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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

[wvns] Explosive charge blows up in US's face

Explosive charge blows up in US's face
By Gareth Porter
Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IJ27Ak05.html


WASHINGTON - When the United States military command accused the
Iranian Quds Force in January of providing the armor-piercing EFPs
(explosively formed penetrators) that were killing US troops, it knew
that Iraqi machine shops had been producing their own EFPs for years,
a review of the historical record of evidence on EFPs in Iraq shows.

The record also shows that the US command had considerable evidence
that the Mahdi Army of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr

had received the technology and the training on how to use it from
Hezbollah, rather than Iran.

The command, operating under close White House supervision, chose to
deny these facts in making the dramatic accusation that became the
main rationale for the present aggressive US stance toward Iran.
Although the George W Bush administration initially limited the
accusation to the Quds Force, it has recently begun to assert that top
officials of the Iranian regime are responsible for arms that are
killing US troops.

British and US officials observed from the beginning that the EFPs
being used in Iraq closely resembled the ones used by Hezbollah
against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, both in their design and
the techniques for using them.

Hezbollah was known as the world's most knowledgeable specialists in
EFP manufacture and use, having perfected this during the 1990s in the
military struggle with Israeli forces in Lebanon. It was widely
recognized that it was Hezbollah that had passed on the expertise to
Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups after the second Intifada
began in 2000.

US intelligence also knew that Hezbollah was conducting the training
of Mahdi Army militants on EFPs. In August 2005, Newsday published a
report from correspondent Mohammed Bazzi that Shi'ite fighters had
begun in early 2005 to copy Hezbollah techniques for building the
bombs, as well as for carrying out roadside ambushes, citing both
Iraqi and Lebanese officials.

In late November 2006, a senior intelligence official told both CNN
and the New York Times that Hezbollah troops had trained as many as
2,000 Mahdi Army fighters in Lebanon.

The fact that the Mahdi Army's major military connection has always
been with Hezbollah rather than Iran would also explain the presence
in Iraq of the PRG-29, a shoulder-fired anti-armor weapon. Although US
military briefers identified it last February as being Iranian-made,
the RPG-29 is not manufactured by Iran but by the Russian Federation.

According to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, RPG-29s were imported
from Russia by Syria, then passed on to Hezbollah, which used them
with devastating effectiveness against Israeli forces in the 2006 war.
According to a June 2004 report on the well-informed military website
Strategypage.com, RPG-29s were already turning up in Iraq, "apparently
smuggled across the Syrian border".

The earliest EFPs appearing in Iraq in 2004 were so professionally
made that they were probably constructed by Hezbollah specialists,
according to a detailed account by British expert Michael Knights in
Jane's Intelligence Review last year.

By late 2005, however, the British command had already found clear
evidence that the Iraqi Shi'ites themselves were manufacturing their
own EFPs. British Army Major General J B Dutton told reporters in
November 2005 that the bombs were of varying degrees of sophistication.

Some of the EFPs required a "reasonably sophisticated factory", he
said, while others required only a simple workshop, which he observed,
could only mean that some of them were being made inside Iraq.

After British convoys in Maysan province were attacked by a series of
EFP bombings in late May 2006, Knights recounts, British forces
discovered a factory making them in Majar al-Kabir north of Basra in June.

In addition, the US military also had its own forensic evidence by the
autumn of 2006 that EFPs used against its vehicles had been
manufactured in Iraq, according to Knights. He cites photographic
evidence of EFP strikes on US armored vehicles that "typically shows a
mixture of clean penetrations from fully-formed EFP and spattering
..." That pattern reflected the fact that the locally made EFPs were
imperfect, some of them forming the required shape to penetrate but
some of them failing to do so.

Then US troops began finding EFP factories. Journalist Andrew Cockburn
reported in the Los Angeles Times in mid-February that US troops had
raided a Baghdad machine shop in November 2006 and discovered "a pile
of copper discs, five inches in diameter, stamped out as part of what
was clearly an ongoing order".

