their protests, and hopefully the Iranian people will soon get the democracy and justice they deserve. Maybe then there will be reconciliation between Iran and the US, which may lead to a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Insha Allah.

Iran Must Stop Meddling in Iraq

US officials suspect Iran of supplying weapons and explosives to insurgents in Iraq. Unfortunately this has only fueled the sectarian conflict and prolonged the occupation of Iraq. I wonder to what extent Iran has aided Sunni Arab insurgents.

US Officials: Iran Caught Red-Handed

Evidence Said to Show Iran Supplying Weapons to Iraqi Enemies of US
Posted 1 hr. 58 min. ago
By Hossam al-Shahmani

Baghdad, Feb 11, (VOI) – Iran is fanning the flames of sectarian violence and backing killings and attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, a spokesman for the Multi-National Force in Iraq (MNF-I) said on Sunday. "We have evidence that Iran provided insurgents with explosive devices and trained them to use these weapons, produced between 2004 and 2006," William Caldwell said in a press conference in Baghdad.

"The Iranian suspects detained in Arbil have confirmed these reports and we have found with them maps and explosives-related material. Those Iranians were trying to get rid of these documents in the lavatories," Caldwell added.

He said "the Iraqi government has notified us that they (the Iranians) were not diplomats and had no passports."

"Iran's refrain from smuggling weapons and money would not end the sectarian problem in Iraq but would lessen it because Iran is stirring sectarian sentiments and violence while the Iraqi people want to live in peace and security," said Caldwell. On U.S. moves against Iran under the claims that it backs violence, Caldwell said "we're moving now because the U.S. casualties resulting from explosive devices, which did not exist in Iraq before, were growing in number."

Caldwell noted that these explosive charges increased casualties among MNF-I troops during the past months to 170 in addition to 700 others injured. Caldwell, in the press conference attended by a U.S. army explosives expert and a U.S. Defense Department analyst, demonstrated samples of various weapons including explosive charges, booby traps, mortar shells of different calibers, remote controls and IDs of Iranians he said were involved in acts of violence and attacks in Iraq.

The U.S. analyst said "Iranian weapons were experimented in South Lebanon by Hezbollah and were later developed," adding "the explosive charges used by Iranian agents in Iraq need a special manufacturing process, which is available only in Iran."

The U.S. analyst added that the electronic device used in detonating it is using negative infrared ray.

The U.S. explosives expert, in the rank of major, said the devices found contain iron shrapnel that penetrate the body of Hummer vehicles.

Did Jimmy Carter lose Iran?

I'm watching "Presidents: 1977 - Present" on History Channel. Carter's image was damaged after the failed mission to rescue American hostages in Iran. I was interested in how Jimmy Carter reacted to the failed mission and whether he addressed the nation. I found his statement here and learned that Carter addressed the nation on April 25, 1980 to discuss the rescue mission.

Then I found Carter's statement on YouTube. One of the comments is by a "rsharif" (probably Iranian American) who wrote "Thank you Jimmy Carter for removing the Shah of Iran and replacing him with the Islamic republic of Iran." The comment has a rating of +7 even though it makes no sense.

I found this concise summary:

Ever since oil was discovered there in 1908, Iran had attracted great interest from the West. The British played a dominant role there until World War II, when the Soviet Union joined them in fighting to keep the Germans out. Until 1953, the United States mostly stayed on the sidelines, advocating for an independent Iran under the leadership of the young king, Reza Shah Pahlavi. But that year, fearing that charismatic prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh might be moving Iran closer to Moscow, the CIA directed an operation to oust him and consolidate power under the Shah.

With a steady flow of oil from the ground and military equipment from the U.S., the Shah led Iran into a period of unprecedented prosperity. But growing resentment against an uneven distribution of wealth and the westernizing influence of the United States led to a confrontation with Islamic clergy in 1963. The Shah effectively put down the uprising, sending its leader, an elderly cleric named Ruhollah Khomeini, into exile in Iraq. Though no one knew it at the time, Iran's Islamic revolution had begun.

The Iranian Revolution

Fast forward to New Years Eve, 1977: President Carter toasted the Shah at a state dinner in Tehran, calling him "an island of stability" in the troubled Middle East. What the president also knew, but chose to ignore, was that the Shah was in serious trouble. As opposition to his government mounted, he had allowed his secret police, SAVAK, to crack down on dissenters, fueling still more resentment. Within weeks of Carter's visit, a series of protests broke out in the religious city of Qom, denouncing the Shah's regime as "anti-Islamic." The popular movement against the Shah grew until January 16, 1979, when he fled to Egypt. Two weeks later, thousands of Muslims cheered Khomeini's return to Iran after fourteen years in exile.

Did the Carter administration "lose" Iran, as some have suggested? Gaddis Smith might have put it best: "President Carter inherited an impossible situation -- and he and his advisers made the worst of it." Carter seemed to have a hard time deciding whether to heed the advice of his aggressive national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wanted to encourage the Shah to brutally suppress the revolution, or that of his more cautious State Department, which suggested Carter reach out to opposition elements in order to smooth the transition to a new government. In the end he did neither, and suffered the consequences.

Iraq's neighbors a "lurking menace"

But Iraq must talk to them and try to be "neighborly" with them, and the US must help. David Ignatius writes:

The Baker-Hamilton recommendations are mostly forgotten, swept away by President George W. Bush's 2007 surge of U.S. troops. That certainly improved security, but the recent bombings in Iraq are a reminder that the surge didn't usher in a new era of peace and love. Political reconciliation is still more slogan than reality -- and the neighbors are more a lurking menace than Baghdad's partners.

