US plot to nail Iran backfires
By Gareth Porter
Asia Times OnlineWASHINGTON - The George W Bush administration's plan to create a new crescendo of accusations against Iran for allegedly smuggling arms to Shi'ite militias in Iraq has encountered not just one but two setbacks.
The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki refused to endorse US charges of Iranian involvement in arms smuggling to Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and a plan to show off a huge collection of Iranian arms captured in and around the central city of Karbala had to be called off after it was discovered that none of the arms was of Iranian origin.
The news media's failure to report that the arms captured from Shi'ite militiamen in Karbala did not include a single Iranian weapon shielded the US military from a big blow to its anti-Iran strategy.
The Bush administration and top Iraq commander General David Petraeus had plotted a sequence of events that would build domestic US political support for a possible strike against Iran over its "meddling" in Iraq, and especially its alleged export of arms to Shi'ite militias.
The plan was keyed to a briefing document to be prepared by Petraeus on the alleged Iranian role in arming and training Shi'ite militias that would be revealed to the public after the Maliki government had endorsed it, and that would be used to accuse Iran publicly.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told reporters on April 25 that Petraeus was preparing a briefing to be given "in the next couple of weeks" that would provide detailed evidence of "just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability". The centerpiece of the Petraeus document, completed in late April, was the claim that arms captured in the southern city of Basra bore 2008 manufacture dates on them.
US officials also planned to display to reporters Iranian weapons captured in both Basra and Karbala. That sequence of media events would fill the airwaves for several days with spectacular news framing Iran as the culprit in Iraq, aimed at breaking down US congressional and public resistance to the idea that Iranian bases supporting the meddling would have to be attacked.
But events in Iraq did not follow the script. On May 4, after an Iraqi delegation had returned from meetings in Iran, Maliki's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said in a news conference that Maliki was forming his own cabinet committee to investigate the US claims. "We want to find tangible information and not information based on speculation," he said.
Another adviser to Maliki, Haider Abadi, told the Los Angeles Times' Alexandra Zavis that Iranian officials had given the delegation evidence disproving the charges. "For us to be impartial, we have to investigate," Abadi said.
Dabbagh made it clear the government considered the US evidence of Iranian government arms smuggling to be insufficient. "The proof we want is weapons which are shown to have been made in Iran," Dabbagh said in a separate interview with Reuters. "We want to trace back how they reached [Iraq], who is using them, where are they getting it."
Senior US military officials were clearly furious with Maliki for backtracking on the issue. "We were blindsided by this," one of them told Zavis.
Then the Bush administration's plot encountered another serious problem.
The Iraqi commander in Karbala had announced on May 3 that he had captured a large quantity of Iranian arms in and around the city. Earlier, the US military had said that it was up to the Iraqi government to display captured Iranian weapons, and now an Iraqi commander was eager to do just that. Petraeus' staff alerted US media to a major news event in which the captured Iranian arms in Karbala would be displayed and then destroyed.
But when US munitions experts went to Karbala to see the alleged cache of Iranian weapons, they found nothing they could credibly link to Iran.
The US command had to inform reporters that the event had been canceled, explaining that it had all been a "misunderstanding". In his press briefing on May 7, Brigadier General Kevin Bergner gave some details of the captured weapons in Karbala but refrained from charging any Iranian role.
The cancelation of the planned display was a significant story, in light of the well-known intention of the US command to convict Iran on the arms smuggling charge. Nevertheless, it went unreported in the world's news media.
A report on the Los Angeles Times' blog "Babylon and Beyond" by Baghdad correspondent Tina Susman was the only small crack in the media blackout. The story was not carried in the Times itself.
The real significance of the captured weapons collected in Karbala was not the obvious US political embarrassment over an Iraqi claim of captured Iranian arms that turned out to be false. It was the deeper implication of the arms that were captured.
Karbala is one of Iraq's eight largest cities, and it has long been the focus of major fighting between the Mahdi Army and its Shi'ite foes. Muqtada declared his ceasefire last August after a major battle there, but fighting resumed there and in Basra when the government launched a major operation in March. Thousands of Mahdi Army fighters have fought in Karbala over the past year.
The official list of weapons captured in Karbala includes nine mortars, four anti-aircraft missiles, 45 rocket propelled grenade (RPG) weapons, 800 RPG missiles and 570 roadside explosive devices. The failure to find a single item of Iranian origin among these heavier weapons, despite the deeply entrenched Mahdi Army presence over many months, suggests that the dependence of the Mahdi Army on arms manufactured in Iran is actually quite insignificant.
The Karbala weapons cache also raises new questions about the official US narrative about the Shi'ite militia's use of explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) as an Iranian phenomenon. Among the captured weapons mentioned by Major General Raied Shaker Jawdat, commander of the Karbala police, were what he called "150 anti-tank bombs", as distinguished from ordinary roadside explosive devices.
