Surprised to learn that the leading terrorist state (according to Bush) is suffering terrorist attacks? Don’t be:
Two grenades exploded Monday in a southwestern Iranian province known for unrest among its Arab population, wounding at least four people, the official Iranian news agency reported.
The grenades went off in restrooms in local government offices in Abadan and Dezful in Khuzestan province, the Islamic Republic News Agency said, citing official sources.
The agency described the blasts as “terrorist acts,” saying they wounded two people in each town.
Oil-rich Khuzestan has a history of violence involving members of Iran’s Arab minority. Several bombs exploded in the provincial capital of Ahvaz in January and last year.
An Iranian Arab insurgent group, the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz, claimed responsibility for the Jan. 24 blasts, which killed six people and wounded 46. The Iranian government blamed the bombings on Britain and United States, which denied any involvement.
An Iranian insurgency in Iran’s oil rich province of Khuzestan? I wonder where that comes from. Well, for some strange reason, Iran thinks it comes from us and our good friend Tony Blair:
Iran blames U.S., Britain for bombings
By Nasser Karimi, Associated Press Writer | January 25, 2006TEHRAN, IRAN –Iran’s president on Wednesday blamed “the occupiers of Iraq” — inferring the United States and Britain — for two bombings that killed at least nine people in the southwestern city of Ahvaz.
The foreign minister said the bombers were supported by the British military, which is based in southern Iraq. Ahvaz has a history of violence involving members of Iran’s Arab minority.
Now I wonder where they got that idea?
On Tuesday, Iran’s Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi said the attacks in Ahvaz were foreign-inspired and related to last year’s bombings in the same city.
In October, Iran blamed Britain for two blasts at an Ahvaz shopping mall that killed six people and wounded dozens.
Tehran also blamed June bombings that killed at least eight people on Iranian Arab extremists with ties to foreign governments, including British intelligence.
Britain has denied any connection to the Khuzestan unrest.
Tensions between the two countries have flared recently over Britain’s opposition to Iran’s resumption of nuclear activities.
Of course, there was also this story, which certainly adds fuel to the suspicion that the British forces may have been training and supplying Arab terrorists in Khuzestan:
In Basra on September 19, British troops clashed with Iraqi police and Shi’ite militia, who had ironically welcomed the toppling of Saddam two years ago. The police had arrested two British undercover commandos who possessed suspicious bomb-making materials. British troops launched an armored raid on the jail to free their agents, fighting the same Iraqi police they had earlier trained. Iraqis had thought it strange that British agents would be caught with the types of bombs associated with insurgents attacking “Coalition” troops, and some assumed that the agents were trying to pit Iraqi religious groups against each other.
Yet at the same time, bombs were going off across the border in Khuzestan. In June, a series of car bombings in Ahvaz (75 miles from Basra) killed 6 people. In August, Iran arrested a group of Arab separatist rebels, and accused them of links to British intelligence in Basra. In September, explosions hit Khuzestani cities, halting crude oil transfers from onshore wells. On October 15, two major bomb explosions in an Ahvaz market killed 4 and injured 95. A November 3 analysis in Asia Times blames Iraqi Sunni insurgents for the bombings.
Iranian officials accused Britain of backing the attacks, and tied the rebel bombs to the British commando incident in Basra. The Daily Star of Beirut reported on October 17 that Iranian officials “point to Western collusion in the sudden spike this year in ethnic unrest in the strategic, oil-producing province of Khuzestan and describe it as proof of a shadowy war that is receiving far less coverage in the international press than events in Iraq. Since the beginning of 2005, riots and a bombing campaign timed to coincide with the June presidential elections rocked Khuzestan’s major cities.”
And who can forget (assuming you learned of it in the first place) that British commandos have previously been seized by Iran after crossing into Iranian waters in 2004:
“This morning, three British boats with eight people on board entered Iranian territorial waters. The Iranian navy, in accordance with their duties, seized these boats and arrested the crew,” spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in a statement.
“They are currently being interrogated and an investigation is under way,” he added. Official sources said the small patrol boats were armed with heavy machine-guns, and identified the detained Britons as Royal Navy commandos.
