-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: February 12, 2007 11:48:20 AM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: IranScam
US CLAIMS AGAINST IRAN: WHY NOW?
By Paul Reynolds
World affairs correspondent, BBC news website
BBC News, February 12, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6353489.stm
In October 2005, the then British ambassador to Iraq William Patey
told reporters in London that Iran had been supplying technology
used to kill British troops in Basra.
He said he had complained to the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad
about it.
The claim was that elements connected to the Shia militia in the
south, the Mehdi army, had been using specially shaped charges, in
which the force of the explosion is directed narrowly in one
direction, thereby enabling it to penetrate armoured vehicles.
No evidence was produced, other than a suggestion that the Iranian-
supported Lebanese group Hezbollah had also used such charges, so
the common origin had to be Iran.
US officials have made similar claims over the last year. General
George Casey, the then US commander in Iraq, said so in June 2006.
Evidence
In a briefing in Baghdad on Sunday, US military and intelligence
officers finally laid out their evidence.
The question has to be asked as to why it has taken at least 14
months for this to happen.
So, why now?
If you take the claims at face value, the reason is that only now
has the evidence become substantial enough to be made public. The
number of attacks is said to have grown as well, so that is another
explanation put forward for going public now. A trend has been
identified about which information should be given.
According to this position, there is nothing sinister about the
timing of the claim. It is the result of an evidence-based process
which has only now reached the stage of producing a result. And
after all, reporters have been asking for this evidence for months.
There are other possibilities as well.
Softening up?
For a start, the fear among some is that the US is softening up
world opinion for an attack on Iran. Such an attack would be aimed
at Iran's nuclear facilities.
At the moment, the US lacks a casus belli and by claiming that Iran
is responsible for killing USA troops, it could be laying the
groundwork for a 'self-defence' justification, according to this
theory.
The new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Jay
Rockefeller said recently: "To be quite honest, I'm a little
concerned that it's Iraq again."
There is also the fact that the US is launching its 'surge' policy
of moving extra troops into Baghdad. These claims are being made
against Shia militias, including the Mehdi army, one of the main
targets of the latest policy.
Blaming Shia Iran for supporting Iraqi Shia militias makes it
easier for the US to sell that policy at home and abroad.
Blaming others
Then there is the old tactic of blaming someone else for your own
problems.
Many people will not distinguish between the Shia militias that
Iran is said to supply -- and which have ties to the Iraqi
government -- and the Sunni insurgents who have been the cause of
much of the violence.
The allegedly Iranian supplied bombs are said to have caused the
deaths of 170 American soldiers, but overall 2497 soldiers have
been killed in hostile incidents, most of them at hands of the Sunnis.
The claim serves the purpose of helping to lay the blame for the
whole insurgency at Iran's door.
There are also other possible reasons for this timing.
Council deadline
The UN Security Council has laid down that Iran must suspend its
enrichment of uranium by 21 February. If it does not, and if the
International Atomic Energy Agency confirms this, the resolution
says that further economic sanctions will be considered.
The US is preparing to argue for tougher sanctions, so making
claims against Iran over Iraq might help it in its arguments that
Iran is a threat.
On the wider front, the Bush administration is engaged in a
campaign against the Iranian government in order to isolate it and
eventually maybe see its end under internal pressure from the
Iranian people.
The latest claims against Iran could be a part of that campaign.
The claims
What of the claims themselves?
They are based on physical evidence, from bombs and their effects.
The bombs now even have their own name and acronym -- explosively
formed penetrators or EFPs.
Previously they had been lumped in the generalised description of
IEDs -- improvised explosive devices.
The implication is that now they are less improvised and more planned.
They are said to be provided by Iran in kit form and to be smuggled
across the often-open border.
However, the officials who presented the evidence could not make a
direct link to Iran.
"The officials said such an assertion was an inference based on
general intelligence assessments," stated the New York Times.
They did make much of the detention in Irbil of five Iranians who
were said to be members of the Quds force of the Iranian
revolutionary Guards.
