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A group of eight Iranians, including two diplomats, were released by U.S. forces Wednesday after being detained because unauthorized weapons were found in their cars, the U.S. military said.

Four cars carrying the Iranians, as well as seven Iraqis, were stopped at a checkpoint Tuesday evening and then allowed to proceed to the nearby Sheraton Ishtar hotel, where they were later taken into custody and questioned, the military said.

Troops seized three weapons from the cars — an AK-47 assault rifle and two 9mm pistols that had been in the possession of the Iraqis in the group. The Iraqis were serving as a protective detail but had no weapons permits, the U.S. military said.

At the hotel later, U.S. troops confiscated a laptop, cell phones and a briefcase full of Iranian and American money in the hotel, the military said.

“Following the brief room search the group was taken to a coalition facility for questioning,” the U.S. military said in a statement. “The Iranian nationals had passports. It was later determined that two of the Iranian individuals were carrying diplomatic credentials.”

Details unclear
All the Iranians were released Wednesday to Iraqi officials, the military said. The fate of the Iraqis — who identified themselves with Iraqi Ministry of Electricity badges — was not immediately clear, and the military did not say whether the confiscated items were returned.

An Iranian diplomat, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that one of those released contacted the embassy Wednesday morning to say that they had been handed over to Iraqi authorities.

“At 7 a.m. today, a member of the delegation called the embassy and said they are now at the prime minister’s office,” the diplomat said. “The Americans released them. They held them until seven this morning.”

The Iranian embassy said the Iranians included two embassy staffers and six members of a delegation from Iran’s Energy Ministry. The diplomat had earlier said there were seven Iranians held and one diplomat.

The embassy said the men had not yet been in to explain in full what happened, and that it was not sure whether their belongings had been returned.

5 other Iranians held since January
The incident came as tensions between Washington and Tehran were already strained by the detention of each other’s citizens as well as U.S. accusations of Iranian involvement in Iraq’s violence and alleged Iranian efforts to develop nuclear bombs.

Iran has constantly complained about the U.S. detention since Jan. 11 of five Iranians who were in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil. U.S. officials say the five include the operations chief and other members of Iran’s elite Quds Force, which is accused of arming and training Iraqi militants.

The Iranian regime denies any involvement in the violence wracking its neighbor.

On Tuesday, President Bush lashed out at Iran for meddling in Iraq’s affairs and fomenting instability in its neighbor. Bush made his remarks in a speech to the American Legion convention in Reno, Nevada, in which he presented a ringing defense of the unpopular Iraq war effort.

“I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities,” said Bush, whose administration has accused Iran of arming Shiite militias in Iraq. “The Iranian regime must halt these actions.”

Tehran holds American-Iranians

U.S. authorities are unhappy about Iran’s arrest of four people with dual American-Iranian citizenship for allegedly seeking to undermine the Islamic republic’s security. Two are imprisoned in Iran, while two are free but barred from leaving the country.

Relations also are edgy over the suspicions of the United States and its allies that Tehran is using its civilian nuclear power program as a screen to develop atomic weapons. Iran denies that, saying the program only has the peaceful aim of generating electricity.

The strains have many people in the region worried about the possibility of fighting between the U.S. and Iran.

But while making his latest defense of Iran’s nuclear program earlier Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the possibility of any U.S. military action against Iran, saying Washington has no plan and is not in a position to take such action.

Ahmadinejad declared that U.S. political influence in Iraq is “collapsing rapidly” and that Tehran is ready to help fill any power vacuum.

Source: the Associated Press

Israeli officials warned the George W. Bush administration that an invasion of Iraq would be destabilising to the region and urged the United States to instead target Iran as the primary enemy, according to former administration official Lawrence Wilkerson.

Wilkerson, then a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and later chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, recalled in an interview with IPS that the Israelis reacted immediately to indications that the Bush administration was thinking of war against Iraq. After the Israeli government picked up the first signs of that intention, Wilkerson says, “The Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy — Iran is the enemy.”

Wilkerson describes the Israeli message to the Bush administration in early 2002 as being, “If you are going to destabilise the balance of power, do it against the main enemy.”

The warning against an invasion of Iraq was “pervasive” in Israeli communications with the administration, Wilkerson recalls. It was conveyed to the administration by a wide range of Israeli sources, including political figures, intelligence and private citizens.

Wilkerson notes that the main point of their communications was not that the United States should immediately attack Iran, but that “it should not be distracted by Iraq and Saddam Hussein” from a focus on the threat from Iran.

The Israeli advice against using military force against Iraq was apparently triggered by reports reaching Israeli officials in December 2001 that the Bush administration was beginning serious planning for an attack on Iraq. Journalist Bob Woodward revealed in “Plan of Attack” that on Dec. 1, 2001, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld had ordered the Central Command chief Gen. Tommy Franks to come up with the first formal briefing on a new war plan for Iraq on Dec. 4. That started a period of intense discussions of war planning between Rumsfeld and Franks.