He is certainly right. Let's review the list of Iraq's neighbors:

Turkey

Lying to the north of Iraq, Turkey has been the least menacing. Turkey has enjoyed good relations with Israel, Europe, and the US. Turkey has a robust tourism industry, and they've been able to contain extremists and provide relatively good security. But in Turkey, you may be arrested for teaching or studying Kurdish. Recently Turkey has bombed Kurdish militia inside Iraq, and most worrying, the Turks have dammed the Tigris and Euphrates at several places, squeezing Iraq's historically life-sustaining rivers and resulting in more severe droughts in Iraq. But in a country that has experienced at least 1,200 suicide bombings in the last 6 years, Turkey's offenses seem minor.

Iran (aka Persia)

Going clockwise on the map, we see Iran to the east, which shares 1,458 kilometers of border with Iraq. Persia occupied the land between two rivers for almost two centuries, and in 539 BC, Cyrus of Persia sacked Babylon and freed the Jews.

It can be argued that Iran has had the greatest influence on Iraq, especially since the rise of Khomeini and his Islamic Revolution. In 1965 Khomeini moved to Najaf, home of the Imam Ali shrine, and there he lectured and instilled in young Shia the notion of Islamic revolution and Islamic government. By the late 60s he became a marja taqlid or "model for imitation" for hundreds of thousands of Shia. By 1975 support for Khomeini the leader of the Islamic Revolution had grown in Iran and among the Iraqi Shia. The Ayatollah was forced out of Iraq by Iraqi VP Saddam Hussein in 1978, and in January 1979 the Shah left Iran. The following month Khomeini moved back to Iran and became the first Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, changing the course of history in the region for decades to come.

In the 70s in Iraq the Islamic Da3wa Party had gained popularity, and they too wanted an Islamic government, which put them at odds with the ruling Ba3ath Party and Saddam Hussein, who pushed aside his President-cousin Ahmed Hassan al Bakr and took control of Baghdad in 1979. By the summer of 1980, Saddam and his security apparatuses had murdered and expelled tens of thousands of Iraqi Shia and pushed Da3wa out of Iraq. In September 1980 Saddam's Iraq invaded Iran, beginning a horrible war that cost a million lives by 1988 and ruined the economies of both countries. In the 80s Iraqi Shia who were able fled by the hundreds of thousands to the US, Europe, and of course to Iran.

Today the Iranian influence in Iraq is even greater, with Da3wa in charge of Baghdad, Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council party garnering about 10% support among Iraqis, and with Muqtada al Sadr studying quietly in Qum in an effort to become the next big Ayotallah. Iran was happy to see the end of Saddam's dictatorship, but they did not want to see the the Iraq become a colony of the US. Instead, some Iraqis fear that Iraq will eventually become a colony of Iran.

Kuwait

In July 1990 I became a citizen of the United States of America. Less than one month after I became naturalized, Saddam's Iraq invaded Kuwait. After Bush Sr. crossed his line in the sand and built a case for war against Iraq, my father became afraid. For a while there my dad really thought I might be drafted, if it ever became a real war, which it never did become. It was interesting to see my father go through the effort to find out if I could ever be drafted into such a war. The answer was no, I couldn't be drafted because I could be considered an "conscientious objector". It turns out my help would not be required anyway, as the US military, with the help of the British and many Arab states, bombed Iraq into the Stone Age, and making life very difficult for Iraqis for many years to come.

On the face of it poor little Kuwait looks to be the least menacing of Iraq's neighbors. There are unknown numbers of Shia in Kuwait, and many of them are Iraqis who fled Saddam's tyranny. But Kuwait is ruled by a Sunni Arab family, and in general they were friendly with Saddam and shared his fear of Iran. So what happened to the love? Saddam invaded Kuwait because, basically, Kuwait was being a punk ass bitch (please pardon the vernacular), giving money (the Kuwaitis say loaning) to Saddam to fight Iran, and then after the war, after Iraq's economy was devastated, Kuwait produced oil way beyond their OPEC quota, and thus resulting in lower oil prices, which hurt Iraq's bottom line. The Iraqis also claimed Kuwait was slant-drilling into Iraq's oil field.

In the end Saddam invaded Kuwait and stole many of its riches and refused to leave Kuwait. However he intentionally kept his Republican Guard out of Kuwait, which was a wise move for him, because he would need them to put down the Shia rebellion after the war and keep himself in power. The allied forces, led by the US, pounded Iraq's army, first by 40 days of air strikes, and then by a ground invasion, killing tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, and accidentally, of course, killing thousands of Iraqi civilians. The Iraqi army was expelled from Kuwait, and on their way out of Iraq, Saddam had his guys burned nearly 700 Kuwaiti oil wells, creating a huge environmental disaster. The US military, led by Colin Powell and Norman Swartzkoff, won a quick war in Iraq and could have easily overthrown the Iraqi dictator, but in the end Bush decided to allow Saddam to live, and ordered US troops not to intervene in the Shia rebellion. It is said Bush's decision was influenced by the Saudis, who did not want to see the Shia take control of Iraq.

Today Kuwait has good relations with Iraq, and the two countries have restored diplomatic ties. Kuwait was the only non-Iraqi Arab country to support the American overthrow of Saddam. They understood Saddam's tyranny very well. But Kuwait still wants its money back, even though Iraq's debt to Kuwait was racked up by Saddam's regime, and many Wahhabi-influenced Kuwaitis have entered Iraq and mass murdered Iraqis since 2003.

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The Saudis, the founders of Wahhabism, have been a royal pain in Iraqis' asses for decades. An analysis in 2007 revealed that half of suicide bombers in Iraq came from Saudi Arabia. The majority of the hijackers on 9/11 (80%) were also Saudi. The two statistics, from two very different places, have one thing in common: Wahhabi terrorism.

