Vol. 71/No. 6      February 12, 2007

Five U.S. soldiers killed in Karbala, Iraq, January 20 were likely attacked by individuals "trained and financed by Iranian agents," reported today's New York Times.

An article in the January 29 New York Sun, a right-wing daily, headlined, "Iran's role in Iraq will be exposed," said that Major General William Caldwell, the chief spokesman of the U.S.-led "coalition" forces in Iraq, will soon make public "new evidence of Iran's role in Iraq." The revelations will allegedly implicate Iran's government in "deliberately sending particularly lethal improvised explosives to terrorists to kill coalition soldiers."

"If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly," said U.S. president George Bush in a January 29 interview with National Public Radio.

Responding to accusations that his administration is trying to fabricate evidence to justify a military assault on Iran, Bush told ABC News a day later he has no such intentions. "Some are trying to take my words and say, 'Well, what he's really trying to do is go invade Iran,'" he said. "Nobody's talking about that."  
 
Tehran to offer military aid to Iraq
Iran's ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, gave an interview to the New York Times, published in the daily's January 29 issue. In the interview, Qumi denied Washington's allegations and ridiculed the "evidence" the U.S. military claims it has collected against Tehran, such as maps of Baghdad delineating Sunni, Shiite, and mixed neighborhoods, which U.S. officials have said "would be useful for militias engaged in ethnic slaughter," according to the Times.

Qumi said Tehran is prepared to offer Iraqi government forces training, equipment, and advisors for what he called "the security fight." He acknowledged that two Iranians seized and later released by U.S. forces in December were security officials, but he said they were engaged in legitimate discussions with the Iraqi government.

Qumi also said that Tehran would soon open a national bank in Iraq, which the Times article described as "a new Iranian financial institution right under the Americans’ noses." A senior Iraqi banking official, Hussein al-Uzri, confirmed that Iran's government had received a license to open the bank. He said this would be the first wholly owned subsidiary in Iraq of a bank based in a foreign country.  
 
Saudi monarchy targets Iran
Meanwhile, Sunni-dominated governments in the region are aligning with Washington to squeeze Tehran. A January 29 dispatch by Strategic Forecasting, a U.S private intelligence agency, headlined, "The Palestinian issue and Saudi-Iranian contest," reported that Saudi King Abdullah invited leaders of the Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah, which have been engaged in armed conflicts against each other recently, to meet at the Grand Mosque in Mecca to negotiate "without any interference by outsiders."

This was a veiled reference to Iran, the article said.

The invitation was carried in an open letter published by the Saudi Press Agency in which the Saudi monarch said "the intra-Palestinian fighting, which has killed as many as 27 people in the last three days, 'serves only the interests of the enemies of Islam and the Arabs,'" Stratfor reported.

The reference to "the enemies of … the Arabs" is aimed against Tehran, the article said. "From a Saudi and Wahhabi point of view, the Shiite Iranians and their Arab allies are not true Muslims, and therefore can be lumped into the 'enemies of Islam' category."

A front-page article January 28 in Egypt's most widely circulated newspaper, Al Ahram, which has close ties to the country's government, accused Iranian intelligence of involvement in the 2005 killing of the Egyptian ambassador to Iraq. Cairo was the first government of a majority Sunni Arab country to send a resident ambassador to Iraq. The foreign ministries of Iran and Egypt denied the allegations.  
 
Divisions among Iranian rulers
The U.S.-orchestrated squeeze on Tehran seems to be producing divisions among Iran's rulers. Two Iranian newspapers, including one reflecting the views of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's "supreme leader," recently called on Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to end involvement in Tehran's nuclear program.

Ahmadinejad has been at the center of a confrontation with Washington over the program, defending his country's efforts to develop nuclear energy against Washington’s allegations that Tehran is secretly trying to produce nuclear weapons.
 
 
Related articles:
‘Bring troops home!’
Tens of thousands march against war in Iraq
‘Ethnic cleansing,’ new U.S. gov’t rationalization for war in Iraq
U.S. Special Forces carry out new bombing raids in Somalia
Washington may send 2,300 more troops to Afghanistan
‘Not one penny, or person, for Washington’s wars!’
Young Socialists attract support at D.C. rally
No peace party in Congress  
 
 
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