Soon after Israeli officials got wind of that planning, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked for a meeting with Bush primarily to discuss U.S. intentions to invade Iraq. In the weeks preceding Sharon’s meeting with Bush on Feb. 7, 2002, a procession of Israeli officials conveyed the message to the Bush administration that Iran represented a greater threat, according to a Washington Post report on the eve of the meeting.

Israeli Defence Minister Fouad Ben-Eliezer, who was visiting Washington with Sharon, revealed the essence of the strategic differences between Tel Aviv and Washington over military force. He was quoted by the Post as saying, “Today, everybody is busy with Iraq. Iraq is a problem…But you should understand, if you ask me, today Iran is more dangerous than Iraq.”

Sharon never revealed publicly what he said to Bush in the Feb. 7 meeting. But Yossi Alpher, a former adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Barak, wrote in an article in the Forward last January that Sharon advised Bush not to occupy Iraq, according to a knowledgeable source. Alpher wrote that Sharon also assured Bush that Israel would not “push one way or another” regarding his plan to take down Saddam Hussein.

Alpher noted that Washington did not want public support by Israel and in fact requested that Israel refrain from openly supporting the invasion in order to avoid an automatic negative reaction from Iraq’s Arab neighbours.

After that meeting, the Sharon government generally remained silent on the issue of an invasion of Iraq. A notable exception, however, was a statement on Aug. 16, 2002 by Ranaan Gissin, an aide to Sharon. Ranaan declared, “Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose. It will only give [Hussein] more of an opportunity to accelerate his programme of weapons of mass destruction.”

As late as October 2002, however, there were still signs of continuing Israeli grumbling about the Bush administration’s obsession with taking over Iraq. Both the Israeli Defence Forces’ chief of staff and its chief of military intelligence made public statements that month implicitly dismissing the Bush administration’s position that Saddam Hussein’s alleged quest for nuclear weapons made him the main threat. Both officials suggested that Israel’s military advantage over Iraq had continued to increase over the decade since the Gulf War as Iraq had grown weaker.

The Israeli chief of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Farkash, said Iraq had not deployed any missiles that could strike Israel directly and challenged the Bush administration’s argument that Iraq could obtain nuclear weapons within a relatively short time. He gave an interview to Israeli television in which he said army intelligence had concluded that Iraq could not have nuclear weapons in less than four years. He insisted that Iran was as much of a nuclear threat as Iraq.

Israeli strategists generally believed that taking down the Hussein regime could further upset an Iran-Iraq power balance that had already tilted in favour of Iran after the U.S. defeat of Hussein’s army in the 1991 Gulf War. By 1996, however, neoconservatives with ties to the Likud Party were beginning to argue for a more aggressive joint U.S.-Israeli strategy aimed at a “rollback” of all of Israel’s enemies in the region, including Iran, but beginning by taking down Hussein and putting a pro-Israeli regime in power there.

That was the thrust of the 1996 report of a task force led by Richard Perle for the right-wing Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies and aimed at the Likud Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

But most strategists in the Israeli government and the Likud Party — including Sharon himself — did not share that viewpoint. Despite agreement between neoconservatives and Israeli officials on many issues, the dominant Israeli strategic judgment on the issue of invading Iraq diverged from that of U.S. neoconservatives because of differing political-military interests.

Israel was more concerned with the relative military threat posed by Iran and Iraq, whereas neoconservatives in the Bush administration were focused on regime change in Iraq as a low-cost way of leveraging more ambitious changes in the region. From the neoconservative perspective, the very military weakness of Hussein’s Iraq made it the logical target for the use of U.S. military power.

*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in June 2005.

Source: IPS

George Bush yesterday ramped up the war of words between the US and Iran, accusing Tehran of threatening to place the Middle East under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust and revealing that he had authorised US military commanders in Iraq to “confront Tehran’s murderous activities”.

In a speech designed to shore up US public opinion behind his unpopular strategy in Iraq, the president reserved his strongest words for the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which he accused of openly supporting violent forces within Iraq. Iran, he said, was responsible for training extremist Shia factions in Iraq, supplying them with weapons, including sophisticated roadside bombs. Iran has denied all these accusations. George Bush yesterday ramped up the war of words between the US and Iran, accusing Tehran of threatening to place the Middle East under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust and revealing that he had authorised US military commanders in Iraq to “confront Tehran’s murderous activities”.

In a speech designed to shore up US public opinion behind his unpopular strategy in Iraq, the president reserved his strongest words for the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which he accused of openly supporting violent forces within Iraq. Iran, he said, was responsible for training extremist Shia factions in Iraq, supplying them with weapons, including sophisticated roadside bombs. Iran has denied all these accusations.

“Iran has long been a source of trouble in the region,” he said.” Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.”

The blunt terms in which Mr Bush portrayed the Iranian threat, and his threat of military confrontation with Tehran involving US troops based in Iraq, elevated the tense standoff between Washington and Tehran to a new level.

