Iran's role in Iraq
James Forsyth 6:34pm
This week’s Time has an important piece on Iran’s role in training, funding and arming the insurgency in Iraq. What one Shiite fighter told Time illustrates just how much Iran is responsible for the levels of violence in Iraq: “Ali's own training in Iran came in late 2005, when he says he and a group of roughly 14 other Iraqis drove to the southern city of Amarah, near the Iranian border. Everything had been arranged through contacts in Syria and Lebanon, where he and his group had fled for a time trying to avoid capture by American forces. According to Ali, a convoy of new sport utility vehicles with drivers speaking only broken Arabic was waiting for them in Amarah. Soon the group was on the road east for a five-hour drive. The destination was an Iranian training facility, where instructors told the recruits not to speak to anyone but them. "We saw a lot of really strange people, a lot of men wearing very long beards," Ali says.
Ali and four others were given training in advance explosives with both lectures and hands-on practice. The course was done in 45 days. At the end, a handler talked to each of them separately and gave them a phone number to call in Iraq. Ali was given $10,000 in cash, he said, with a handler telling him the money was meant to support his efforts.
"I was shocked," says Ali, who sat for an interview with TIME on the southern outskirts of Baghdad. "I never dreamed I would hold $10,000 in my hands." The starter money, however, was only a "drop in the sea." Ali says he continues to phone for funds with the contacts he made in Iran and that his group has conducted two successful roadside bomb attacks against American forces operating north of Baghdad.” This should give pause to those who argue that the Iran problem is the Bush administration not Iran. Tehran’s willingness to hand-off weapons to terrorists despite the risk of them being traced back to Iran shows just why Iran can not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.
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Comments
TGF UKIP
March 21st, 2008 9:30pm"Shows just why Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon." Quite so, James, but just try telling that to the Germans or the rest of Iran's EU allies. It will be down to the US to act and this time, except possibly for Israel, they really will be alone for neither the Labour Government under Brown nor this Tory Party have the moral clarity to face up to such issues.
Austin Barry
March 22nd, 2008 12:10amThe US and Israel will grasp this nettle, the latter because it has no choice. Meanwhile the weak appeasement monkeys of Europe will mutter cowardly pieties and do nothing i.e. invoke the corrupt offices of the UN.
London Calling
March 22nd, 2008 4:30amBritain went to war with Iraq based on a lie, also ended up in Afghanistan fighting the tali ban, where our soldiers are fighting a continuous fresh supply of trained fighters from Pakistan, whilst Iran flaunts its power by supplying financial support/training and weapons to terrorist organizations,who then use these weapons to attack our soldiers, our allies and Israel. Britain may have joined the wrong war to begin with, but in the process the real threat 'Iran' and Islamic extremists living amongst us have been exposed. Europe's coma is our awakening, but if we don't wake Europe up also and create a united force against Iran, America will be forced to take control of the situation, therefore Europe must collectively agree a way forward in dealing with Iran and prepare itself now, but sadly I also fear that our awakening hasn't yet fully blossomed in government and I am in agreement with the previous post that all parties have no moral clarity to face up to such issues.
john problem
March 22nd, 2008 9:24amExtraordinary, isn't it? Bush and Blair gave all the Middle East a new raison d'etre - bashing the West. Took their minds quite off spending and consumerism.
Max Kaye
March 22nd, 2008 11:48amUnless Iran changes course dramatically, a military showdown is just a question of time.
Europe will, naturally, stand on the sidelines wringing it's hands, mumbling pieties and hoping that it's lucrative contracts with the mullahs don't get blasted away with the regime.
Nicholas
March 22nd, 2008 5:08pmThey were "bashing the west" long before Bush and Blair. Some people have incredibly short memories. This all began with the defeat of Turkey in the First World War and Arab terrorism in various forms has been on the rise since the 1920's. The last 50 years saw it given a boost by the Cold War and then again by the end of the Cold War. The patterns of history are long term which is why the Western obsession with the short-term (in government, media & business) is so self-defeating. The Western response has been essentially barmy, in the interests of oil and business you let someone into your house with a highly contagious disease.
David Lindsay
March 25th, 2008 12:03amIs Iran backing people in Iraq who are not sure if Shi'ites are really Muslims at all, but know that they hate them all the same? Could anyone possibly have carried out the detective work to find out that she was? No, of course not.
But then, the idea of magically invisible Iraqi WMD was also recognised as ridiculous by ninety per cent of Britons, and a fat lot of good that did. Get ready for war against Iran.