Iran Closes Major Border Crossings With Iraq

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297796,00.html

Iran Closes Major Border Crossings With Iraq

Monday, September 24, 2007

BAGHDAD - Iran closed major border crossings with northern Iraq on Monday

to protest the U.S. detention of an Iranian official the military accused of

weapons smuggling, a Kurdish official said.

At least four border gates have been closed and one remains open, the

governor of the Kurdish province of Sulaimaniyah, Dana Ahmed Majeed, told

The Associated Press. The move threatens the economy of Iraq's northern

region - one of the country's few success stories.

In Tehran, the public relations department in Iran's Interior Ministry said

no decision had been taken to shut the border.

But Kurdish authorities said the Iranians began shutting down the crossing

points late Sunday near the border towns of Banjiwin, Haj Omran, Halabja and

Khanaqin.

The closings came four days after U.S. troops arrested an Iranian official

during a raid on a hotel in Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles northeast of Baghdad.

U.S. officials said he was a member of the elite Quds force of the Iranian

Revolutionary Guards that smuggles weapons into Iraq. But Iraqi and Iranian

leaders said he was in the country on official business and with the full

knowledge of the government.

"This closure from the Iranian side will have a bad effect on the economic

situation of the Kurdish government and will hurt the civilians as well,"

said Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for the autonomous Kurdish government. "We

are paying the price of what the Americans have done by arresting the

Iranian."

A U.S. military spokesman, Rear Adm. Mark Fox, also said Sunday that Iran

has smuggled advanced weapons into Iraq for use against American troops,

including the Misagh 1, a portable surface-to-air missile that uses an

infrared guidance system and could threaten U.S. aviation.

Iran has denied U.S. allegations that it is smuggling weapons to Shiite

militias in Iraq, a denial that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

reiterated in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday.

"We don't need to do that. We are very much opposed to war and insecurity,"

said Ahmadinejad, who arrived in New York Sunday to attend the U.N. General

Assembly. "The insecurity in Iraq is detrimental to our interests."

But the U.S. insists it has evidence to the contrary. On Monday, U.S. troops

killed one suspected militant and detained four others said to be involved

in kidnapping operations run by Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Baghdad's

Shiite district of Sadr City, the military said.

The latest detention of an Iranian official also has taxed relations between

Iraq and the United States, already strained after the shooting deaths of 11

civilians at Nisoor Square in Baghdad on Sept. 16 - allegedly at the hands

of Blackwater USA security contractors.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said the Blackwater incident was among

several "serious challenges to the sovereignty of Iraq" by the company,

adding he would take the case up in discussions with President Bush in New

York, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

Blackwater denies its guards fired illegally and says they were defending

themselves from armed insurgents.

Al-Maliki also condemned the Iranian's arrest, saying he understood the man,

who has been identified as Mahmudi Farhadi, had been invited to Iraq. U.S.

officials said he was a member of the elite Quds force of the Iranian

Revolutionary Guards accused of smuggling weapons into Iraq.

"The government of Iraq is an elected one and sovereign. When it gives a

visa, it is responsible for the visa," al-Maliki told The Associated Press

in an interview Sunday in New York. "We consider the arrest ... of this

individual who holds an Iraqi visa and a (valid) passport to be

unacceptable."

Last week, President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, demanded the Iranian's release

and warned in a letter to America's top commander in Iraq, Gen. David

Petraeus, and the U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, that Iran had threatened to

close its border with Iraq's Kurdish region over the case.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Sunday that

Farhadi was in charge of border transactions in western Iran and went to

Iraq on an official invitation.

The U.S. military said the suspect was being questioned about "his knowledge

of, and involvement in," the transportation of EFPs and other roadside bombs

from Iran into Iraq and his possible role in the training of Iraqi

insurgents in Iran. No charges against the Iranian have been filed yet.

In more violence Monday, an Iraqi security guard was killed and three others

were wounded when a car bomb exploded near the convoy of a local security

official near the northern city of Kirkuk, police Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir

said.