The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis

[deminks]

Source: The Independent

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.

Read more: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2414760.ece

[whistle]

1. Ahaaa, so this was the Chimp's and Darth Vader's doing

....I figured Dubya and Cheney were behind this whole thing. This was a LIHOP with MIHOP undertones operation!

[Jonathan50]

2. They aren't "hostages" they are "detainees"

Hence this is not a "hostage crisis".

Proper use of language is important.

[kineneb]

30. no- they are "illegal immigrants"!

albeit armed "illegal immigrants".

yup...must use proper terminology...

[MADem]

3. Hmmmm....launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, eh?

Somehow, I rather DOUBT that. The Kurds make it a point to know what's going on in their area. If you fart, they know where you had lunch and what was on the menu.

If we were speculating, it might be just as likely that:

The Kurds have been granted "plausible deniability" with that blurb that said they knew nothing (when in actual fact, they knew everything).

Some Kurd ratted out the plan to the two Iranians who got away. Money changed hands.

Money changed hands before the raid took place between the US and the Kurds. {/ul]

If we were speculating, of course....

[rodeodance]

4. i do recall this raid-------and lots of angry people/authorities at the time.

[MADem]

6. Yeah, it was something like three months ago, damned near.

Even Kurdish dudgeon can be faked--and they wouldn't half-step either. It would be a completely convincing performance. They're very sharp people--some of the smartest, most determined, savvy, and geopolitically sophisticated folks in that region. They have no compunctions about doing what needs doing to stay alive and to maintain and strengthen their autonomous position.

They've learned that "Trust but Verify" lesson too. The hard way. They learned it from FDR, Nixon, and Booooooosh One.

[progressive_realist]

12. Kurdish peshmerga turned back the American soldiers at gunpoint

That's some mighty fine acting.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011100138.html

[MADem]

15. Yeah, but look at the HEADLINE

U.S. Detains 6 Iranians in Irbil Raid

Some "turning back" if they managed to grab six people, and they still have five of them--they let one go.

It could have easily gone down like this: Hey, Achmed, we got the guys we wanted...so now, we'll go the airport, and you can "turn us back" in a very public venue, so you save face with the locals. Make it look good now. Here's the briefcase full of cash, after we're done you get another one just like it, OK?

[Auggie]

5. Is it possible they wanted American forces to be captured so they

had a reason to invade? I wouldn't put it past them.

[MADem]

9. The Iranians saw the UK sailors as easy targets. They were doing UN interdictions.

They did them in the same place, same time, pretty much, every day. They were like fruit waiting to be plucked.

I think that UK sailor business has more to do with this http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=69678 than the Iranian "consulate" raid.

US 'ready to attack Iran' claims Russian media
Monday, April 2, 2007


ISTANBUL - TDN with wire dispatches


The United States will be “ready to launch a missile attack on Iran's nuclear facilities as soon as early this month,” claimed the Russian media on Saturday. The allegations came at a delicate moment in which U.S. President George W. Bush warned Iran to release 15 British sailors, and the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz was reported to be sent to the Persian Gulf, adding to the already formidable U.S. force there.

The newspaper reports, relying on Russian intelligence, said the U.S. has “devised a plan to attack several targets in Iran,” and an assault could be carried out by launching missiles from fighter jets and warships stationed in the Gulf.

"Russian intelligence has information that the U.S. Armed Forces stationed in the Gulf have nearly completed preparations for a missile strike against Iranian territory," said a Russian official, according to RIA Novosti agency. The agency further alleged that the exact timing of the attack might be “from 4 a.m. until 4 p.m. on April 6."

Bush demands release of sailors:

U.S. President George W. Bush has branded Iran's seizure of 15 British navy personnel "inexcusable behavior" and demanded the release of those he referred to as "hostages" as Britain re-affirmed its desire to resolve the crisis peacefully. ... a British newspaper reported in its Sunday edition that Britain hopes to send a top navy officer to Tehran to promise that the Royal Navy will never knowingly enter Iranian waters without permission. Word of such a plan emerged as officials were privately speculating that the crisis could continue for months, the Sunday Telegraph said. ... Meanwhile, nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz will sail today to support U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. Navy said, amid a spike in tensions over Iran's seizure of 15 British marines and sailors.....