KSA never wanted to see the Shia take control of Iraq, and they have ben the biggest funders of the insurgency in Iraq. The Saudis were also the biggest funders of the war between Iraq and Iran.



The Saudis did not want to see Saddam take control of Kuwait, but they did not want to see the Shia take control of Baghdad either. Thus the Saudi government, led by King Fahd, urged Bush Sr. to keep Saddam in power in 1991, and thus they funded the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq after 2003, their clerics preaching "resistance" against the "infidel" occupier and the "agents of Iran", this despite the presence of many Iranians, Arab Shia, and Americans in the Arabian peninsula. The US launched two wars on Iraq from CENTCOM in Doha, Qatar, but Qatar enjoys peace, even Starbucks, while Baghdad burns. Nevertheless the Wahhabis sent hundreds of brainwashed suicide bombers to Iraq, to murder mostly Iraqi Shia.

With full control of the oil that Saudi Shia live on and near, the Saudi royals are not interested in democracy, and they are not interested in restoring diplomatic ties with the new Iraq. “To isolate itself from Iraq, Saudi Arabia has signed a $1 billion contract with the European defense company EADS, for the construction of a 900-kilometer [562-mile] fence." Iraqis wait anxiously and hope the fence will protect them from the backward Wahhabi cultists.

Jordan

I've heard the weather in Amman is beautiful. In the summer of 1991 my mother and sister visited Amman to see my aunts and cousins who fled Iraq earlier that year. By 2000 approximately half of my relatives had fled the wars and tyranny of Saddam Hussein, starting new lives elsewhere, mostly in the UK. I don't understand why those refugees did not receive the same attention that our Arab brothers have paid to recent Iraqi refugees from the current war. Jordan deserves praise for accepting such a large number of refugees, and not just Iraqi. 60% of Jordan's population is of Palestinian descent. Twice there were large influxes of Palestinian refugees into Jordan - in 1948 and 1967. Also twice there were large influxes of Iraqi refugees - 1991-1992 and 2005-2007. Iraqi Baathists have fled to Amman in large numbers.

But there is a dark side to Jordan's relationship with Iraq. The person most responsible for inciting the sectarian violence in Iraq was a Jordanian terrorist named Abu Musab al Zarqawi. He was born and raised in Zarqa, not far from occupied Palestine. Even closer to occupied Palestine is the Jordanian town of Salt, whose deranged sons were compelled to join their mujahideen-brothers in Iraq, to attack the new Iraqi government and its security forces, and to participate in the most gruesome sectarian conflict the world has seen in decades.

The Jordanian government, to its credit, has fought extremists and has at times been at the receiving end of Salafi terrorists like Zarqawi, but in my opinion they have not done enough to fight extremist and backward ideology in their country. Honor killings are still common in Jordan, and when the killers are punished, they are in most cases not punished nearly severely enough.

Syria

Syria is an enigma. Its population is 80% Sunni Arab, but for decades it has been ruled by a Baathist Alawi family that has had cozy relations with Iran since the Islamic Revolution. Syria's alliance with Iran was the reason for the split between Saddam and Hafez al Assad. Recently I asked my cousin if Alawis are true Shia, and I asked him if they are true Shia, how could they allow so many "mujahideen" to enter Iraq via Damascus and cause so much death and destruction against their Shia brethren in Iraq? "NO" the Allawites are not true Shia, he said, and even if Assad wanted to prevent Baathists and Wahhabis from planning and coordinating in Damascus, he couldn't because most Syrians are Sunni Arab, and many of them have been influenced by Baathism or the Muslim Brotherhood and maybe Wahhabism. So it is even more ironic that Syria has been supported by Shia-dominated Iran.

Syria has been home to the largest number of Iraqi refugees since 2003, and although their existence in Syria has been relatively peaceful, many Iraqis in Damascus are worried about raised tensions between the two governments. Iraqi PM Maliki has blamed Damascus for the August 19 explosions in Baghdad. In the end, the Syrian regime may decide to normalize relations with Iraq at least for economic reasons.

This Ramadhan we have seen fewer violent deaths in Iraq than in previous years, but in general Iraqis continue to suffer as a result of sectarian conflicts than seem never to end. This year the average number of deaths per day from suicide attacks and vehicle bombs (7.8) is still higher than in 2004 (5.2), but the number of deaths per day from gunfire/executions is 4.6, the lowest since 2003. With continuing violence and an inept government in Baghdad that still cannot provide security or 24-hour a day electricity to all Iraqis, there's not much to cheer about in Iraq these days. Many Iraqis are looking forward to the crucial elections in January, and many are hoping for real change in Iraq.

US to Invade Iran?

I can't believe that Bush is even thinking about invading Iran.

Massive US Navy exercise continues off coast of Iran

ABOARD THE USS JOHN C STENNIS: US fighter jets battled imaginary enemy ships and aircraft off the coast of Iran yesterday during the second and final day of the largest US Navy exercise in the Arabian Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. US commanders said the maneuvers were not a direct response to Iran's seizure on Friday of 15 British sailors and Marines, but the parade of two aircraft carriers, 13 support ships and 125 aircraft only 42 miles off Iran's coast was clearly intended to send a message of US military prowess. Rear Admiral Kevin Quinn, commander of Strike Group Three, which includes the USS John C Stennis said the purpose of the exercises was to show "the commitment of the US to stability and security in the region." Commander Chris Rentfrow said that although the Iranians were watching, the operations had not elicited a reaction.

"Operations are pretty much normal," he said, "we've seen some activity from their patrol aircraft, which is entirely normal." The relationship between the US and Iran has grown increasingly strained in recent months over Iran's nuclear program and its alleged support for Shiite militias in Iraq.