It seems we are already at war with Iran, a war by proxy, using terrorists that we have trained, deployed, sheltered and exploited for “intelligence” on Iran’s nuclear program.
MEK has long been controversial because of its history of violent attacks in Iran, its relationship with Saddam’s regime and its background as a quasi-religious, quasi-Marxist radical resistance group founded in the era of the late Iranian shah. In 1997, the Clinton administration put MEK on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist groups. MEK’s U.S. supporters, among whom at one point numbered dozens of members of Congress, charged that the Clinton administration only labeled MEK as a terrorist group as part of an ill-conceived attempt to improve relations with the ayatollahs who currently run Iran. However, the Bush administration added two alleged MEK front organizations to the State Department’s terrorist list in 2003.
Despite the group’s notoriety, Bush himself cited purported intelligence gathered by MEK as evidence of the Iranian regime’s rapidly accelerating nuclear ambitions. At a March 16 press conference, Bush said Iran’s hidden nuclear program had been discovered not because of international inspections but “because a dissident group pointed it out to the world.” White House aides acknowledged later that the dissident group cited by the president is the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), one of the MEK front groups added to the State Department list two years ago.
Efforts at regime change by Bush and Blair have been in full force for some time now. Remember how they attempted to wrong foot Iraq? Do you think that these “provocations” might follow that same modus operandi, i.e., as a means to justify an attack or an invasion of Khuzestan? We’ll have to wait and see, but I don’t see anything at this point that indicates Bush has backed off his long standing effort to expand the war on terror to Iran.
Khuestan is the major oil producer for Iran I have read. The idea of starting a indigeneous revolt is so stupid.
As if the Americans are thinking that the people there want to have their land fought over by Americans bombing them to freedom from Iran. They will never win the hearts and minds of anyone because the Americans are simply too cruel. Khuzestan was the object of the war between Iran and IRaq that lasted almost a decade. I would be these people have had enough liberation.
An air war against Iran with troops invading this region is just so unbelievalbly stupid. The Iraq army would probably fight the Americans, certainly all the militias from the south would and the Iranian Army would fight as well, not to mention a thousand year long lasting counterinsurgency by Iranian forces. This is just so DUMB. Somebody better do something about Bush and somebody better start bitch slapping the American people into waking up.
More abject stupidity by Bush and more abject stupidity on the part of Americans for thinking that Iran is a danger to the U.S. The danger to the U.S. is right here in the U.S. If you are looking for terrorist organizations go to Washington.
think this is the credible threat issue? we make iran consider the possibility of an annexation to iraq of that province in order to apply pressure?
No that’s not it. The Iraq south is allied with Iran. Really the Iraqi government wants the U.S. out but they are afraid at the moment to do anything major.
If the U.S. tries to invade that Iranian province with U.S. troops the Iraqi government will condemn it, and I think fight the American troops. That is the Shiites will fight in addition to the so called Sunni insurgents. That won’t stop the Americans but the idea of going in there with troops is so crazy….as crazy as invading Iraq. They want to destroy Iran by breaking it up like they have Iraq. That’s the Israeli method. Israel is a horriffic entity at this point. Just evil.
That’s why I wonder whether the United Stotes of Isreal is repsonsible for the Mosque bombing.
Israel is poison and America has drunk now too often from it’s cup.
Just my opinion but I’d say the multinational private/govt consortium of interests that brought us the adventures in Iraq are possible…the usual suspects. What’s really demoralizing for some of us is the realization that the good guys-bad guys teams appear to be on the same side. I get the impression that some are only calling for impeachment so they can be the ones calling the shots.
Anyone remember the Iranian Embassy Siege of 1980 in London?
In the Wiki entry it was claimed that the Iranian Arabs who siezed the Embassy and most of whom were killed in the subsequent SAS operation were trained and funded by Iraq.
I suspect that the Iranian Arabs would be very loathe to be supported in a new campaign by the same country and special operations force that killed their countrymen.
Mind you sometimes people will use a long spoon.
Hell, the US does that all the time.
Yes, you are correct – it is the British stirring up trouble in Iran.