MORE, particularly having to do with carrier deployment/rotation, at link.

[IndianaGreen]

18. The UK is a foreign occupying power in an illegal and criminal war

They have no more business in Iranian waters than they do on Iraqi waters.

[MADem]

31. Wow, you know absolutely nothing about what they were doing, do you?

And yet you persist with SUCH FORCE!!! And such dramatic "Che-like" language!!! Oooooh!

They were carrying out a UN mission. That was their charge. They were doing UN - mandated interdictions.

What, you hate the UN too?? Go stand next to John "Captain Kangaroo" Bolton, then!!!!

:rofl: :rofl:

[DavidDvorkin]

7. If this is true, then it didn't matter where the Brits actually were

Iraqi or Iranian waters, just so long as they were vulnerable to capture.

[MADem]

11. Well, the fact that the raid on the building in Kurdistan took place is true.

The linkage between the two events isn't demonstrated, though.

Was it a "consulate?" Or was it a building with a flag in front of it that they called, after the fact, a consulate?

I posted elsewhere in this thread a link to a story about the Russkie's news flash that the US was set to invade on the 6th. This story first appeared almost a week ago in the Russkie and Lebanese press. It's oozing outward, slowly, since then.

I do wonder if that story was planted by Iran to whip up nationalistic sentiment, and this Sailor business is icing on their cake.

The Sailor video "confessions" include statements (written by their captors, assuredly) that they trespassed 'deliberately' into Iranian waters.

I mean, come on. They were doing UN interdictions. They'd been doing them for some time.

[MrPrax]

26. It matters when they violate it...

so it matters...

How I know Blair faked Iran map

"...But what about the map the Ministry of Defence produced on Tuesday, with territorial boundaries set out by a clear red line, and the co-ordinates of the incident marked in relation to it?

I have news for you. Those boundaries are fake. They were drawn up by the MoD. They are not agreed or recognised by any international authority.

To put it at its most charitable, they are a potential boundary. It is accepted practice, where no boundary exists, to work by a rule-of-thumb idea of where a boundary, based on a median line between the two coasts, might be...."

Daily Mail

Contrary to the troll bait, the US/Israel/UK have been trying to create an incident for the last year; taking the Iranian diplomats as hostage in Arbil was part of raising tensions to create a pretext for a well-planned and openly declared plan to illegal attack yet another ME nation, all under the watchful eye of a democratic congress.

It's funny to some people alleged political saavy of the Kurds to sell out to the Americans seems 'normal', but deny any of that appearance when talking about the Democratic Party. Pelosi, Reid, etc are all to be taken at their word unconditionally, but the 'Kurds' must be lying just like all of the arabs.

Which of course if one went over the record, one would find that we have been lying through our teeth but it's rather surprising that people will actually go out of their way to invent M$M speculation based entirely on racist self-aggrandizement.

[Benhurst]

8. Recommended #4

[keopeli]

10. Linking these two events makes Iran look bad, but no evidence is offered.

The US abductions in Abril was certainly a provocative act, but this article offers no link between the two events apart from the parties being the same.

The key question is not whether this is retaliation for the Iranian diplomats held by the US for negotiating security terms with the Iraqis (on official business). The real question is whether the UK ship was in Iranian territory.

If you believe these events are linked, then you believe Iran had a motive other than defending their territory from military incursion. This makes Iran look bad, even though no evidence of the link has been offered.

Though this article seems believable, it is lacking in sufficient cause to raise such an alarm. I'm suspicious of the origins of the story and the motive of the Independent.

Peace.

[MADem]

13. Linking the events makes the US and UK look bad, too, depending on your perspective

I think there's something else entirely going on here. I think Iran is whipping up nationalistic sentiment by suggesting that the US is about to attack; then taking the UK hostages, and when the attack does not occur, they'll be able to say that their capture of the UK Sailors prevented the attack.

I also think they know those guys in Kurdistan were up to a bit of misadventure. It's not a headline in their news--and you'd think it would be. Heck, when we had hostages taken by Iran, they made it into a TV program that fed Ted Koppel for decades.