Tensions increased even further after Friday, when Iranian forces captured 15 British sailors for allegedly entering Iranian territorial waters. US and British officials insist the team was operating under a UN mandate and with the permission of the Iraqi government to search cargo vessels inside Iraqi waters. Operations onboard the Stennis continued at breakneck pace yesterday as a mass of men and machines conducted their highly coordinated routine. Hundreds of sailors dressed in green, yellow and blue jackets to indicate their functions waved hand signals at each other to communicate through the noise. The smell of jet fuel permeated the air. With one final salute to the men and women on the deck, pilots catapulted off the carrier in waves, producing a shockwave strong enough to knock observers back a step. The deck of the USS Stennis is so large that two planes can land on it, and two can take off, simultaneously.

Captain Bradley Johanson, the commanding officer of the Stennis, said the carrier flew 84 missions with 64 aircraft on Tuesday. Another 79 sorties were planned.

Lieutenant Dennis Cox, who selects weapons for the jets, said he could feel the excitement in the air. "Today, I talked with a few of the crew, and they were flying double hops," he said. "This is fairly unusual. I could tell by the looks on their faces that they had a big day." The war games involve over 13,000 US personnel mounting simulated attacks on enemy aircraft and ships, while hunting submarines and looking for mines. US officials have made it clear that US warships would stay out of Iran's territorial waters, which extend 12 miles off the Iranian coast. The US drills were the latest in a series of competing American and Iranian war games in the region.

Iran conducted naval maneuvers in November and April, while in October the Navy led a training exercise aimed at blocking nuclear smuggling. The Stennis strike group, with more than 6,500 sailors and marines, entered the Gulf late Monday or early Tuesday along with the guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam, the Navy said. The Stennis, which had been supporting military operations in Afghanistan from the Arabian Sea, joined the strike group led by the Eisenhower. It is the first time two US aircraft carriers have operated in the Gulf since the US-led invasion of Iraq.

The Eisenhower was operating off the coast of Somalia in January and February. Ships from Bahrain's navy were also operating in the region during the exercise, but US and Bahraini officials denied they were taking part in the maneuvers. US commanders have said that none of America's naval coalition partners in the region joined the exercise. - AP

US Afraid of Iran (enough to arm KSA)

US has been covertly arming Gulf States since 2004, officials say
Larisa Alexandrovna
Published: Wednesday August 1, 2007

$20b arms sale to Saudi Arabia ‘done deal’

A recently disclosed US agreement with Saudi Arabia for a 10-year, $20 billion dollar arms sale is a “done deal,” according to intelligence officials and experts familiar with the negotiations.

Yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made a rare joint visit to Saudi Arabia to meet with members of the monarchy, as well as representatives of other Gulf States including the United Arab Emirates, to discuss a $20 billion dollar arms deal to deliver weapons, training, and weapons systems upgrades to Saudi Arabia over the next ten years. Although officially the meeting is to negotiate an agreement, sources have confirmed to RAW STORY that the deal has already been approved.

“It is a done deal. Everyone who needed to has already signed off,” said a former National Security Council official, who wished to remain anonymous given the security aspects of the topic. The deal also includes massive aid packages to Egypt and Israel, which have not yet been formally announced.

Arming the Gulf states

According to current and former intelligence officials, however, the Bush administration has been arming Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states covertly since “at least” 2004, a year after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March of 2003.

The GCC is a union of regional allies, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Created in 1981, it is similar in structure and purpose to the European Union.

Using backchannels and corporate partners, arms have been furnished to the Gulf states to beef up security against what the US sees as an increased risk posed by Iran. Along with sharing various resources, GCC members have agreed to jointly combine military forces.

According to the NSC official, the current Saudi deal serves two purposes, both of which are a direct result of the US-led war against Iraq and the regional instability it has caused. One is to support the Saudi rulers, while the other is to isolate Iran.

The most pressing concern for the Saudi royal family is their ability to maintain power. The Saudi royal family, who are Sunnis, see the election of Shi’a Muslim Nouri al-Maliki as Iraqi Prime Minister as a signal that the Shi’a state of Iran could become more powerful and threaten the sovereignty of the House of Saud. Beyond that, the royals also fear that their own people might overthrow the monarchy should instability in the region continue to worsen.

“The Saudis see Maliki as the cat’s paw of Iran and they think we are actively supporting Maliki,” the NSC official said. “What the monarchy is actively worried about is that guys who got bloodied in Iraq will return home and overthrow them, and that would be very bad for us.”

Not everyone agrees.

In an email to RAW STORY Wednesday, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, said he believes the deal is unwise.

“I believe that the $20B arms package just announced – and the diplomacy accompanying it – is a complete refutation of the Bush/Rice policy of refusing to coddle the autocracies of the Middle East,” Wilkerson said. “Because we are afraid of Tehran, we are willing to fund massively regimes whose interests are not only counter to our own but who are actively engaged in covertly undermining U.S. interests, from supporting anti-U.S. elements in Iraq to building and funding thousands of madrassas in volatile places like the Federally Administered Territories in Pakistan.”

Since 1990, Saudi Arabia has spent over $39.6 billion in arming itself against both the threat of Iran and the growing likelihood of a domestic uprising. The US has also given $300 million more in arms during that period through the State Department, making that nation the single largest client of US defense contractors.

Bribing the House of Saud?

Several military and intelligence sources say that the other major impetus behind the arms deal is the Bush administration’s focus on destabilizing and isolating Iran. Part of that strategy involves cutting Iran off from dealing with companies that also have business dealing with Saudi Arabia and, at the same time, protecting Saudi Arabia from any fallout over US activities against Iran. According to the Washington Post, separate arms deals have also been approved for both Israel and Egypt to “strengthen pro-Western countries against Iran at a time when the hard-line regime seeks to extend its power in the region.”