In a report on February 23, NBC Baghdad correspondent Jane Arraf
quoted "senior military officials" as saying that US forces had "been
finding an increasing number of the advanced roadside bombs being not
just assembled but manufactured in machine shops here".

Nevertheless, the Bush administration decided to put the blame for the
EFPs squarely on the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Corps, after Bush agreed in autumn 2006 to target the Quds Force
within Iran to make Iranian leaders feel vulnerable to US power. The
allegedly exclusive Iranian manufacture of EFPs was the
administration's only argument for holding the Quds Force responsible
for their use against US forces.

At the February 11 military briefing presenting the case for this
claim, one of the US military officials declared, "The explosive
charges used by Iranian agents in Iraq need a special manufacturing
process, which is available only in Iran." The briefer insisted that
there was no evidence that they were being made in Iraq.

That lynchpin of the administration's EFP narrative began to break
down almost immediately, however. On February 23, NBC's Arraf
confronted Lieutenant General Ray Odierno, who had been out in front
in January promoting the new Iranian EFP line, with the information
she had obtained from other senior military officials that an
increasing number of machine shops manufacturing EFPs had been
discovered by US troops.

Odierno began to walk the Iranian EFP story back. He said the EFPs had
"started to come from Iran", but he admitted "some of the
technologies" were "probably being constructed here".

The following day, US troops found yet another EFP factory near
Baqubah, with copper discs that appeared to be made with a high degree
of precision, but which could not be said with any certainty to have
originated in Iran.

The explosive expert who claimed at the February briefing that EFPs
could only be made in Iran was then made available to the New York
Times to explain away the new find. Major Marty Weber now backed down
from his earlier statement and admitted that there were "copy cat"
EFPs being machined in Iraq that looked identical to those allegedly
made in Iran to the untrained eye.

Weber insisted that such Iraqi-made EFPs had slight imperfections
which made them "much less likely to pierce armor". But NBC's Arraf
had reported the previous week that a senor military official had
confirmed to her that the EFPs made in Iraqi shops were indeed quite
able to penetrate US armor. The impact of those weapons "isn't as
clean", the official said, but they are "almost as effective" as the
best-made EFPs.

The idea that only Iranian EFPs penetrate armor would be a surprise to
Israeli intelligence, which has reported that EFPs manufactured by
Hamas guerrillas in their own machine shops during 2006 had penetrated
eight inches of Israeli steel armor in four separate incidents in
September and November, according to the Intelligence and Terrorism
Center in Tel Aviv.

The Arraf story was ignored by the news media, and the Bush
administration has continued to assert the Iranian EFP charge as
though it had never been questioned.

It soon became such an accepted part of the media narrative on Iran
and Iraq that the only issue about which reporters bother to ask
questions is whether the top leaders of the Iranian government have
approved the alleged Quds Force operation.


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.

===

US Ups Nuclear Tensions With New Iran Sanctions
By Jitendra Joshi
Agence France-Presse
Thursday 25 October 2007
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102607K.shtml


The United States on Thursday escalated tensions over Iran's
nuclear drive and alleged backing for terrorism with a raft of new
sanctions against the Islamic republic's military and banks.

Iran denounced the unilateral sanctions as illegal and "doomed to
failure" and Russia sounded a note of concern. But US Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice said Washington was well within its rights.

"We're taking additional actions to defend our interests and our
citizens, and to help our friends to secure their countries," she told
reporters.

The sanctions target the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC),
accused of spreading weapons of mass destruction, and the IRGC's elite
Quds Force, which was designated as a supporter of terrorism.

Three Iranian state-owned banks were also blacklisted, along with
IRGC-controlled companies and the logistics arm of Iran's defense
ministry, as the United States stepped up a drive to squeeze Iran out
of global banking.

"It is plain and simple -- reputable institutions do not want to
be bankers to this dangerous regime," Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson
said.

"The IRGC is so deeply entrenched in Iran's economy and commercial
enterprises, it is increasingly likely that if you are doing business
with Iran, you are doing business with the IRGC," he said.

The US administration has tried and failed for years to exert
pressure on Iran, which it accuses of fomenting global terrorism,
supporting insurgents in Iraq and working to develop an atomic bomb.