I don't see a report anywhere on this page, do you? It just seems, well, curious to me that they don't focus on this 'kidnapping' of their people with more 'outrage.' Something's not right about that, IMO. http://english.irib.ir/

[deminks]

14. My take - the article is saying the two events are linked by US provocation

While everyone is agonizing over maps and GPS units, it was the US who provoked Iran to take their own hostages, since we have 5 of theirs. British, US, Polish - it didn't matter. They took coalition forces. The article is saying the the raid WE conducted provoked Iran to take their own hostages, and that Downing Street should have known.

There are no memos from George on how to provoke Iran, yet, but this is offered as another viewpoint on how the event came about. Not so much GPS units, but George the Provocateur Extraordinaire.

IMHO.

[MADem]

16. IRIB isn't even COVERING that story though. And that doesn't make sense.

Why isn't Iran screaming about their "hostages?" It's been almost THREE months now.

Perhaps because they weren't diplomats, but armed combatants who had no business over the border?

The story they ARE flogging, though, beside the UK Sailors, is the "US IS GONNA ATTACK" story. They even interviewed Seymour Hersch:

Question: Mr. Hersh there is so many people who predict that there would be a US military strike on Iran, most of them to say this is going to be an air strike. According to Iran's geo- strategic position which is mountainous and the US air strike could not be followed by ground strike, what could the US military do in order to be successful and does the US have the ability to launch a ground strike on Iran or not?

Answer: I am somebody who has an opposition to the government and so I do not sit down at the table with people in the White House and the Pentagon officially and discuss these things. The best I can tell you is nobody knows for sure what is going to happen. It is very possible that President Bush and Vice President Cheney, all their language is just a bluff and it is designed to make Iran give up and stop its nuclear fuel cycle research. I don't think so, but it is possible. I do know there is an intensive planning for an air strike and one of the problems you have when you start the process is if the air strike isn't successful or it doesn't lead to what they want, I mean a capitulation by Iran. The next step would be they are considered some sort of on the ground operation. All of this has to be considered in the planning but this is just planning. What I have been writing about for over year is still planning. It is going to be planning until the president wakes up one morning and says I want to strike Iran and then it happens. That order so far has not come.

Question: It seems that President Bush is under pressure from neo-cons according to the fact that some Republicans along with majority of Democrats voted for non-binding resolution in the House of Representatives to limit President Bush and according to decreasing popularity of President Bush could Democrats and moderate Republicans resist against President Bush's strategy in the Middle East and stop him or he would act upon guideline from neo-cons circle and influential lobbies in Washington?

Answer: Of course, it is not clear that President Bush is going to be influenced by the Democrats. The congressional elections in the Last fall clearly showed that the American people want this war ended in Iraq. There is no sign that the president has done that. What has been done is surge, increase number of troops. My country is also in big trouble in Afghanistan, the war that has got much worse. The Taliban clearly have not been defeated as we had thought. We have huge problems. But you would think normally the president would be working very closely with the Democrats and trying to figure out the best way to resolve the crises in such a way that we are not defeated and the world is in jeopardy that he doesn't seem to be doing that. It seems to be doing exactly what he wants to do. So the politics of the day make very little difference to Bush.

http://english.irib.ir/

[IndianaGreen]

17. Iraq's President Talabani complained about the 5 Iranian diplomats

taken captive by the US. They are still detained, and possibly under torture. Iran is fully justified in defending herself against American aggression.

[MADem]

27. He's not so mad that he took measures to kick us out, though, is he?

And he's "just" the President. A powerless figurehead, much like the President of Iran. And a Kurd. Which is why he protested, because it fits with what the peshmerga did as well. He probably got a piece of that cash in the suitcase--after all, a man's gotta eat.

Jalal Talabani is a member of "the" Talabani famiy, who are like the George Washingtons to Kurdistan. Well, to be accurate, more like the Thomas Jeffersons--the George Washingtons would be the Barzani clan.

All I am saying is this: What people SAY, and what they MEAN, are often two different things.

