History Forum / General / British History / December 2006

Excellent!

"American and Iraqi officials have long accused Iran of interfering in this
country’s internal affairs, but have rarely produced evidence. The
administration presented last week’s arrests as a potential confirmation of
the link. Mr. Johndroe said, “We suspect this event validates our claims
about Iranian meddling, but we want to finish our investigation of the
detained Iranians before characterizing their activities.”"

"He added: “We will be better able to explain what this means about the
larger picture after we finish our investigation.”"

Intriguing And, As Yet, Unresolved.

DSH
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December 25, 2006

U.S. Is Detaining Iranians Caught in Raids in Iraq

By JAMES GLANZ and SABRINA TAVERNISE

The New York Times

BAGHDAD, Dec. 24 — The American military is holding at least four Iranians
in Iraq, including men the Bush administration called senior military
officials, who were seized in a pair of raids late last week aimed at people
suspected of conducting attacks on Iraqi security forces, according to
senior Iraqi and American officials in Baghdad and Washington.

The Bush administration made no public announcement of the politically
delicate seizure of the Iranians, though in response to specific questions
the White House confirmed Sunday that the Iranians were in custody.

Gordon D. Johndroe, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said
two Iranian diplomats were among those initially detained in the raids. The
two had papers showing that they were accredited to work in Iraq, and he
said they were turned over to the Iraqi authorities and released. He
confirmed that a group of other Iranians, including the military officials,
remained in custody while an investigation continued, and he said, “We
continue to work with the government of Iraq on the status of the
detainees.”

It was unclear what kind of evidence American officials possessed that the
Iranians were planning attacks, and the officials would not identify those
being held. One official said that “a lot of material” was seized in the
raid, but would not say if it included arms or documents that pointed to
planning for attacks. Much of the material was still being examined, the
official said.

Nonetheless, the two raids, in central Baghdad, have deeply upset Iraqi
government officials, who have been making strenuous efforts to engage Iran
on matters of security. At least two of the Iranians were in this country on
an invitation extended by Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, during a visit
to Tehran earlier this month.

It was particularly awkward for the Iraqis that one of the raids took place
in the Baghdad compound of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq’s most powerful
Shiite leaders, who traveled to Washington three weeks ago to meet President
Bush.

Over the past four days, the Iraqis and Iranians have engaged in intense
behind-the-scenes efforts to secure the release of the remaining detainees.
One Iraqi government official said, “The Iranian ambassador has been running
around from office to office.”

The debate about what to do next has also engaged officials in the White
House and the State Department. The national security adviser, Stephen J.
Hadley, has been fully briefed, officials said, though they would not say
what Mr. Bush has been told about the seizure or the identity of the
detainees.

A senior Western official in Baghdad said the raids were conducted after
American officials received information that the people detained had been
involved in attacks on official security forces in Iraq. “We conduct
operations against those who threaten Iraqi and coalition forces,” the
official said. “This was based on information.”

A spokesman for Mr. Hakim, who heads a Shiite political party called Sciri,
which began as an exile group in Iran that opposed Saddam Hussein, declined
to comment. In Tehran, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali
Hosseini, had no comment about the case on Sunday other than to say it was
under examination.

The action comes at a moment of extraordinary tension in the three-way
relationship between the United States, Iran and Iraq. On Saturday, even as
American officials were trying to determine the identity of some of the
Iranians, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution imposing
mild sanctions against Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has rejected pressure to open talks with
Iran about its actions in Iraq.

Much about the raids and the identities of the Iranians remained unclear on
Sunday. American officials offered few details. They said that an
investigation was under way and that they wanted to give the Iraqi
government time to figure out its position.

American and Iraqi officials have long accused Iran of interfering in this
country’s internal affairs, but have rarely produced evidence. The
administration presented last week’s arrests as a potential confirmation of
the link. Mr. Johndroe said, “We suspect this event validates our claims
about Iranian meddling, but we want to finish our investigation of the
detained Iranians before characterizing their activities.”

He added: “We will be better able to explain what this means about the
larger picture after we finish our investigation.”