President George W. Bush suggested last week a nuclear-armed Iran
could trigger "World War III" and Vice President Dick Cheney spoke on
Sunday of "serious consequences" unless the Islamic republic comes to
heel.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Pentagon was conducting
"routine" contingency planning for military options against Iran, but
stressed diplomatic and economic pressure remained the focus.

Responding to the US sanctions, Russian President Vladimir Putin
warned against making a bad situation worse.

"You can run like crazy carrying razors -- it is not the best way
to resolve the problem," he said at an EU-Russia summit in Portugal.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini also
lashed out after the US announcement, according to state media.

"The hostile American policies towards the respectable people of
Iran and the country's legal institutions are contrary to
international law, without value and -- as in the past -- doomed to
failure," he said.

"The ridiculous accusations by American officials cannot save them
from the Iraqi crisis that they have themselves created," Hosseini said.

Rice stressed the US wanted a diplomatic solution, but warned: "If
they choose to continue down a path of confrontation, the US will act
with the international community to resist these threats of the
Iranian regime."

Democratic presidential hopeful Chris Dodd said the announcement
"smacks, frankly, of a dangerous step toward armed confrontation with
Iran."

The United States has been frustrated by Russian and Chinese
reluctance to impose a third round of UN sanctions over Iran's nuclear
program, and European countries such as France and Germany have
longstanding commercial ties to Iran.

Senior US officials said despite having little direct leverage
over Iran, the United States was sending a "powerful" message to major
trading nations whose banks rely on the dollar-dominated financial system.

"China, for instance, has increased its trade with Iran at a time
when most other members of the United Nations Security Council are
decreasing trade with Iran," Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said.

Burns also stressed that the US sanctions were legal under UN
Security Council resolutions demanding an end to Iran's enrichment of
uranium and to its purported export of terrorism.

US officials said these were the broadest sanctions imposed on
Iran since the country's Islamic revolution in 1979. It is also the
first time the United States has directly sanctioned another country's
military.

The banks targeted were Bank Melli and Bank Mellat, accused of
providing banking services for Iran's nuclear agencies, and Bank
Saderat, which allegedly funnels funds to Islamist organizations such
as Hezbollah and Hamas.

===

New US Sanctions Likely to Weaken International Unity on Iran
By Warren P. Strobel and Kevin G. Hall
McClatchy Newspapers
Thursday 25 October 2007


Washington - For more than two years, the United States has
insisted that the key to stopping Iran's suspected nuclear weapons
program is maintaining unified international pressure on the Islamic
Republic.

But on Thursday, the Bush administration signaled in no uncertain
terms that it's prepared to go its own way in confronting what it
considers to be a growing threat from Iran , even if doing so
demolishes an increasingly shaky global consensus.

The administration unilaterally imposed the toughest set of
sanctions on Iran since the country's Islamic revolution in 1979.

The measures target the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps , the
military vanguard of Iran's Islamic state; the IRGC's paramilitary
arm, the Quds force; Iran's largest state-owned bank and two others;
and 17 companies and individuals that are part of the IRGC.

The sanctions are intended to cut off Iran's access to the U.S.
financial system and discourage private businesses from operating in
the country.

President Bush 's action drew immediate criticism from his own party.

"Unilateral sanctions rarely ever work," Sen. Chuck Hagel ,
R-Neb., a foreign policy moderate, said during his weekly news
conference. "I just don't think the unilateral approach and giving war
speeches helps the situation. It will just drive the Iranians closer
together."

It also "escalates the danger of a military confrontation," Hagel
said.

West European governments didn't immediately react to the
sanctions. But Russian President Vladimir Putin warned scathingly that
new sanctions could worsen relations with Iran and bring talks to "a
dead end."

"It's not the best way to resolve the situation by running around
like a madman with a razor blade in his hand," he said during a visit
to Portugal .

The broad sanctions, senior U.S. officials said, are meant to
target not only Iran's nuclear program, but also what Washington
asserts is its support for anti-U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan ,
export of ballistic missiles and support for international terrorism.