Another motivation for the arms deal is the Bush administration’s need for support to curb the democratically elected Maliki’s influence while at the same time demonstrating “good faith” to the Saudis, who have increasingly become disillusioned with US policy in Iraq and mishandling of the Iraq war.

“There is a real fear that the [Saudi monarchy] will move towards France and Britain,” said the NSC official. A military official pointed out that with the increase in Asian demand for Saudi Arabia’s largest export, oil, the Arab nation now has more leeway to break away from its long-standing relationship with the United States.

Wilkerson points out, however, that the deal prioritizes aid to just three countries.

“By this recently-announced policy, we have effectively committed more than 80% of U.S. strategic aid to three countries – Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia – all of whom are acting in ways fundamentally counter to our interests,” he said. “In my view, we are doing this in a futile and desperate attempt to ‘buy’ their assistance with respect to Iraq, as well as an attempt to enlist their efforts in countering Iran – the latter of which they would do anyway, even without our aid.”

“This is quintessentially a diplomacy of fear and desperation and not of wisdom and confidence,” he added.

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, when 19 men – 15 of them from Saudi Arabia – attacked the United States, do not seem to have had much effect on US interest in arming the Saudis.

When asked about this, one intelligence official said, “It was 14 or 15 guys, not the government of Saudi Arabia.”

Yet there is evidence that the Saudis have transferred or sold US arms to unauthorized partners.

During the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, the Saudis allegedly gave Iraq 1,500 US 2,000-pound bombs (Los Angeles Times, 14 September 1992). "Inadvertent" transfers of bombs and vehicles to Syria and Bangladesh during the Gulf War have also been reported (Arms Control Today, May 1992), as well as another that almost took place when an asylum-seeking Saudi F-15 pilot flew his aircraft to Sudan in November 1990. The plane was returned (Washington Post, 15 November 1990).

Wall St. Concerned About Iran Situation

It's amazing how sensitive the oil market is.

Oil Rises a 7th Day as Iran Tension Adds to Disruption Concern

By Mark Shenk

March 28 (Bloomberg) -- Crude oil rose for a seventh day, climbing close to $65 a barrel in New York, on concern that Iran's capture of British servicemen may escalate, disrupting shipments from the Middle East.

Oil jumped more than $2 a barrel, after surging $5 in seven minutes late yesterday on speculation the U.K. would mount a rescue attempt. The Middle East is responsible for about a third of the world's oil output. Prices also rose on expectations an Energy Department report today will show that U.S. gasoline inventories fell for a seventh straight week.

``The recent price moves show that geopolitical factors are back front and center,'' said Nauman Barakat, senior vice president of global energy futures at Macquarie Futures USA Inc. in New York. ``Sentiment is bullish. Geopolitical tension and tightness in the gasoline market are the twin pillars of this market.''

Crude oil for May delivery rose $1.54, or 2.5 percent, to $64.48 a barrel at 9:45 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices reached $64.86 during the session. Futures are down 2.4 percent from a year ago.

Prices surged from 1979 through 1981 after Iran cut oil exports. The average cost of oil used by U.S. refiners was $35.24 a barrel in 1981, according to the Energy Department, or $79.67 today's dollars.

``Whenever there is a headline about Iran people prick up their ears,'' said Justin Fohsz, a broker at Starsupply Petroleum, a division of GFI Group Inc., in Englewood, New Jersey. ``If the Iranians release the British, oil should come off quite a bit.''

Strait of Hormuz

Almost a quarter of the world's oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Relations between Iran, which sits on the world's second-largest proven reserves, and western governments were already frayed because of the country's nuclear program.

``It is now time to ratchet up the pressure,'' Prime Minister Tony Blair said in Parliament in London today. The capture of the U.K. personnel was ``wrong and completely illegal.''

Vice Admiral Charles Style told reporters in London that Iran's navy ``ambushed'' Britain's boats on the Iraqi side of the Shatt al-Arab waterway. He said GPS navigation data showed the position of Britain's ships and that Iranian officials have given two separate accounts for the location of the vessels.

Increases Concerns

``It increases people's concerns about how they would behave if they had a nuclear weapon,'' U.K. Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said in a statement to Parliament. She said she's considering whether to take the matter to the UN and to European Union foreign ministers meeting this weekend.

The United Nations Security Council on March 24 unanimously backed a resolution freezing the assets of a state-owned Iranian bank and imposing penalties on some military commanders, to push Iran to suspend production of the nuclear fuel. The package toughens sanctions approved in December.

Brent crude oil for May settlement jumped $1.48, or 2.3 percent, to $66.08 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures exchange. Futures touched $69 a barrel yesterday, the highest intraday price since Sept. 4.

Iranians outraged by `300' movie

I have not seen the movie, but a couple of nights ago I saw the History Channel special about the 300 Spartans who held off a Persian army of thousands. I found it to be a very interesting story, and it is impressive that 300 men could hold back an army of tens of thousands. The Spartans were not super human, but they were very well trained fighters. The battle occurred at a narrow mountain pass, so it was impossible for the Persian army to surround the Spartans, until the third day when they found a mountain path around the pass. Furthermore, the Persians had inferior equipment: wicker shields and thin body armor. The Spartans had bronze shields and body armor. And it wasn't just 300 Spartans - 700 Thespians had joined them. It was an incredible feat nonetheless, and I am a bit surprised by the Iranian reaction. I will have to watch the movie and compare it to what I saw on the History Channel.

