Kidnapping In The Middle East: The US Started The Current Round
A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.
Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.
In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.
Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.
US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five Iranian officials they did seize, who have not been seen since, were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces".
Source, and full story: Independent UK, April 3, 2007
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What, you thought you'd find out the truth from the Bu$h League U.S. news media???
From an email I sent on January 12, 2007, to a columnist:
Under long historical tradition, and international law, an attack on a Consulate or Embassy has been considered to be an act of war upon the nation. Some of your readers might not be familiar with that, a brief enlightenment is in order. And yes, point out what to us older folks is the obvious, that the US got rather unhappy when ITS Embassy was taken over in 1979...
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Some may call what is going on with Iran and the British operatives an example of The Law Of Unintended Consequences. Chalmers Johnson has written a very instructive book, Blowback, on how the U.S. has a long pattern of not thinking through the consequences of its actions.
That serious ramifications would flow from the U.S. attack in January on, essentially, an Iranian embassy, was a no-brainer. Yet the U.S. corporate media, and really much of the "alternative" media, completely ignored what was just another serious escalation in the routine violation of interantional law. To the extent that it got any mention it was soon superseded by more earth-shattering events like Anna Nicole's she-finally-got-around-to-it drug overdose (thank you BigPharma, eventually the Anna Nicole stories will fade away and we can move on to the next non-event).
TLC
Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.
In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.
Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.
US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five Iranian officials they did seize, who have not been seen since, were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces".
Source, and full story: Independent UK, April 3, 2007
___________________________
What, you thought you'd find out the truth from the Bu$h League U.S. news media???
From an email I sent on January 12, 2007, to a columnist:
Under long historical tradition, and international law, an attack on a Consulate or Embassy has been considered to be an act of war upon the nation. Some of your readers might not be familiar with that, a brief enlightenment is in order. And yes, point out what to us older folks is the obvious, that the US got rather unhappy when ITS Embassy was taken over in 1979...
______________
Some may call what is going on with Iran and the British operatives an example of The Law Of Unintended Consequences. Chalmers Johnson has written a very instructive book, Blowback, on how the U.S. has a long pattern of not thinking through the consequences of its actions.
That serious ramifications would flow from the U.S. attack in January on, essentially, an Iranian embassy, was a no-brainer. Yet the U.S. corporate media, and really much of the "alternative" media, completely ignored what was just another serious escalation in the routine violation of interantional law. To the extent that it got any mention it was soon superseded by more earth-shattering events like Anna Nicole's she-finally-got-around-to-it drug overdose (thank you BigPharma, eventually the Anna Nicole stories will fade away and we can move on to the next non-event).
TLC
posted by TLC's Place at 8:51 PM
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