Matthew Levitt , an expert on terrorist financing and a former
Treasury Department official, said the measures are "the largest
single sanction action that I know of. ... This is huge."

Others said that while the sanctions are likely to deepen Iran's
isolation, other countries with deep business ties to Iran , such as
China and Russia , are unlikely to follow suit.

The sanctions end what bankers call "U-turn" transactions- using
third parties to settle oil contracts in the United States - which
allowed Iran to conduct business in dollars despite previous sanctions.

But Iran had prepared for the U.S. decision by moving most of its
oil business into euros and yen, the currencies of the European Union
and Japan . "It's not like it came without warning," said Hal Eren , a
Washington attorney who specializes in legal issues involving economic
sanctions.

The unilateral U.S. move, under consideration for several months,
appears to be an acknowledgement that U.S.-led efforts to contain Iran
via the United Nations Security Council have faltered.

Last month, in the face of resistance from Russia , China and
Germany , Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice agreed to postpone
consideration of new U.N. sanctions until next month, pending talks
between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency .

"We haven't seen the kind of action from many countries around the
world who trade with Iran . China , for instance, has increased its
trade with Iran ," said Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns .
"And since we believe in diplomacy and want to make it work, we have
to find another way to make diplomacy work and that is through these
strengthened sanctions."

Burns and Rice went out of their way to insist that the sanctions
weren't a prelude to military action against Iran .

However, the U.S. actions, announced by Rice and Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson , also underscore a growing divergence between
the United States and even its European allies in how they perceive
the Iranian threat.

France , Britain and, to a lesser extent, Germany and others are
focused on Iran's enrichment of uranium, which could be used for
nuclear weapons.

But the United States now finds itself locked in proxy combat with
Tehran on a broader front, including the nuclear issue; the flow of
arms from Iran to Shiite militias in Iraq ; and Iranian backing for
groups such as Lebanon's Hezbollah that oppose U.S. plans in the
Middle East .

"Not all countries may have the breadth of interests the United
States has," Burns said.

Levitt predicted that other countries eventually may follow the
new U.S. sanctions with similar measures. Banks and firms in Germany ,
France and elsewhere have begun reducing business in Iran , and a
34-nation group known as the Financial Action Task Force recently
advised its members' banks to weigh the risks of dealing with Iran .

Some experts doubt the sanctions will sway Russia and China , however.

"I think from Putin's visit to (Iran President Mahmoud)
Ahmadinejad the other day, he's probably not going to go along with
this effort. And the Chinese are playing a very quiet role, but I too
expect they will be very reluctant," said Gary Hufbauer , an expert on
economic sanctions at the Petersen Institute for International Economics .

"Maybe this is the best that can be done," Hufbauer said.

===

Iran summons France envoy over nukes remarks
Farhad Pouladi
AFP
October 3, 2007
http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20071003-095805-6825r


TEHRAN -- Iran Wednesday summoned a top French diplomat to protest at
remarks by foreign minister Bernard Kouchner suggesting Tehran could
be seeking the atomic bomb, state media reported.

"French charge d'affaires Jean Graebling was summoned ... to the
foreign ministry to receive the protest and hear of the Islamic
republic of Iran's dissatisfaction with France's recent positions and
its negative tone," according to a ministry statement carried on state
television's Web site.

Since the election of President Nicolas Sarkozy, France has
considerably toughened its position toward Iran, and called for new
sanctions to oblige Tehran to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

Kouchner - who caused a stir last month by saying the world must
prepare for war with Iran - told Europe 1 radio Tuesday that "nothing
is more dangerous than the situation in Iran.

"The Iranians must stop enriching uranium, because what they are doing
encourages the experts to think they are possibly moving toward the
atomic bomb and not the civil nuclear power to which they have
absolute right.

"It is absolutely vital to have peace," he said. "I did not call for
war, I called for peace."

Iran noted that France's stance was despite Tehran, last month,
agreeing a timetable with the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) for it to answer outstanding questions about its nuclear
activities.

