Meddlers!

By Cernig

We've heard a lot recently about US allegations that Iran is interfering in Iraq, aiding insurgents with weaponry and training, but Iran has also long said that both the US and Britain back insurgents inside Iran and we hear rather less about that.

That might change if Iran goes ahead with a lawsuits, as it claimed today, against both nations for aiding terrorists who allegedly blew up a mosque.

Iran's judiciary said on Monday it would file international lawsuits against the United States and Britain, accusing them of providing financial support to those behind a blast in a mosque that killed 14 people.

Iran's intelligence minister last week said Iran had arrested five or six members of a terrorist group with links to Britain and the United States who he said were involved in the explosion that also wounded 200 in the southern city of Shiraz. Iranian officials had previously said the April 12 blast, during an evening prayer sermon by a prominent local cleric, was caused by explosives left over from an exhibition commemorating the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Judiciary spokesman Ali-Reza Jamshidi told state television the terrorists behind the bombing were agents of the U.S. and British governments in Iran. "The relationship of those who planted the bombs in Shiraz with the U.S. and Britain was identified and they were being financially supported and in fact they acted as foreign agents in Iran," he said. "In view of the documents obtained the judiciary in cooperation with the government and the Foreign Ministry will file lawsuits with international authorities against their supporters, who on the one hand claim to fight terrorists and on the other hand provide them with equipment," he said.

He was clearly referring to Britain and the United States, but did not give details on how Tehran would take legal action against them. Iran has in the past accused the two countries of trying to destabilize the Islamic Republic by supporting rebels, mainly those in sensitive border areas.

The British government recently failed to prevent judges from ordering the removal of the main suspect in foreign-backed meddling in Iran, the MeK, from being removed from the UK's terror list. Iran isn't too happy about that, summoning the British ambassador to protest the removal - and in truth the British government didn't try too hard to keep the MeK on the list. Neoconservatives and rightwing regime-change advocates have given the MeK heavy political backing in the last few years in both the US and UK and it seems likley that the US State Department will follow suit when it next reviews the MeK's inclusion in October.

The Islamo-marxist and messianic MeK (they believe their leader is the Twelfth Mahdi), which has previously been accused of killing US citizens in terrorist acts and was the force behind worldwide attacks on Iranian embassies, has more recently been seen as an invaluable ally by the US in Iraq. It has been provided with very salubrious accomodations at Camp Ashraf inside Iraq which are streets ahead of the common Iraqi experiences of power shortages and poor services, protected by American and Romanian troops, and MeK personnel have been used as interpreters and interrogators by occupation forces. This despite an ongoing commitment by the Iraqi government to expel the MeK from Iraq and to try dozens of its members for crimes against humanity committed when the MeK were Saddam's henchlings, used for punitive raids on Iraqi Shiites.

In 2006, online news-site Raw Story published allegations from anonymous sources in American intelligence and the UNSC that the Bush administration was using the MeK as proxy agents inside Iran to carry out advance team reconnaisance and strikes:

One former counterintelligence official, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the information, describes the Pentagon as pushing MEK shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The drive to use the insurgent group was said to have been advanced by the Pentagon under the influence of the Vice President’s office and opposed by the State Department, National Security Council and then-National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice.

...Another former intelligence official added that the US military had detained as many as 3,500 members of MEK at Iraq’s Camp Ashraf since the start of the war, including the highest level ranking MEK leaders. Ashraf is about 60 miles west of the Iranian border.

This intelligence official, wishing to remain anonymous, confirmed the policy tensions and also described them as most departments on one side and the Pentegon on the other.

“We disarmed [the MEK] of major weapons but not small arms. [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was pushing to use them as a military special ops team, but policy infighting between their camp and Condi, but she was able to fight them off for a while,” said the intelligence official. According to still another intelligence source, the policy infighting ended last year when Donald Rumsfeld, under pressure from Vice President Cheney, came up with a plan to “convert” the MEK by having them simply quit their organization.

“These guys are nuts,” this intelligence source said. “Cambone and those guys made MEK members swear an oath to Democracy and resign from the MEK and then our guys incorporated them into their unit and trained them.”

...Although the specifics of what the MEK is being used for remain unclear, a UN official close to the Security Council explained that the newly renamed MEK soldiers are being run instead of military advance teams, committing acts of violence in hopes of staging an insurgency of the Iranian Sunni population.

Asked how long the MEK agents have been active in the region under the guidance of the US military civilian leadership, the UN official explained that the clandestine war had been going on for roughly a year.

