he botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis
Exclusive Report: How a bid to kidnap Iranian security
officials sparked a diplomatic crisis
By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 03 April 2007
A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian
security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was
the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to
Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.
Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces
launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison
office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured
five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses
of being intelligence agents and still holds.
In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective,
The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched
without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two
men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.
Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in
Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led
Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that
Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British
forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the
Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture
were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian
National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda,
the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,
according to Kurdish officials.
The two men were in Kurdistan on an official visit during
which they met the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, and later
saw Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Regional
Government (KRG), at his mountain headquarters overlooking
Arbil.
"They were after Jafari," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of
Massoud Barzani, told The Independent. He confirmed that the
Iranian office had been established in Arbil for a long time
and was often visited by Kurds obtaining documents to visit
Iran. "The Americans thought he [Jafari] was there," said Mr
Hussein.
Mr Jafari was accompanied by a second, high-ranking Iranian
official. "His name was General Minojahar Frouzanda, the head
of intelligence of the Pasdaran [Iranian Revolutionary
Guard]," said Sadi Ahmed Pire, now head of the Diwan (office)
of President Talabani in Baghdad. Mr Pire previously lived in
Arbil, where he headed the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK),
Mr Talabani's political party.
The attempt by the US to seize the two high-ranking Iranian
security officers openly meeting with Iraqi leaders is
somewhat as if Iran had tried to kidnap the heads of the CIA
and MI6 while they were on an official visit to a country
neighbouring Iran, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan. There is
no doubt that Iran believes that Mr Jafari and Mr Frouzanda
were targeted by the Americans. Mr Jafari confirmed to the
official Iranian news agency, IRNA, that he was in Arbil at
the time of the raid.
In a little-noticed remark, Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian
Foreign Minister, told IRNA: "The objective of the Americans
was to arrest Iranian security officials who had gone to Iraq
to develop co-operation in the area of bilateral security."
US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five
Iranian officials they did seize, who have not been seen
since, were "suspected of being closely tied to activities
targeting Iraq and coalition forces". This explanation never
made much sense. No member of the US-led coalition has been
killed in Arbil and there were no Sunni-Arab insurgents or
Shia militiamen there.
The raid on Arbil took place within hours of President George
Bush making an address to the nation on 10 January in which he
claimed: "Iran is providing material support for attacks on
American troops." He identified Iran and Syria as America's
main enemies in Iraq though the four-year-old guerrilla war
against US-led forces is being conducted by the strongly
anti-Iranian Sunni-Arab community. Mr Jafari himself later
complained about US allegations. "So far has there been a
single Iranian among suicide bombers in the war-battered
country?" he asked. "Almost all who involved in the suicide
attacks are from Arab countries."
It seemed strange at the time that the US would so openly
flout the authority of the Iraqi President and the head of the
KRG simply to raid an Iranian liaison office that was being
upgraded to a consulate, though this had not yet happened on
11 January. US officials, who must have been privy to the
White House's new anti-Iranian stance, may have thought that
bruised Kurdish pride was a small price to pay if the US could
grab such senior Iranian officials.
For more than a year the US and its allies have been trying to
put pressure on Iran. Security sources in Iraqi Kurdistan have
long said that the US is backing Iranian Kurdish guerrillas in
Iran. The US is also reportedly backing Sunni Arab dissidents
in Khuzestan in southern Iran who are opposed to the
government in Tehran. On 4 February soldiers from the Iraqi
army 36th Commando battalion in Baghdad, considered to be
under American control, seized Jalal Sharafi, an Iranian
diplomat.
The raid in Arbil was a far more serious and aggressive act.
It was not carried out by proxies but by US forces directly.
The abortive Arbil raid provoked a dangerous escalation in the
confrontation between the US and Iran which ultimately led to
the capture of the 15 British sailors and Marines - apparently
considered a more vulnerable coalition target than their
American comrades.
The targeted generals
* MOHAMMED JAFARI
Powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council,
responsible for internal security. He has accused the United
States of seeking to "hold Iran responsible for insecurity in
Iraq... and [US] failure in the country."
* GENERAL MINOJAHAR FROUZANDA
Chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the
military unit which maintains its own intelligence service
separate from the state, as well as a parallel army, navy and
air force
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2414760.ece
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If you want to make someone angry, tell him a lie; if you want
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