An "anti-tank bomb" is a device that is capable of penetrating armor, which has been introduced to the US public as the EFP. The US claim that Iran was behind their growing use in Iraq was the centerpiece of the Bush administration's case for an Iranian "proxy war" against the US in early 2007.
Soon after that, however, senior US military officials conceded that EFPs were in fact being manufactured in Iraq itself, although they insisted that EFPs alleged exported by Iran were superior to the home-made version.
The large cache of EFPs in Karbala which are admitted to be non-Iranian in origin underlines the reality that the Mahdi Army procures its EFPs from a variety of sources.
But for the media blackout of the story, the large EFP discovery in Karbala would have further undermined the credibility of the US military's line on Iran's export of the EFPs to Iraqi fighters.
Apparently understanding the potential political difficulties that the Karbala EFP find could present, Bergner omitted any reference to them in his otherwise accurate accounting of the Karbala weapons.
What will start happening next, in fact, it already has, is that MOSSAD/CIA operatives in Iraq will start using shoulder-fired SAM's to knock down American helicopters, and when that happens, scum bags like Joe boy LIE berman will be on the ariwaves, with false tears in his eyes, damning the Iranians for using SAM's to kill Americans and demand vengeance.
All three presidential candidates will demand retribution against Iran, to appease their AIPAC handlers.
The Bush/Cheney Junta will swing into action, and initate a small strike against an Iranian military facility, in the hopes that Iran will take the bait and hit back, giving the war mongers in DC the excuse they've been looking for to bring the "Shock and Awe" democracy tour to Iran.
too, so who cares what happens to them. This seems to be what everyone thinks around here, anyway.
Now that the ZOG is openly provoking the Russians, it's only fair that they get a dose of "stinger therapy" like the Soviets got in Afghanistan in the 80s.
Back when the "terrorists" were working for us!
That's not even mentioning the pure havoc these can wreak on the airline industry.
I have said it before: For the Bush regime and its handlers the real proof of strength lies in the success with which the "reality" can be removed from the facts. This is a philosophy of raw power, and it has nothing to do with good manners...
"We are an empire now, and we create our own reality" http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html
Therefore, and in particular in connection with starting the third world war which Bush has kindly promised on Israeli TV, you are unlikely to hear anything which even remotely resembles the truth.
No one has accused Iran of being a Zionist regime. I think you are a zionist agent and are trying to inject zionist propaganda here.
Another item from Gareth Porter...
..they wanted to do in Iraq too, but Iran is/was much more powerful, despite saddam's useless arms buildup. (besides, in the beginning saddam was doing their bidding just fine!) Just look at how the zoos aided and abetted both sides to kill each other; another million dead.
..which zoo was quoted.. kissinger said something about getting both sides to kill each other, did he not?
..the only reason the devils wanted the US to attack Iran was because then their zoos could take care of Iraq, or so they thought anyway. maybe they'll build the tallest building in the world.. somewhere around.. Baghdad. hmm?
The biggest target, anyway.
Yes, that was during the Iraq-Iran War (1980-88), which killed over a million people. The USA provided weaponry to both sides.
Kissinger summarized the US / zionist position at the start of the war: "I hope they kill each other."
The killing lasted for eight years because everyone wanted to cash in on the Gulf War bonanza. With so many billions being made selling weapons systems to both sides, including poison gas, nobody wanted it to end. In fact, steps were taken to deliberately prolong the conflict by strengthening first one side and then the other. Then came nearly thirteen years of U.S.-led sanctions, which killed 500,000 to one million Iraqis.
From 1984 to 1989, the American Type Culture Collection Company in Maryland sold weaponized strains of anthrax and bubonic plague to Iraq. These WMDs were later found and destroyed by UNSCOM inspectors. Nancy Wysocki, vice president of public relations at the company, said the biological weapons were sold to Iraq "For legitimate research purposes.”
Also, the USA supplied $695 million worth of advanced field communications equipment to Iraq on August 1st 1990, one day before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
I'm surprised the spin didn't adjust to simply make the Iranian's the supplier's of non-Iranian manufactured arms. The US Congress and public would have swallowed it either way.
..besides the fact that Iranians have every right to arm and influence whomever they want, including their Shia bretheren in Iraq, all this tut-tut for war in babylon would unleash the real version of the zooshite the pollo swallow whole.
..an attack on Iran IS WW3, because Iran, Syria, Russia and China will aid each other, and also have defense pacts, which give them every excuse they'd need to join the battle. the indians will not join, as they are mostly peaceful, despite their polytheism. i forgot which one it was.. perhaps Shiva that won the war by declaring peace, rather than making more martyrs.
..the chance of the devil/zoos winning through war is nil. the chance of the devil/zoos winning through evil subversion is higher, yet still amounts to zero.
..they love their sheckels and imaginary power so much, they fail to understand the nature of the universe.