The Quds (the word means Jerusalem) force was said by the US
officials to be controlled directly by the "highest levels of the
Iranian government".
That last statement is significant in that the US is now making a
charge against the Iranian government itself, not just against its
agents.
Scepticism
Against the inference that this all comes from Iran is the concept
that Iraqis themselves would be capable of copying a design and
therefore do not need to get bombs from Iran.
And there have been a number of news reports over the last year
expressing scepticism, even among military personnel, about the
link to Iran.
The Washington Post reported last October that British troops in
the south doubted the claim. A year ago, the London Times said
that British officers in Basra had stopped making any such claim,
saying only that the technology matched bomb-making found elsewhere
in the Middle East, including Lebanon and Syria.
====
US SETS OUT IRAN BOMBS EVIDENCE
By Jane Peel
BBC News, February 11, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/middle_east/6352593.stm
The evidence of Iranian involvement in supplying Shia extremists in
Iraq was meant to have been published at the end of January.
It was apparently delayed because the Americans wanted to be as
sure as they could be of their facts and what they could make public.
They wanted, too, to show journalists physical evidence to back
their case.
They knew reporters would be sceptical of intelligence assessments
after their dramatic and ultimately discredited claims over Saddam
Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
So, this time there was no senior member of the US administration
to put the case publicly against Iran. It was a low-key affair.
Three men addressed correspondents from around the world in a
Baghdad briefing room. [All cameras and recording devices were
banned from the room.]
The men spoke on condition of anonymity. One was a defence analyst,
one a defence official, the third a defence explosives expert.
On a table to their right was laid out the evidence. Weapons
components, including two rocket propelled grenade rounds, mortar
rounds and the unusually-titled Explosively Formed Penetrator or
EFP. They could be traced to Iran, we were told.
With no detailed military knowledge, it was impossible to verify
the claims -- that is why the explosives expert was there.
He went into some detail to explain why a mortar's tail fin was of
a type only known to be produced in Iran. He told us that a
sophisticated machining process was required to manufacture the
metal liners of the EFPs. This had previously been traced to Iran.
The capability for such a process had not yet been seen in Iraq.
US raids
Photographic evidence of the effects of these lethal roadside bombs
was put before us. Large holes could be seen in US humvees and
Iraqi police vehicles.
We were told that the malleable metal liners in the EFPs form into
a ball, or slug, when the explosive is set off. Travelling at a
very high velocity, this is what does the damage.
According to the officials, 170 coalition troops have been killed
by this type of roadside bomb since May 2004. In 2006 use of this
weapon nearly doubled.
The weapons parts are said to be smuggled across the border from
neighbouring Iran to supply Shia extremists.
The assessment <sic> of the [anonymous] senior defence analyst was
that the orders to do so came from the highest levels of the
Iranian government.
To back this claim, the officials referred to the arrests of a
number of Iranians in two incidents in Iraq in December and January.
In one raid in the northern city of Irbil they said the Iranians
were caught trying to change their appearance and flush documents
down the toilet.
One was contaminated with explosives residue.
One was reportedly the Chief Operating Officer of the al-Quds elite
unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard which reports to the
Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran.
Government ties
In another raid, the security forces said they found inventory
sheets of weaponry and equipment that had been brought into Iraq.
The US-led coalition must be hoping that by releasing this
information their claims will be seen as credible.
They will also be hoping to exert pressure on the Shia-dominated
Iraqi government, which has strong ties to Iran, and many of whose
leaders spent the Saddam Hussein years in exile there.
As one of the officials said: "We need the government of Iraq to
assert itself and make it very clear to the government of Iran that
it doesn't want outside interference".
It was not just the US and coalition troops who were suffering, he
said, but the Iraqi security forces and civilians who were also
falling victim to the Iranian-supplied weaponry.
Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and
security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from
across the web, free AOL Mail and more.
www.ctrl.org
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substanceânot soap-boxingâplease! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'âwith its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright fraudsâis used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
<A HREF="http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