PUBLIC alliances are often different from PRIVATE alliances. Deals are made all the time.

Your last sentence was a total hoot. The "I'm a Commie Revolutionary" phraseology aside, that is. You're suggesting that Iran "defended herself against American aggression" by capturing UK servicemembers.

So, they're on a par with most American eighth graders, then--flunking geography!

There's a lot going on here, and those Iranians are only a small piece of the pie. If they were the central reason for the capture, the Iranians would be screaming about them. But they aren't. They aren't even ON their broadcasts. It's all about sovreignty, lines in the water, territory...and the planned attack on Iran by the US on 6 April that originated in the Russian and Lebanese press. That's the story they are shopping. Make of that what you will.

[Heidi]

19. Kick.

:kick:

[sabra]

20. The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis

Source: The Independent

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.



Read more: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2414760.ece

[azurnoir]

21. Wow between this and the missing guy

that "should not be thought of as a hostage" who is now being claimed to be a retired FBI agent. You almost have to wonder if Dub'ya is feeling ignored or what, there seems to be an effort to make this situation somehow America's business.

[nadinbrzezinski]

22. We do have a crazy leader in the

[TomInTib]

23. Something in all of this just bugs the hell out of me.

There is some kind of just jumping-off crazy to all of this.

Will this be the bushie life-line?

You know...

Come Hell or high water...

Who blinks?

[MADem]

29. It bugs me too. But maybe not for the same reasons.

No one is thinking that the sudden shopping of this story (which was heavily covered in January, when it fucking HAPPENED!) by the BRITISH might be a way of inoculating themselves if things go wobbly. See, they didn't cross into Iranian territorial waters, the UK is the poor hapless victim of American Adventurism!!! Yeah....that's the ticket!

We're asked to believe that British Intelligence was SO STUPID that they didn't factor this event and others into the measures their personnel take for Force Protection. That they were suddenly inattentive, they didn't see the headlines in major international newspapers when the event occured back in January, when they've been the only ones awake at the wheel for some time. I find that difficult to swallow.

I cannot get past one simple fact--when we had hostages taken in Iran, at an EMBASSY, we covered the story for four HUNDRED and forty four frigging days. Hell, the coverage gave birth to NIGHTLINE. Check the Persian press--radio, internet, tv, and newspapers--scarcely a PEEP about this Kurdish matter. And it's only been since JANUARY. Could it be because those guys weren't "diplomats" and that building wasn't a "consulate?" And if they weren't, and it wasn't, then perhaps they were up to no good?? The two clowns who 'escaped' sure as hell weren't diplomats. Were they Qods (Pasaradan) leadership, perhaps? Which makes you wonder if those five that were retained were foot soldiers.... http://www.fas.org/irp/world/iran/qods/index.html

And then, there's that story that mysteriously originated in late March in the Russkie and Lebanese press--that the US was gonna "attack Iran on April 6." They even gave a twelve hour window, that's how precise they got about it... :eyes: I'd love to know who planted that juicy tidbit, myself.

Something's going on, that's for sure. It is a pisspile of DISINFORMATION, IMO.

Who's dis-infoing who, now THAT is the question....

[Truthiness Inspector]

24. Right

and that is why the Iranian government has refrained itself from saying as much, all while hanging onto a fiber that the Brits were in Iranian waters.

Iran howls about this now. Uh huh.

[goodhue]

25. !

[deminks]

28. Here it is:CBS: Swap For Brit Hostages In The Works?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/03/world/main2640858.shtml

CBS/AP) A senior Iraqi foreign ministry official said on Tuesday that the government was "intensively" seeking release of five Iranians detained by the U.S. military more than two months ago in northern Iraq.

"We are intensively seeking the release of the five Iranians," the senior official said.

"This will be a factor that will help in the release of the British sailors and marines" held by Iran since March 25.

The official also said that the Iraqi government had exerted pressure on those holding an Iranian diplomat, who was released Monday and returned to Tehran on Tuesday. The official would not say who had held the diplomat.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/03/world/main2640858.shtml

Now the two events are connected.

[azurnoir]

32. Mr president Bush already said no to that

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=554037