Certainly, the MeK and its political wing have an uncommon amount of influence in US conservative circles, including the Bush administration, for a small cult of terrorists. Many of the most prominent neoconservative organistations and administration insiders associated with the Iraq invasion have also gone to bat in support of the MeK. It's US spokesman is FOX News' Iran analyst. It has been used as a source by the Bush administration for allegations and evidence about Iran's nuclear program and about Iranian agents inside Iraq. Indeed, the only time the MeK doesn't get a hearing way in excess of its size and actual influence is when it says that Iran's main proxies inside Iraq are the ISCI and its Badr Brigade militia - and names thousands of their members on Iran's payroll.

It seems likely that Iran, should it press ahead with international lawsuits over the explosion at the Shiraz mosque, will name the MeK as at least one of the insurgent groups (along with the PJAK and some Sunni seperatist groups) which is being used by the US and Britain to meddle in Iranian affairs. If Iran has rather better evidence than the U.S. does for allegations of deliberate leadership-sanctioned meddling in Iraq (i.e. circumstantial evidence at best) then that might throw an entirely new media spotlight on the back-and-forth of allegations as to who exactly is meddling where.

Certainly, there's a lot of truth to Iranian claims that the US is doing far more meddling with Iraq's sovereignty than Iran is. That the Iraqi security forces are entirely beholden to the US for their military logistics - and thus have American approval built in to their decision process - is undeniable. That the Iraqi government has bowed to Bush administration wishes on a wide range of issues, even where the actual enacting of US-driven policy has been reluctant at best - is also a matter of record. Now, the upcoming US/Iraqi agreement for the ongoing presence of occupation forces after the UN mandate expires is also giving fuel to Iranian hardliners who wish to paint Iraq as a satrapy of American imperial ambition:

TEHRAN, Iran - Two hard-line newspapers seen as speaking for Iran's clerical establishment called Monday for Iraqis to oppose a strategic framework deal with the United States, Tehran's first public condemnation of the arrangement.

The papers accused Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of caving in to American demands over the pact.

...The Jomhuri-e-Eslami daily said in a front-page editorial that the deal would be "capitulation the U.S. has imposed on the oppressed Iraqi people," and urged Iraqis to turn to "a popular revolution" that would bring about the "expulsion of the occupiers" from Iraq.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have said they aim to finish negotiations on the deal by July and submit the draft to Iraq's parliament for ratification. The document could run into trouble if it is perceived as being too generous to the Americans.

The hard-line Jomhuri-e-Eslami claimed the agreement would allow the United States to set up 14 military bases across Iraq, authorize a long-term American military deployment in the country, give judicial immunity to U.S. nationals and allow the U.S. to use Iraqi land, sea and airspace to launch military attacks in the region.

..."The U.S.-cooked agreement turns Iraq into a full-fledged colony, so that Iraqi officials will be totally powerless but American military officials will have full powers to commit any action they want," the paper said.

It also denounced al-Maliki for approving the outlines of a "humiliating" agreement. The Iraqis should turn to clerics, academics and political activists and rise up against the pact, the paper advises.

"Silence in the face of capitulation ... is an unforgivable sin that will spoil the future of this country," it said.

Hezbollah, another hard-line newspaper, said the deal with the U.S. will only bring "captivity" to Iraq and that the Americans will turn Iraq "into their permanent base in the Middle East" and use the country for their own plans, including "containing Iran."

"Signing this agreement will undoubtedly pave the way for captivity of the Iraqi people in the clutches of the American occupiers more than before," it said and called on Iraq's top Shiite clerics to order a public uprising against the deal and "take up the banner of struggle against colonialism."

Sistani, who is rumored to be gravely ill and perhaps near death, is unlikely to order a Ghandi-esque campaign of civil disobedience against the Iraqi government and US occupation. But there's another firebrand young cleric, recently embroiled in a shooting feud with the central government, who might find it in his interests to make such a call. As to Iran, the time when tying down US troops with an armed insurgency in Iraq was useful might be drawing to a close as world opinion hardens around the narrative that Iran is meddling to fuel armed conflict. It might just be that in a post-occupation phase of permanent basing agreements a more peaceful campaign of mass protests and civil disobedience would be more useful to it for tying US land forces to Iraq so that they aren't free for an attack on Iran itself.

Comments

[Eric Martin]

Your on a roll Cernig

[Eric Martin]

Er, "you're"

[section9]

I hope you're not counting on Sadr to stage any sort of civil disobedience campaign against the Maliki Government. He doesn't have the authority or the mojo of Al-Sistani.

The last time he called for a march, not that many showed up. Besides, his people got rolled in Basra, as the NYT finally had to admit. Now he had to buy into a ceasefire in Sadr City? The Iranian investment in this guy ain't exactly payin' off.

Grasping at straws, much?

[Cain]

This would the explosion at the mosque that Iran previously ruled out as a bombing after they declared that their investigation found that it was live ordinance on display inside the mosque which detonated.

And a few months later when Iraq and the US are putting pressure on Iran for supporting attacks inside Iraq, suddenly the Jews, the Brits and the US were behind it.

You're gullible.