Leonidas at Thermopylae, by Jacques-Louis David (1814)

Iranians outraged by `300' movie
By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 36 minutes ago

TEHRAN, Iran - The hit American movie "300" has angered Iranians who say the Greeks-vs-Persians action flick insults their ancient culture and provokes animosity against Iran.

"Hollywood declares war on Iranians," blared a headline in Tuesday's edition of the independent Ayende-No newspaper.

The movie, which raked in $70 million in its opening weekend, is based on a comic-book fantasy version of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., in which a force of 300 Spartans held off a massive Persian army at a mountain pass in Greece for three days.

Even some American reviewers noted the political overtones of the West-against-Iran story line — and the way Persians are depicted as decadent, sexually flamboyant and evil in contrast to the noble Greeks.

In Iran, the movie hasn't opened and probably never will, given the government's restrictions on Western films, though one paper said bootleg DVDs were already available.

Still, it touched a sensitive nerve. Javad Shamghadri, cultural adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said the United States tries to "humiliate" Iran in order to reverse historical reality and "compensate for its wrongdoings in order to provoke American soldiers and warmongers" against Iran.

The movie comes at a time of increased tensions between the United States and Iran over the Persian nation's nuclear program and the Iraq war.

But aside from politics, the film was seen as an attack on Persian history, a source of pride for Iranians across the political spectrum, including critics of the current Islamic regime.

State-run television has run several commentaries the past two days calling the film insulting and has brought on Iranian film directors to point out its historical inaccuracies.

"The film depicts Iranians as demons, without culture, feeling or humanity, who think of nothing except attacking other nations and killing people," Ayende-No said in its article Tuesday.

"It is a new effort to slander the Iranian people and civilization before world public opinion at a time of increasing American threats against Iran," it said.

Iran's biggest circulation newspaper, Hamshahri, said "300" is "serving the policy of the U.S. leadership" and predicted it will "prompt a wave of protest in the world. ... Iranians living in the U.S. and Europe will not be indifferent about this obvious insult."

Is reform in Iran inevitable?

Good news. Young Iranians seem to be getting tired of not being able to freely criticize their government and not being able to do simple things like holding hands in public without being flogged or imprisoned. Given that half of Iranians are under the age of 25 and a large percentage of those young Iranians consider themselves to be agnostic, I think that reform in Iran is inevitable, and given that so many of Iraq's politicians spent many years in Iran and are still influenced by Iran, reform in Iran will certainly result in reform in Iraq.

Who knows? Maybe even Mahmoud Ahmedinejad can change. It turns out that he's a blogger who allows comments on his blog, although comments are screened.

Students stone police in Iran riot
Last updated at 20:33pm on 9th December 2007

Students defied a clampdown on protests in Iran yesterday by tearing down the gates of Tehran university.

They chanted slogans against President Ahmadinejad and carried placards saying "Live free or die", "No war, no fascism" and "Women must decide their fate, not the state."

They wrecked the iron-barred gates and threw stones at police, according to Iranian state radio, which said the protest ended peacefully.

Tehran University is the largest and one of the oldest universities in Iran.

Student protests have been rare in recent years. Western rights groups have accused Iran of banning dissent.

But there was a demonstration in Tehran last month against the detention of three students who were picked up during a protest at another Iranian university a week earlier.

Some of the placards yesterday named the arrested students.

Professors have joined them in criticising Ahmadinejad for clamping down on dissent on campuses.

The president and his government say they "support free speech and welcome constructive opposition".

Arab Hypocrisy (and Bewildering Stupidity)

Sometimes I find that the comments people leave for my posts are more interesting than the posts. This is probably the case for any blog. Sometimes I find the comments so interesting, I feel compelled to bring them out onto center stage. Yesterday a gentleman (not!) who calls himself "haidar" responded to my post entitled Murdered for being Shi'a:

Yes and this is why I will never forgive the sectarian scum of the Earth Shi'a that joined forces with the U.S. and which resulted in the death of my family members. Will never forgive or forget what these traitors have done and those scum suckers deserve anything that is happening to them. And I have a big problem with American soldiers walking the streets of Baghdad. Iraqi Mojo does not speak with any authority for any Iraqi. He is a disgrace to even the Shi'a their, I am sure of it. This kind of man speaks with no dignity as he opens his doors for the Americans, he will even offer his mother to the soldiers so they feel like they are at there own homes. Iraqi American you should dissolve this blog and begin your knew blogging life with Jeffrey in New York you have more in common with him that you do with any Iraqi whether Shia or Sunni. You are the joke of all the Iraqi blogs. People witness you from one blog to the next leaving your dummy comments and the people email back and forth about how stupid you are. You are like a stupid joke that even all the Shi'a make a mockery of. If you dont beleive me ask your Iraqi "freinds" bwahawawahha

So the ordinary Iraqi Shi'a deserve to be murdered because Shi'a like Ahmad Chalabi joined forces with the US. I have noticed (based on comments on other blogs) that many Sunni Arabs feel this way, unfortunately. For 24 years, as Saddam's regime mass murdered Iraqi Shi'a and Kurds (and many good Sunni Arabs!) the Iraqi Shi'a and Kurds never blamed the ordinary Sunni Arabs of Iraq for the crimes Saddam and his henchmen committed. The Iraqi Shi'a and Kurds never bombed a marketplace in a Sunni Arab neighborhood. During Saddam's rule, no Iraqi Shi'a ever stormed into a Sunni Arab's home, dragged the men from their rooms and murdered them for being Sunni.

Today another gentleman (yikes!) left this comment for the same post:

Iraqi American is so far from reality he is still in the Iraq-under-saddam mindset. He is truly a JOKE in the blogosphere. The only ones who come here are right wing Americans.

MOJo has an obvious obsession with Saddam, eventhough he is dead. ARAB IRAQIS distance themselves from the Mojo clown, who can hardly speak or write Arabic.