Tehran said it was also "strongly protesting at France's push for
another UN Security resolution and encouraging European nations to
impose additional sanctions on Iran," according to the foreign
ministry statement.

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries member Iran vehemently
rejects charges it is seeking a nuclear weapon, saying the atomic
drive is aimed solely at generating electricity for a growing population.

Major world powers have agreed to wait for November reports by IAEA
director Mohamed ElBaradei and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana
before deciding whether to push for a third round of sanctions against
Tehran.

The Security Council has already passed two resolutions imposing
sanctions over Tehran's refusal to heed ultimatums to suspend uranium
enrichment, a process which creates nuclear fuel, but can be diverted
to make the core of an atomic bomb.

ElBaradei said in an interview with the Financial Times Wednesday that
Iran must provide key details on its program by late November or its
unwillingness to work with the international community will "backfire."

He said the two key issues that required clarification had to do with
Iran's research capabilities and its nuclear weaponization capacity.

"I've told the Iranians: 'This is your litmus test. You committed
yourself to come clean. If you don't, nobody will be able to come to
your support.'"

Iran's foreign ministry had also lashed out at France's stance last
month, saying Paris was mimicking hawkish US policy and was being
"more American" than the White House itself.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned that France's attitude could
hurt its economic interests in the country, with major companies -
including oil giant Total, as well as carmakers Renault and Peugeot -
doing business in Iran.

The Sarkozy presidency has said it wants European firms not to bid for
new business in Iran, and for financial institutions to scale back
investments, in a drive to pressure Iran parallel to UN sanctions moves.

Total had agreed a major deal in 2006 to exploit phase 11 of Iran's
giant South Pars gas field, so as to produce liquefied natural gas
(LNG) for export, but is still yet to execute the project.

Iran has bluntly warned it will go ahead with Iranian firms alone if
the deal is not swiftly implemented.

===

Ahmadinejad turns down chance to star in Oliver Stone film
Robert Tait in Tehran
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2116242,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12#article_continue


Oliver Stone has made two documentaries about Cuba's Fidel Castro,
whom he considers a friend


His thirst for the limelight has driven him to launch a multilingual
blog and issue a string of headline-grabbing statements. But Iran's
president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was surprisingly camera-shy when his
extrovert persona drew the attention of Hollywood, turning down a
request by Oliver Stone, the director of JFK, Nixon and Platoon, to
make a documentary film about him. He dismissed the American
film-maker as "part of the Great Satan", the Iranian regime's standard
term of abuse for the US.

Mr Ahmadinejad's aides said Stone had requested special access to the
president after contacting his office through intermediaries in the
Iranian film business. The 60-year-old director has made two
documentaries about Cuba's Communist president, Fidel Castro, whom he
considers a friend, and another about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

However, Mr Ahmadinejad, who has often criticised Hollywood as a
bastion of pro-Zionist interests, was unimpressed by Stone's radical
credentials after viewing the films.

"While it is true that Oliver Stone is considered to be among the
opposition in the US, the opposition is still part of the Great
Satan," the president's media adviser, Mahdi Kalhor, told the
semi-official Fars news agency.

"We believe that the American cinema system is devoid of all culture
and art and is only used as a device. In the last two years, the
global arrogance [Iranian shorthand for the US and Britain] has made a
lot of effort to portray their own image of Ahmadinejad, not the one
which exists in reality. Hollywood and other Zionist media react to
phenomena they don't like through different processes."

Mr Ahmadinejad's adviser, Javan Shamghadri, said Stone's request might
be reconsidered if he could secure the rights for Iranian film-makers
to make a documentary about the US president, George Bush, and the CIA
without harassment.

Iran has complained repeatedly about how the country is depicted by
Hollywood. Stone's 2004 film, Alexander, a biopic about Alexander the
Great, was heavily criticised because of its sympathetic portrayal of
the ancient Macedonian king, who is disliked in Iran because he is
held responsible for the destruction of Persepolis, seat of the
Achaemenid dynasty, in 330BC. This year, Iran protested to the UN
about another film, 300, which portrayed the battle of Thermopylae
between the Spartans and Persians in 480BC.

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