Troops raid Iranian consulate in Iraq

[jonSlack]

Troops raid Iranian consulate in Iraq (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467711461&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)


Iraqi officials said Thursday that multinational forces detained five Iranians in an overnight raid on Teheran's diplomatic mission in the northern city of Irbil.

The forces stormed the building at about 3 a.m., detaining the five staffers and confiscating computers and documents, two senior local Kurdish officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. Irbil is a city in the Kurdish-controlled north, 350 kilometers from Baghdad.

A resident living near the mission said the foreign force used stun bombs in the raid and brought down an Iranian flag that was on the roof of the two-story yellow house. As the operation went on, two helicopters flew overhead, said the resident on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution.

[JKM4767]

I wasn't even tracking there was an Iranian consulate there. I am suprised the Kurds and the PUK didn't do anything earlier. Nice city, though, well for Iraq anyway.

[Bill Moore]

During the Kurdish civil war (PUK versus KDP) the PUK was supported by Iran, and the KDP cut deals with Saddam making it sort of a proxy war. The point is that some Kurdish elements have ties with Iran. Of course there is a large Kurdish population in Iran also. I'm sure Jedburgh can enlighten us more on this.

Going back to the Iranian Consulate in Irbil, I found out recently that Irbil has its own functioning international airport (I wonder if they go through Iraqi or Kurdish Immigration and Customs?) Kurdistan also cut oil deals with other nations, so it appears that in many ways they are plowing ahead with their dream of becoming an independent nation, so it doesn't surprise me that there are consulates in Irbil. Additionally, Irbil is one of the safest cities in Iraq. Anyway, interesting story on the raid, I hope to see the Paul Harvey rest of the story version soon.

[tequila]

The KDP actually invited Saddam's army into Kurdistan to help it smash the PUK --- over 30,000 Iraqi troops took Irbil from Talabani's PUK and handed it over to the PUK. The KDP also was helped by Iraqi Army troops when it took Sulamaniyah.

Talabani's PUK is quite tight (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4457568.stm)with the Iranians going back to the Iran-Iraq War (Saddam had similar warm relations with Iranian Kurds that fought for, yes, Iraq during that conflict). Barzani's KDP has also at times sought refuge behind the Iranian border.

[Jedburgh]

I wasn't even tracking there was an Iranian consulate there. I am suprised the Kurds and the PUK didn't do anything earlier. Nice city, though, well for Iraq anyway.
The PUK has traditionally had a close relationship with Iran. Hell, after their post-Desert Storm uprising was crushed, there were far more Kurds who fled to Iran than there those who went to Turkey. But it was the masses huddled on the Turkish border who forced the intiation of OPC, and ended up receiving the lion's share of aid and assistance.

And during the KDP-PUK civil war, the KDP invited the Iraqi Army into Irbil back in Aug 96 because the PUK had been receiving direct Iranian support in their internecine squabble. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face....

Of course, the broader record is mixed - Iran has always followed its own interests in whatever support it provided to one or another Kurdish faction. The most famous being the manner in which Iran (and the US) cut off and abandoned the Iraqi Kurds in '74.

There's certainly a lot more behind the raid than is being casually mentioned in the media. And the results/fall-out will be interesting to watch.

[tequila]

NYT provides some more details (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/world/middleeast/11cnd-raid.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=world&pagewanted=print). Apparently we didn't inform the Kurdish government.

[Rob Thornton]

We watched part of the story on Iraqi TV. Monty Hall has nothing on the folks over here. Irbil is a very interesting city with an appetite - property values in Irbil are ever on the increase. Sometimes trying to tell who is connected to who is like looking at a plate of cooked speghetti - but it grows on you.

P.S. if it turns out that some of the Iraqi BDEs come from up North, consider the deal that must've been made to pull that one off. Not much up here is done for free;)

[tequila]

Some more details come out (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/12/world/middleeast/12raid.html?ei=5094&en=489150d45b330eff&hp=&ex=1168664400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print). The Kurds sound mildly upset.


American troops backed by attack helicopters and armored vehicles raided an Iranian diplomatic office in the dead of night early Thursday and detained as many as six of the Iranians working inside.

The raid was the second surprise seizure of Iranians by the American military in Iraq in recent weeks and came a day after President Bush bluntly warned Iran to quit meddling in Iraqi affairs.

There was a tense standoff later in the day between the American soldiers and about 100 Kurdish troops, who surrounded the American armored vehicles for about two hours in this northern Iraqi city.

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.

Washington Post article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011100427_pf.html)indicates there were two raids, with one stopped at Irbil Airport by Kurdish troops. Apparently Kurds and Americans nearly opened fire on one another.