MARK MY WORDS: THE AMERICANS WILL STAY IN IRAQ FOR ANOTHER 50 YEARS MINIMUM. They dont build the biggest embassy in the world there for no reason.

This will all backfire:
Israel and America will never allow Iran to have the nuclear weapon, and therefore Iran will be wiped out in less than 2 years. The time is ticking.
When Ahmedenijad is beheaded along with Ayatollah Sistani I will be the FIRST to be cheering on the streets.

Where do I sign up for the American army? I would LOVE to destroy Iran and behead Sistani. Dont worry, I will "liberate" Iran.

My response to Ahamad:

"Iraqi American is so far from reality he is still in the Iraq-under-saddam mindset."

Iraq is being terrorized by the people who LOVED Saddam and the Al Qaeda scum buckets who seek to destroy any hope for democracy in Iraq. Saddam was a piece of shit, and so are the people who love(d) him. So are the Wahhabi scum of earth who believe that Shi'a are infidels and deserve to be murdered.


"The only ones who come here are right wing Americans."

Except you are here, ghebby. Your friend haidar was here yesterday.


"MOJo has an obvious obsession with Saddam, eventhough he is dead."

Saddam and his filthy henchmen are responsible for the murder of my relatives and my families' friends. They are responsible for aiding Al Qaeda after 2003. I do not expect terrorist sympathizers like you and haidar to understand.


"ARAB IRAQIS distance themselves from the Mojo clown, who can hardly speak or write Arabic."

LOL, you mean Arab Iraqis who LOVE Saddam and the 'resistance' distance themselves from Mojo. Except you are here commenting on my blog. Is this how you 'distance' yourself from me??


"MARK MY WORDS: THE AMERICANS WILL STAY IN IRAQ FOR ANOTHER 50 YEARS MINIMUM."

If terrorist scum continue to mass murder Iraqis, you may be right - US troops may stay in Iraq for decades - mark MY words! So if you don't want to see so many US troops in Iraq, perhaps you should encourage your terrorist heroes to stop murdering innocent Iraqis so that American troops can leave Iraq.


"They dont build the biggest embassy in the world there for no reason."

America has embassies in almost every country in the world. Why aren't you slamming Qataris for hosting the United States Central Command? Why don't we see marketplaces in Doha being bombed??

The hypocrisy of Arabs like Ahmad is really quite astounding:

http://qatar.usembassy.gov/

http://amman.usembassy.gov/user/default.aspx

http://riyadh.usembassy.gov/

http://oman.usembassy.gov/

http://cairo.usembassy.gov/

http://lebanon.usembassy.gov/

http://www.usembassy.ma/


"Israel and America will never allow Iran to have the nuclear weapon, and therefore Iran will be wiped out in less than 2 years. The time is ticking."

Iran wiped out? I don't think so. Maybe the US will eventually overthrow the fundie regime, but wipe out Iran? Perhaps this is what you wish.


'When Ahmedenijad is beheaded along with Ayatollah Sistani I will be the FIRST to be cheering on the streets.

Where do I sign up for the American army? I would LOVE to destroy Iran and behead Sistani. Dont worry, I will "liberate" Iran.'

It really is amazing how stupid people like Ahmad are. REALLY AMAZING. In case you haven't noticed, ghebby, the Americans respect Sistani, unlike so many Sunni Arabs! But it doesn't surprise me that you'd want to behead Sistani.

Perhaps most interesting is that both Ahmad and haidar are living in (or at least blogging from) western countries. Ahmad is in Canada and haidar is in California.

US shared intelligence with Saddam even after Halabja

'As they rallied support for their respective wars, both President George H.W. Bush and his son President George W. Bush emphasized that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who had “gassed his own people.” At the time Saddam was doing the gassing, the Reagan Administration adopted the same indifferent posture toward Iraq’s use of these weapons on the Kurdish civilians as it had adopted toward the gassing of Iranian soldiers. Although the poison gas attacks on Kurdish villages begain in March 1987 - and were presumably known at least to U.S. intelligence agencies - neither U.S. officials nor anyone else in the international community said a word publicly.

On the morning of March 16, 1988, Iraqi warplanes flew over the small city of Halabja, on a plain east of the strategically important Darbandikan Dam in Eastern Kurdistan. The day before, Iranian Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) and Kurdish peshmerga had captured the city, but both forces withdrew, possibly suspecting an Iraqi attack. Three years later, I was in Halabja and the survivors told me what happened next. There followed a smell that resembled burned almonds. Leaves turned brown, and people dropped dead. The corpses turned black. I was shown the basement of a house - still shut up for fear of the lingering effects of the poison - where fort-eight men, women, and children had taken shelter and died. The floor was littered with rotting clothes. At the graveyard, a man stuck his hand in a pile of dirt and pulled out two skulls. They were small, the skulls of children.

More than five thousand people died in the Halabja gassing. The Iranians saw a potential propaganda coup. They brought Iranian and Western journalists into the dead city. On a doorstep, a man wearing baggy Kurdish trousers and turban lay dead with the corpse of a swaddled baby in his arms. The photo of that scene was transmitted around the world.

World opinion reacted to Halabja with horror. In the U.S. Congress, Senator George Mitchell, a Maine Democrat, introduced a non-binding sense-of-the-Senate resolution denouncing Iraq for the attacks. Reagan’s tilt toward Iraq was running into trouble just when it seemed Iran might win the war. Although survivors described planes with Iraqi markings, the Reagan Administration suggested that both Iran and Iraq were responsible. It was an illogical lie - why would Iran attack its own allies - but one that successfully obscured the issue with the American media and foreign policy cognoscenti.