A Californian for 16 years now, I lived in England during the Thatcher years. Which gave me a great opportunity to see government propaganda in action. And Mrs. T’s people were VERY good at it, far better than the Bush administration’s version of the same (but why try too hard when the people want so desperately to be lied to, I suppose).
Its important for background to point out that during the height of the IRA campaign, any time there was a bombing, the question (among those few people who were paying attention) was always “was that one of theirs or one of ours?”
Which is a long preamble to this story that appeared in the Independent Newspaper in October last year.
Terror devices used by the IRA in a vicious murder campaign in Ulster blew up British servicemen as the world blamed Iran.
By Greg Harkin, Francis Elliott and Raymond Whitaker
Published: 16 October 2005
Eight British soldiers killed during ambushes in Iraq were the victims of a highly sophisticated bomb first used by the IRA, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
The soldiers, who were targeted by insurgents as they travelled through the country, died after being attacked with bombs triggered by infra-red beams. The bombs were developed by the IRA using technology passed on by the security services in a botched “sting” operation more than a decade ago.
Unfortunately, it requires a login to acces the full article, but the gist of the story is that Iran has been provided with bomb-making technology by the Irish Republican Army, who in turn, were supplied with it by no less than the British Army in a so-called “botched sting operation”. (!)
The superficial spin on the story is the
“terrible irony” that some of our own soldiers had now died as a result. Total bullshit of course, I mean – what would anyone expect if you tell your enemy how to make better bombs?
The interesting question is why did this story appear when it did? On the face of it, there’s no obvious reason at all. The eight soldiers that it mentions were killed months earlier. And the story gives no idication either. In particular, we do not find out where, when, how, why, or from whom the authors came by this damning material.
And the answer, of course, is that this is just a rather fine specimen of the British common-or-garden planted story, which by a remarkable coincidence, appeared at precisely the same time as reports of a terrorist attack inside Iran in which the Iranian authorities said there was evidence of British complicity.
OOPS! Who knew that parts of the bombs would still be recognizable? Never mind, when you’re in spot of bother, nothing beats a good cup of tea and a drop of propa-journalism to save the day. And one’s flabby white English arse.
Note one of the nice subtleties of the story: while it meets its objective – to get out in front of the obvious question about why British bomb technology was found in Iraq and Iran – it does so under the cover of (ostensibly) criticizing the government for foolish actions taken in the past. Kinda neat, eh?
At the time this story came out, I emailed the authors, suggested they look into WHY they had “come across” that information at that time. No reply, of course.
Bloody Bastards.
Oil-rich Khuzestan has a history of violence involving members of Iran’s Arab minority. Several bombs exploded in the provincial capital of Ahvaz in January and last year.
Ahvaz has a history of violence involving members of Iran’s Arab minority.
Okay, other than the bombings last year, what do we have? An search of Google and Yahoo turns up nothing, so lets take a little trip over to Lexis/Nexis.. and voila we find the last time the words Ahvaz and Bombing were in the same article (which is copyrighted) was during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Moreover a brief survey of non-U.S./U.K. coverage of the recent and past bombings in Khuzestan finds no reference to a historic insurgency in the South.
Although there have been anti-Persian uprisings in the South, those were contemporary to such events as the discovery of the New World and, most recently, the French and Indian War. The Ottomans were never able to successfully pry away Khuzestan from a succession of Persian rulers. During the war with Iraq Khuzestani Arabs were some of the fiercest of the Iranian forces and took upwards of 75% of the casualties to units raised in Khuzestan (approx 12,000 out of 16,000 total.)
I could be wrong, but, IMHO, if this is U.S. sponsored as a prelude to some sort of “invasion lite” of the sort envisioned for Iraq (that Chalabi and Co. would simply take the reigns of a willing nation after a decisive set piece military victory) then an Iraq type outcome would be a best case scenario. If this is intended by the U.S. as anything other than a cover story for domestic consumption, we should watch out for a disaster on par with the Bay of Pigs. It would be treasonous to send in U.S. forces if their safety is in any way reliant on putative ‘allies’ on the ground in Iran.