The top US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, has raised the propaganda war against Iran another notch levelling
new allegations that the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) was responsible for the deaths of US troops in Iraq. The comments to journalists last weekend at a
military base near the Iranian border come in the wake of persistent leaks in Washington indicating that the Bush administration is preparing to use “counter-terrorism” as the pretext for air strikes on Iran. Petraeus provocatively declared that Tehran’s ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, was a member of the elite Quds Force, which the Bush administration has been contemplating formally branding as a “terrorist organisation”. Petraeus acknowledged that Kazemi had diplomatic immunity and “therefore he is obviously not subject
,” but the general’s remarks lay the basis for US demands for the diplomat’s expulsion or other punitive actions. The US military has over the past year seized a number of Iranian officials, including credentialled diplomats. Last December US troops detained at least five Iranians, including two diplomats, and pressured the Iraqi government to expel them on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations that they were involved in assisting Shiite militia in Iraq. In January, just hours after President Bush declared that the US would “seek out and destroy” Iranian networks in Iraq, US Special Forces broke into an Iranian liaison office in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil. Five Iranian officials were detained in the pre-dawn raid. Last month, US soldiers detained Iranian official Aghai Farhadi, who was part of a delegation holding trade talks with the Kurdish regional government. Farhadi and the Irbil Five, who the US alleges are Quds Force members, are still in custody, despite demands for their release by the Iraqi government. No charges have been laid. Last week, Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the US operational commander in Iraq, told the Washington Post that “militarily, we should hold onto them ”. He did not elaborate on the military value of holding the Iranian officials. But the newspaper reported in April that during White House discussions of their fate Vice President Dick Cheney had insisted the Iranian officials continue to be held to send a message to Tehran that its “actions are monitored”—that is, to use the five as hostages. Petraeus’s allegations against Iran’s ambassador were part of a barrage of other accusations. He accused the IRGC of being “responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have killed US soldiers”. The IRGC is an 125,000-strong component of the Iranian military. In comments to CNN, Petraeus declared: “There’s no question, absolutely no question that Iran is providing advanced RPGs , RPG 29s. It has provided some shoulder-fired, Stinger-like, air-defence missiles. It has provided the explosively formed projectiles and it has provided some 244 mm rockets, in addition to mortars, mortar rounds and other small arms ammunition.” The general also claimed that the Iranians “are implicated in the assassination of some governors in the southern provinces”. He was particularly dismissive of talks between the US and Iranian ambassadors in Baghdad, sponsored by the US State Department, over stabilising the US-led occupation of Iraq. Referring to Iranian assurances, Petraeus declared: “We are very much in the ‘show-me’ mode right now.” Petraeus’s inflammatory remarks add to the growing deluge of American propaganda accusing Iran of arming and training anti-US insurgents in Iraq. US officials now routinely brands any attack on its forces in Shiite areas as the work of “Iranian-backed militia”. Last Friday, air strikes on a predominantly Shiite village in Diyala province killed at least 25 people. The US military claimed that the operation hadbeen targetting a “Special Groups” commander believed linked to the Quds Force and that all the victims were Shiite militiamen. An Iraqi police spokesman and eyewitnesses told AFP that women and children had been killed and injured in the attack, which levelled at least four houses. The US campaign recalls the barrage of lies in 2002 and early 2003 that were used as the casus belli for its illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Pentagon’s only attempt to justify its claims of Iranian interference in Iraq was a dossier presented in February to a select group of journalists in Baghdad. Iranian-made rocket propelled grenades, mortar shells and explosively formed penetrators were put on display as “proof” that Tehran was supplying arms. Asked how he knew that “the highest levels of the Iranian government” were involved, the unnamed American official had to admit that his conclusion was just “an inference”.