Yesterday's raids were both in Irbil, a Kurdish city in northern Iraq. One was carried out at 3 a.m. on the Iranian Liaison Office, which is used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a local headquarters, U.S. officials said. Kurdish officials said U.S. troops came in helicopters. They disarmed the security guards, broke through the gate, entered the building and detained six men, Iranian officials told the Iranian news agency. One was later released.

The other raid was at the Irbil airport, where U.S. forces tried to detain people until Kurdish troops intervened -- and almost ended up in a confrontation with U.S. troops, said Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. "A massacre was avoided at the last minute," he said. A U.S. official confirmed that the incident nearly resulted in U.S. and Kurdish allies firing at one another.

[jonSlack]

The Karbala attack and the IRGC (http://billroggio.com/archives/2007/01/the_karbala_attack_a.php)


"On January 20th, a team of twelve men disguised as U.S. soldiers entered the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Karbala, where U.S. soldiers conducted a meeting with local officials, and attacked and killed five soldiers, and wounded another three. The initial reports indicated the five were killed in the Karbala JCC, however the U.S. military has reported that four of those killed were actually removed from the center, handcuffed, and murdered."

...


"The Karbala raid makes sense in light of the U.S. raids on the Iranian diplomatic missions in Baghdad and Irbil, where Iranian Qods Force agents were captured, along with documentation that divulged Iran's involvement with and support of Shia death squads, the Sunni insurgent, and al-Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunnah. Five Iranians from the Irbil raid are still in U.S. custody, and captured U.S. soldiers would provide for excellent bargaining chips"

[Culpeper]

Iraqi insurgents using Austrian rifles from Iran (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=JPKY4R41A1KIBQFIQMGCFF4AVCBQ UIV0?xml=/news/2007/02/13/wiran13.xml)


The National Iranian Police Organisation bought the rifles allegedly to use them against drug smugglers in an £8 million order placed with Steyr in 2005.

The company was given permission to export them by the Austrian government, which is not a Nato member.

[Jedburgh]

ISN, 26 Feb 07: Kurdish Strike Reminder of Forgotten War (http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=17292)

...The state-run IRNA news agency (http://www.irna.com/en/) reported on Saturday that Iranian Revolutionary Guards units had engaged Kurdish militants in the country's West Azarbaijan province, as the insurgents apparently sought to flee to the safety of the Iraqi border 17 kilometers away.

According to IRNA, "The Revolutionary Guards besieged these elements and started neutralizing them. In this operation at least 17 mercenary anti-revolution elements were killed and some were injured."

Kurdish news agency Firat (http://www.firatnews.com/) carried a report the same day that militants from the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK/PEJAK) (http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?search=1&articleid=2370030) were claiming to have shot down an Iranian military helicopter in the area with a shoulder-launched missile, killing eight soldiers and capturing one....

[Hellbilly Soldier]

Excerpt from "Squeeze Iran" By Kenneth R. Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 9, 2007


When he announced the troop surge in Iraq, Bush also put Iran and Syria on notice. “Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops,” he said. “We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We'll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

Those weren’t idle words. That very night, U.S. forces raided an Iranian intelligence headquarters in the Kurdish town of Irbil, capturing six Iranians. The Iranian government screamed that they were diplomats, but apparently only one had any sort of diplomatic credentials. My sources tell me this was Hassan Abbassi, a well-known strategist who is close to president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The other five turned out to be Revolutionary Guards officers. My sources identified three of them by name, and told me they were providing a treasure trove of intelligence to their U.S. interrogators (who appear to be receiving help from an intelligence expert from the opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq).

“They are key people in the Sepah Quds,” the overseas terrorist arm of the Revolutionary Guards, a former Iranian intelligence officer told me.

Iranian exiles and Kurdish sources identified another captive as Brig. Gen. Mohammad Djafari Sahraroudi, a Kurdish affairs expert who is wanted by Interpol for his involvement in the 1989 murder in Vienna of Iranian Kurdish dissident Abdulrahman Qassemlou.

Also among those detained was Mohammad Jaafari, an aid to National Security advisor Ali Larijani, the sources said.

The raid in Irbil was in fact the second U.S. backed raid that captured senior Iranian revolutionary guards officials recently. Shortly before Christmas, coalition forces raided the headquarters of Shiite political leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, just three weeks after he was in the Oval Office meeting with President Bush.

During that raid, they captured documents which American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Ledeen called “a wiring diagram” of Iran’s terror networks in Iraq.

Iran is believed to be operating a number of intelligence offices in Iraq similar to the one in Irbil, to plan terrorist attacks against U.S. forces and supply money and equipment to insurgents.