Senior British official blames Iranians for UK troop deaths

[Batgirl]

A senior British official today directly blamed Iran’s Revolutionary Guard with supplying the lethal explosive technology used by Iraqi insurgents to kill British soldiers.

The briefing, giving on condition of anonymity, is the first high-level admission that the Iranians are now considered to be directly supporting Sunni Muslim insurgent groups fighting coalition forces.

The source said that the Iranian action could be an attempt to warn off Britain over its demands that Tehran should abandon a controversial nuclear programme.

"It would be entirely natural that they would want to send a message ‘Don’t mess with us’. It would not be outside the policy parameters of Tehran," the official said.

The British source said it was believed that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had been responsible for supplying the technology behind a series of deadly attacks on British troops over the summer.

Michael Evans, Defence Editor for The Times, said: "There has been a suspicion that at least the last half a dozen of the recent deaths of British soldiers have come as a result of new and more advanced technology.

"The Americans have been accusing Iran of providing help to insurgents for some time, but this is the first occasion on which a senior British official, even one speaking on a non-attributable basis, has confirmed that this is now also the British view."

The IRGC was formed in 1979 as an ultra-conservative military force fiercely loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini which fought alongside the Iranian army in the Iran-Iraq war.

Although it is not officially tied to the Government, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the country's new hardline president, joined the IRGC in the 1980s is still believed to be a member.

The attacks showed a marked evolution of the sophistication of weaponry from crude mobile-phone bombs to powerful armour-piercing bombs and infra-red detonators. "We think it has come from Lebanese Hezbollah via Iran," he said.

He refused to be drawn on whether the IRGC were acting on the orders of the government in Tehran or was operating independently.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations and considered a relatively pro-Western moderate, was today reported as having announced his resignation from the country’s nuclear negotiating team. No reason was given for his departure by the state news agency IRNA.

Although Iran is a Shia Muslim country, the official said it now appeared that elements in Tehran were in contact with Sunni Muslim insurgent groups across the border in Iraq.

Sunni Muslims linked to al-Qaeda have been blamed for trying to ignite a civil war to destabilise the Shia-led parliament. They believe it will lead to the division of Iraq into West-friendly, oil-rich Shia and Kurdish provinces, leaving little more than a war-torn desert for the Sunnis.

The British official said: "There is some evidence that the Iranians are in contact with Sunni groups. I don’t think it is for a benign purpose. If part of the aim was to tie down the coalition in Iraq, it would be entirely consistent with supporting those groups."

Earlier this year it was disclosed that British diplomats had protested to the Iranian government after the seizure of arms being smuggled across the border into Iraq.

"We continue to press Iran on that and we continue to encourage the Iraqi government to do that," the official said.

The official warned that there was likely to be an upsurge in violence in the run up to the referendum on the new Iraqi constitution on October 15 and also in the lead in to elections in December.

"That is what the security forces are preparing for. There are a lot of people who don’t want this process to succeed," he said.

He played down the dramatic operation in which British forces were forced to storm a police station in Basra to rescue two SAS soldiers who had been arrested and handed over to local Shia militias. The incident led to suggestions of the widespread infiltration of Iraqi security forces by extremists.

"I think that was a rather isolated incident. That was the baddest of the bad police stations. That was a police station we had long ago abandoned as being beyond the pale," he said.

"It didn’t tell us anything that we didn’t know already - there were elements in the police who shouldn’t be there."

The official also disclosed that the trial of the former dictator Saddam Hussein, which had been due to start later this month, was now likely to be put back until after the elections.

He said that the delay was not for political reasons but because the practical arrangements - such as the provision of bullet-proof screens and witness protection programmes - had yet to be put in place.

"I think there are some logistical problems. There are a lot of things they haven’t got round to yet. I would be surprised if it slipped a bit," he said.

There have been at least seven soldiers killed by roadside bombs in southern Iraq in the summer.

Fusilier Donal Anthony Meade, 20, from Plumstead in south east London, and Fusilier Stephen Robert Manning, 22, from Erith in Kent, were killed by a roadside bomb about five miles east of Shaibah airbase, in the Basra province, on September 5.

Major Matthew Bacon was killed in an attack in Basra on September 11.

On July 16, Second Lieutenant Richard Shearer, 26, from Nuneaton, Warwickshire, Private Leon Spicer, 26, and Private Phillip Hewett, 21, both from Tamworth, Staffordshire, died in a roadside bomb blast in Amarah, north of Basra. They were patrolling in the central Risaala district when the device went off.

In May, Lance Corporal Brackenbury, 21, from East Yorkshire, died after an explosion in Amarah, which Iraqi police said was caused by a roadside bomb. The soldier, from the King's Royal Hussars in A Squadron, was in a military convoy passing nearby.

Times Online

[Grimmy]

I read in Michael Yon's blog that what the Iranians are providing are perfidious devices such as preformed sections of concrete roadside curbing with the bombs built in and manhole covers, also with bombs built in.

This way, the bad guys (also often suspected of being either active duty Iranian intel folk or trained by them) have to prise up a section of roadside curbing and preplace it with the "bomb inside" one or simply replace a sewer cover.

You know we're gonna have to take the wood to both Syria and Iran. My hope is we drop all this "kinder gentler" bullshit and just simply crush em both mercilessly, vindictively and totally. Look at how long the Germans have been all nice and peaceful, hell, the Jerries still havent regrown any spine...so we know the old school method actually does work.

And the funny thing is, once we've beat the crap out of Syria and Iran, there's not a hella lot of "arab world" left to bother with.

[Batgirl]

Keep out of Iraq, Blair tells Iran

By Anton La Guardia Diplomatic Editor and Alec Russell in Washington
(Filed: 07/10/2005)

Tony Blair warned Iran yesterday to stop meddling in Iraq, saying that Britain would not be intimidated by Iranian-linked roadside bombs that have killed eight soldiers.


Tony Blair stands with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani

Speaking a day after a senior British official said that Iran had given Sunni and Shia extremists advanced bomb-making technology, the Prime Minister said: "There are certain pieces of information that lead us back to Iran. But I am not saying any more than that; we cannot be sure of this."

However, he added: "I want to be very, very clear about this - the British forces are in Iraq under a United Nations mandate. There is no justification for Iran or any other country to interfere in Iraq.

"Neither will we be subjected to any intimidation in raising the necessary and right issues to do with the nuclear weapons obligations of Iran under the atomic energy agency treaty."

Mr Blair said the bombs used against coalition forces were "similar in nature" to those used by Hizbollah, an Iranian proxy in Lebanon.

President George W Bush accused Iran and Syria of backing Islamic terrorists and said that America saw no difference between terrorists and their sponsors.

"Any government that chooses to be an ally of terror has chosen to be an enemy of civilisation and the civilised world must hold those regimes to account," he said.

Telegraph

[Curt]

The Syrians and Iranians have the most to gain and nothing to lose by their interference