Over the next few months, the fortunes of the war shifted sharply in Iraq’s favor. Iraq retook the Faw Peninsula on April 17, 1988, in a thirty-five-hour amphibious operation that made extensive use of nerve gas. Video shot afterward showed the corpses of Iranian soldiers surrounded by syringes as they tried to inject themselves with atropine in a fruitless effort to administer an antidote. By the summer of 1988, the Iraqi Army had recaptured almost all the territory that Iran had taken since 1982. For six years, Iran had continued the war because Khomeini wanted Saddam Hussein’s head. At last, Khomeini recognized that this was not to be. Iran accepted U.N. Security Council Resolution 598, which called for a cessation of hostilities and a return to the status quo ante. It was, said Khomeini, like drinking poison.

It was an apt metaphor. Poison gas was decisive to Saddam’s survival, and the American help with targeting was invaluable. While I have found no evidence that the Reagan Administration provided Iraq with battlefield intelligence related to the Halabja attack, this cannot be ruled out. Even after Halabja, the Reagan Administration continued to provide intelligence that Iraq used to target its chemical weapons more accurately.

Iran’s propaganda coup at Halabja backfired. The images shown on Iranian television were terrifying, and recruitment into the armed forces dropped precipitously. With massive international debts, Iraq was in no position to resist international pressure to stop using chemical weapons. By falsely suggesting that Iran was also responsible for the atrocity, the Reagan Administration helped make sure there was no such pressure.

On August 20, 1988, an armistice went into effect between the two countries.'

--Peter W. Galbraith, The End of Iraq

Is Bush Funding Al Qaeda?

"A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al-Qaeda," Hersh concludes.

"The 'redirection,' as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims."

Some US aid distributed to Sunni groups in Lebanon falls into the hands of radical groups, US, European and Arab officials told the weekly magazine.

"We're spreading the money around as much as we can," a former senior intelligence official said, and that has "serious potential unintended consequences."

Such money "always gets in more pockets than you think it will," the source said. "It's a very high-risk venture."

A member of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's government in Lebanon said: "We have a liberal attitude that allows Al-Qaeda types to have a presence here."

In some cases, the clandestine operations rely on Saudi Arabia and its national security advisor, Prince Bandar, to provide the funding, so that operations remain secret, according to portions of the article, which The New Yorker distributed to news organizations on Sunday.

There is an apparent debate between some in the US government over which is more dangerous to US interests: Iran or Sunni radicals. Some in the Administration have argued that Iran is the bigger threat, which is a victory for the Saudi line, writes Hersh.

In the Saudi view, Saudi Arabia is "taking a political risk by joining the U.S. in challenging Iran: Bandar is already seen in the Arab world as being too close to the Bush Administration. 'We have two nightmares,' [a] former diplomat told [Hersh]. 'For Iran to acquire the bomb and for the United States to attack Iran. I’d rather the Israelis bomb the Iranians, so we can blame them. If America does it, we will be blamed.'"

Although US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has defined a new Iran policy in broad terms, much of the change is secret.

The secrecy does not please Democrats who have recently taken the reins of power in Congress from the Republicans.

Senator Ron Wyden, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said, "The Bush administration has frequently failed to meet its legal obligation to keep the intelligence committee fully and currently informed. Time and again, the answer has been 'Trust us.' ... It is hard for me to trust the administration," he told the weekly magazine.

Hersh also said the pace of US covert operations inside Iran has increased.

"That's been happening for months," Hersh told CNN television Sunday.

"There's been a lot of very aggressive cross-border activity," he said. "It's more than just casual," he said. "That's been going on quite a bit."

"We have been pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight ... for covert operations in many areas of the Middle East where we ... want to stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence," he told CNN.

"These are people connected to Al-Qaeda who want to take on Hezbollah," he said.

"We may not directly be funneling money to them, but we certainly know that these groups exist," Hersh told CNN.

Iran-Iraq War in Wikipedia

'The Iran–Iraq War, also known as the Imposed War (جنگ تحمیلی, Jang-e-tahmīlī) and Holy Defense (دفاع مقدس, Defā'-e-moghaddas) in Iran, and Saddām's Qādisiyyah (قادسيّة صدّام, Qādisiyyat Ṣaddām) in Iraq, was a war between the armed forces of Iraq and Iran lasting from September 1980 to August 1988.

The war began when Iraq invaded Iran on 22 September 1980 following a long history of border disputes and fears of Shia insurgency among Iraq's long-suppressed Shia majority influenced by the Iranian Revolution. Although Iraq hoped to take advantage of revolutionary chaos in Iran and attacked without formal warning, they made only limited progress into Iran and within several months were repelled by the Iranians who regained virtually all lost territory by June, 1982. For the next six years, Iran was on the offensive.^[14] Despite calls for a ceasefire by the United Nations Security Council, hostilities continued until 20 August, 1988. The last prisoners of war were exchanged in 2003.^[14][15]

The war came at a great cost in lives and economic damage — a half a million Iraqi and Iranian soldiers as well as civilians are believed to have died in the war with many more injured and wounded — but brought neither reparations nor change in borders. The conflict is often compared to World War I^[16] because tactics included large scale trench warfare, manned machine-gun posts, bayonet charges, use of barbed wire across trenches and on no-mans land, human wave attacks and Iraq's extensive use of chemical weapons (such as mustard gas) against Iranian troops and civilians as well as Iraqi Kurds. At the time, the UN Security Council issued statements that "chemical weapons had been used in the war." However, in these statements Iraq was not mentioned by name, so it has been said that "the international community remained silent as Iraq used weapons of mass destruction against Iranian as well as Iraqi Kurds" and it is believed that the United States government prevented the UN from condemning Iraq.^[17]'