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U.S. Troops Raid 2 Iranian Targets in Iraq, Detain 5 People
By Robin Wright and Nancy Trejos
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 12, 2007; Page A16
U.S. troops launched two raids on Iranian targets in Iraq yesterday, following through on President Bush's vow to confront and break up Tehran's networks inside Iraq. Five Iranians were detained, and vast amounts of documents and computer data were confiscated, according to U.S., Iraqi and Iranian officials.
The two raids are part of a new U.S. intelligence and military operation launched last month against Iran, U.S. officials said. The United States is trying to identify and detain top officials of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' al-Quds Brigade operating in Iraq. The al-Quds Brigade is active in arming, training and funding militant movements, such as Lebanon's Hezbollah, throughout the Middle East.
....
Last month, U.S. forces seized two senior Iranians -- Brig. Gen. Mohsen Chirazi and Col. Abu Amad Davari -- in the first round of raids. Chirazi is the No. 3 official in the al-Quds Brigade and the highest ranking Iranian ever held by the United States.
.....
Tehran contends that the five men detained are all diplomats, an assertion that Iraq's foreign minister and U.S. officials reject
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011100427.html
.......The attack was denounced by senior Kurdish officials, who are normally America’s closest allies in Iraq but regarded the action as an affront to their sovereignty in this highly tribal swath of the country. Iran’s Foreign Ministry reacted in Tehran with a harsh denunciation that threatened to escalate tensions with the Bush administration.
....Witnesses said the attack was directed at a building that an American official described as a liaison office that was properly accredited with Iraq as an Iranian government facility. It was unclear whether the Iranians who were arrested carried diplomatic passports and whether the office was supposed to share some of the immunities enjoyed by embassies and consulates.
Local residents said the main function of the office was to process papers for people who want to go to Iran for visits or medical treatment. ....
A senior State Department official said that the Iranian office in Erbil was not technically a consulate, but rather a liaison office which also provided some consular services.
He said that American officials believed that the Iranians intended to turn the office into a consulate at some point, but that had not yet happened. Therefore, he said, the State Department does not consider the office to be Iranian territory......
A measured statement late in the day from Mr. Barzani’s (president of the semiautonomous territory of Kurdistan) office expressed “its sadness over these actions,” indicating that it believed the building had diplomatic immunity. “It is better to inform the Kurdistan government before taking actions against anybody,” the office said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/world/middleeast/12raid.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5094&en=489150d45b330eff&hp&ex=1168664400&partner=homepage
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Five Iranians detained by U.S.-led forces were working in a decade-old government liaison office that was in the process of being upgraded to a consulate, the Iraqi foreign minister said Friday.
But Deputy U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in Washington that the U.S.-led forces entered the building because information linked it to Iranian elements engaging in violent activities in Iraq.
Tehran condemned the raid in the Kurdish-controlled northern city of Irbil and urged Iraq to push for the Iranians' release.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the building where the Iranians were detained Thursday had operated with Iraqi government approval for 10 years.
"We are now in the process of changing these offices to consulates," he said. "It is not a new office. This liaison office has been there for a long time." ....
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/01/12/D8MK3JNO0.html
So we have this - Iranians were openly operating a Liaison Office in an area of Iraq that has a tenuous relationship with the central government. They had the support of the locals but not yet the support of central government. The Iranians were not yet accredited diplomats and may never have become so regardless of the wishes of Tehran AND the local Kurds.
Iranians in Iraq, including those with Diplomatic Immunity, have been engaged in illegal acts and detained. This is legal. Diplomats so engaged are returned to their home country "persona non grata". Everyone else is subject to the local laws.
Meanwhile Baghdad and Kurdistan are at odds over who gets to make treaties with neighbouring countries. This will no doubt have had an impact on when/if this place ever became a consulate.
Also, it is in the best interests of both Baghdad and Kurdistan to lay this at the feet of those "misguided" Americans (note the "more in sorrow than in anger" tone) allowing THEM plausible deniability so that THEY can continue to build relations with whoever is currently in charge in Tehran (a bit of an open question these days).
Finally we have new reports of bombs going off in the west of Iran (Baluchistan) with an election coming up -
TEHRAN: A car bomb exploded in Iran's southeastern province of Sistan-Balochistan, killing the only occupant of the vehicle, the official news agency IRNA reported on Friday.
"The explosive material was planted in a car at a Zahedan (the provincial capital) street, where the governor general's building is located," said the top local security official, Mohsen Sadeghi.
He said the incident occurred on Thursday at 9 pm (1730 GMT). Interior Minister Mostafa Pour Mohammadi dismissed the idea that the blast targeted the provincial governor but said the explosion broke some windows in the building, the Mehr agency reported.
The minister also ruled out the possibility of any link between the incident and Iran's nationwide elections being held on Friday. "Based on our latest information, this incident was not related to the elections and the governor and it will not affect the elections either," he said.
A Zahedan MP, Payman Forouzesh, said the fatal explosion was caused by a percussion bomb and was followed by another similar blast. "Another percussion bomb in front of the university planted in a trash can went off and injured the leg of a citizen," Forouzesh was quoted as saying by ISNA news agency. "Security measures have been taken all over Zahedan and all the forces are on alert," he added.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=4799
the prospect that Khamanei may be dead or dying (or not)
http://joshuapundit.blogspot.com/2007/01/khamaneis-death-neither-confirmed-or.html
and Ahmedinejad losing to the moderates on the council that will replace Khamenei in the last elections, having his term curtailed by a year and then this:
Rafsanjani says road to be named after the "Martyr" Ahmadinejad
With Tehran swirling with rumors regarding the pending demise from cancer of Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i, the ultimate power jockey, Hojjat-ol eslam Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, hinted recently that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could be forcibly removed from power if he doesn't resign voluntarily.
Following December's widely-boycotted elections, Rafsanjani has now taken over as head of the Assembly of Experts, the body that under the Islamic Republic constitution will name the Supreme Leader when Khamenei dies. In an otherwise fawning paeon to Khamenei ("whose death will have a shattering effect on the Iranian public, who idolize their leader and would largely view his loss as a catastrophe" [sic]), Stratfor notes that "t might be no coincidence Rafsanjani, in a recent talk with journalists, described a new highway currently under construction in Tehran, as the "highway of Shahid (martyr) Ahmadinejad." Hat tip to Gary Metz for pointing out the Stratfor piece.
http://www.krsi.net/news/Default.asp?PgNum=4
Like the Khamenei story it would be really interesting if it proves to be true...and not just disinformation. Either way it is interesting.