In the raids, the Americans also detained a number of Iraqis. Western and
Iraqi officials said that following normal protocol, the two diplomats were
turned over to the Iraqi government after being questioned. The Iraqis, in
turn, released them to the Iranian Embassy. An Iraqi official said his
government had strained to keep the affair out of the public eye to avoid
scuttling the talks with Iran that were now under way.

The raids and arrests were confirmed by at least seven officials and
politicians in Baghdad and Washington. Still, the development was being
viewed skeptically on Sunday by some Iraqis, who said that they suspected
that the timing was intended to reinforce arguments by some in the
administration that direct talks with Iran would be futile.

An administration official in Washington disputed that, saying, “When the
military conducted the raids, they really didn’t know who they were going to
find.”

The United States is now holding, apparently for the first time, Iranians
who it suspects of planning attacks against both Iraqis and Americans. One
senior administration official said, “This is going to be a tense but
clarifying moment.”

“It’s our position that the Iraqis have to seize this opportunity to sort
out with the Iranians just what kind of behavior they are going to
tolerate,” the official said, declining to speak on the record because the
details of the raid and investigation were not yet public. “They are going
to have to confront the evidence that the Iranians are deeply involved in
some of the acts of violence.”

The events that led to the arrests of the Iranians began on Thursday,
although details are sketchy.

In one raid, which took place around 7 p.m. that day, American forces
stopped an official Iranian Embassy car carrying the two Iranian diplomats,
one or two Iranian guards and an Iraqi driver. Iraqi officials said that the
diplomats had been praying at the Buratha mosque and that when it was
stopped, the car was in the Allawi neighborhood, a few minutes from the
Iranian Embassy to the west of the Tigris River.

All in the car were detained by the Americans. The mosque’s imam, Sheik
Jalal al-deen al-Sageir, a member of Parliament from Mr. Hakim’s party, said
the Iranians had come to pray during the last day of mourning for his
mother, who recently died. He said that after the Iranians left, the Iranian
Embassy phoned to say that they had not arrived as expected. “We were afraid
they were kidnapped,” Sheik Sageir said.

But he said he was later informed that the diplomats, whom he said that he
did not know well, were in the custody of Americans. “I had nothing to do
with that,” Sheik Sageir said. “I don’t know why the Americans took them.”

The predawn raid on Mr. Hakim’s compound, on the east side of the Tigris,
was perhaps the most startling part of the American operation. The arrests
were made inside the house of Hadi al-Ameri, the chairman of the Iraqi
Parliament’s security committee and leader of the Badr Organization, the
armed wing of Mr. Hakim’s political party.

Many Shiite political groups are now suspected of having ties to Iran, and
Sciri is no exception. Senior party leaders lived in exile in Iran for years
plotting the overthrow of Mr. Hussein. Some married Iranians and raised
their children there.

Mr. Hakim has emerged as the central Iraqi Shiite who is backing a new bloc
made up of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds that would isolate more radical
politicians. Americans back the new bloc, and Mr. Hakim traveled to
Washington earlier this month to discuss its formation with Mr. Bush. It was
not clear how the arrests, embarrassing to Mr. Hakim, would affect those
political efforts.

Iraqi leaders appealed to the American military, including to Gen. George W.
Casey Jr., the senior American ground commander in Iraq, to release the
Iranians, according to an Iraqi politician familiar with the efforts.

“The president is unhappy with the arrests,” said Hiwa Osman, a news media
adviser to Mr. Talabani.

The politician familiar with the efforts said the Iranians in the compound
had been in Iraq for four days. He said Iraqi officials expected that two
more of the Iranians would be released soon.

The disagreement will further irritate relations between Prime Minister Nuri
Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq and his American supporters. The Shiite-led
government has begun to chafe under the control of the Americans, pressing
for more control of its army and for greater independence from what it says
is unilateral American decision making.

The Americans are concerned that the Shiite-led government would not respect
the rights of the minority Sunni Arab population, and, in the worst case,
would use the largely Shiite security forces as a weapon in this country’s
deepening sectarian war.

Since the 2003 invasion, the Iraqis have arrested dozens of Iranians, many
of whom had entered the country illegally. Since the borders opened after
the invasion, Iranians began to travel to Iraq to worship in religious
places holy to Shiites. The Ministry of Education counts the number of
Iranians studying in colleges here.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington, and Nazila Fathi from
Tehran.