The speech also contained the implicit desire on Mr Bush’s part for regime change, calling for “an Iran whose government is accountable to its people, instead of to leaders who promote terror and pursue the technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons”.

Equally menacing words emanated from Tehran yesterday, where Mr Ahmadinejad said US influence in the region was collapsing so fast that a power vacuum would soon be created. “Of course, we are prepared to fill the gap,” he said.

Though the Iranian president said he backed the leadership of the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, and welcomed the involvement of Saudi Arabia, his offer to occupy the space the Americans might leave behind is unlikely to cool emotions in Washington.

He went on to deride the possibility of the US pursuing military action in Iran, saying it was in no position to do so and claimed that Iran had already acquired enriched nuclear fuels, though they would only be used for peaceful purposes.

In a further cause of tension, Mr Bush accused the Quds force within Iran’s revolutionary guards of leading the supply chain to Iraqi extremist groups. As the Guardian revealed earlier this month, the Bush administration is preparing to declare the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guard Corps a “global terrorist organisation” - a move that would be seen as provocative within Tehran.

According to reports from Baghdad last night, a group of Iranians were detained last night in a raid by US troops on a hotel in the city. Of 10 people arrested, seven were said to be Iranian, including an employee of the Iranian embassy and six members of Iran’s electricity ministry in Iraq to discuss contracts for electric power stations. It was not immediately clear why the men had been arrested, or where they had been taken. The US military would only say the action was part of an on-going operation.

Mr Bush’s bullish talk of his determination to “take the fight to the enemy” in the carefully choreographed setting of a veterans’ convention in Reno, Nevada, was the second of a two-part appeal by him to shore up public support for his flagging strategy on Iraq. In the first speech, made last week, he invoked Vietnam to argue that quitting Iraq now could put the lives of millions of innocent civilians at risk.

Mr Bush yesterday vowed to persevere with his controversial military policy in Iraq, insisting that political and security progress was being made, despite a rising tide of dissent even from high up within his Republican party.

“Our strategy is this: every day we work to protect the American people. We will fight them over there so that we don’t have to fight them in the United States of America,” he said.

The twin speeches were intended as preparation for a crucial series of debates on Iraq that will dominate Washington for the next few weeks.

In a fortnight the senior general in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and American ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, will give two days of testimony in which they are likely to argue that the troop “surge” is having some beneficial impact on security levels, though political progress lags behind.

Under the current policy, US troop numbers in Iraq have risen by 30,000 to about 165,000.

As the climax of these intense hearings, Mr Bush himself will present his latest assessment.

Yesterday’s speech was the latest clear indication that he will resist any attempt to change course in the prosecution of the war.

Mr Bush’s latest attempt to reassure the American people that the war is moving in the right direction came on another tumultuous day in Iraq.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims attending a Shia festival in Kerbala, 68 miles south-west of Baghdad, were ordered to leave the city after intense fighting broke out, reportedly between warring Shia factions. At least 52 people have been killed since Monday, mostly police officers engaging in the battle.

Source: Guardian

University lecturers in Iran are to be forced to tell security authorities of all foreign trips in advance in a move aimed at preventing them from being recruited as western spies.

The restriction will extend to private tourist journeys and pilgrimages, as well as academic trips funded by foreign institutions. It follows official accusations that the west is trying to exploit Iranian academics for espionage purposes.

The new rule - set out in a government circular disclosed by the officially-linked Baztab website - toughens existing regulations requiring scholars to give university security services prior notice of academic trips being paid for by their own institutions. The move is the latest in a series of measures intensifying scrutiny of Iran’s academics, who have been identified by the country’s Islamic rulers as a potential fifth column in alleged US-backed plots to foment a “soft revolution”.

 Last year Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, urged fundamentalist students to demand the sacking of liberal or pro-western lecturers.

In May a senior intelligence official publicly warned academics that they would come under suspicion if they maintained contacts with foreigners or travelled abroad to conferences and seminars. The official accused western intelligence agencies of trying to recruit Iranian scholars under the guise of forging scientific or academic links.

Scholars at Iranian universities say the warnings have already had the effect of drying up contacts with the outside world. “In the light of how things are developing, many people just aren’t attending seminars abroad any more. There is just too much risk involved,” one lecturer told the Guardian. “Foreign academics are no longer coming to Iran either. It’s more difficult for students of Iranian studies to get visas to come, either as part of their courses or when applying for conferences.”

Iran has recently accused three Iranian-American academics and one journalist of espionage and acting against national security. One of them, Haleh Esfandiari, Middle East director at the Woodrow Wilson Centre, a Washington thinktank, was released on bail last week after three and a half months in prison.

The suspicion has also extended to students. Iran’s intelligence minister, Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ezhei, warned at the weekend that students who made contact with the US and foreigners would be “confronted”.

“We will confront those who are currently studying in universities under the guise of being students and have contact with foreigners and White House statesmen,” he said. “They will be confronted because we believe they are not university students but are seeking to destroy the system of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

His comments follow the arrests of several student activists in recent months.

Source: Guardian