G
_ G O D _
Guest
Tehran Wants to Swap British Sailors for Iranian
Officers Detained in Iraq-Iranian Military Source
http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/iran-wants-to-swap-captives-for-pows-in-iraq
by Ali Nourizadeh
London
A military source close to the command of the Iranian Al-Quds Brigade revealed to
Asharq al-Awsat the motives behind detaining 15 British sailors in Shatt al-Arab on
Friday. He said the decision to take in the British military elements was taken at an
emergency meeting of the Higher Defense Council in the light of a report received by
Brigadier Qasim Sulaymani, the commander of Al-Quds Brigade, and communicated on 18
March to General Hasan Fayruz Abadi, the armed forces Chief-of-staff.
Asharq al-Awsat learns that the report contained a warning that the operations
undertaken by Al-Quds Brigade and the Revolutionary Guards have become exposed to
American and British military intelligence after the arrest by American forces of
Brigadier Tayshizri, the commander of Al-Quds Brigade operations in Iraq, and his
assistant, Brigadier Qayim, and three of their aides in Irbil, and the subsequent
abduction of Jalal Sharafi, the representative of the Intelligence Ministry at the
Iranian diplomatic mission in Baghdad, in addition to the disappearance of Colonel
Amir Muhammad Hussein Shirazi in Turkey. Sources said he has defected but Iran says
he was kidnapped. He is one of the most important intelligence officers in Al-Quds
Brigade in Iraq.
The Revolutionary Guards intelligence had submitted to the joint chiefs of staff of
the Iranian armed forces early in March a plan to abduct a number of American and
British military to exchange them for the detained Iranian officers, who total 15
officer and intelligence agents. But the Joint Chiefs of Staff called for giving the
issue more time and allowing room for diplomatic contacts between the Iraqi and
Iranian Foreign Ministries. It was learned that Foreign Minister Manouchehr Muttaqi
received promises from his Iraqi counterpart Hushyar Zebari that the five officers
arrested in Irbil might be released before the Nowruz feasts (Iranian New Year). But
Nowruz was celebrated in 21 March and no news came about the said officers except for
a phone call one of them had with his wife in the presence of a representative from
the International Reed Cross. It was then that instructions were issued to the units
of the Guards and the Marine Base at Khurramshahr to implement the first part of the
plan by laying siege and detaining one of the British Navy patrols charged with
combating smuggling. The Revolutionary Guards Navy had undertaken a similar act in
June 2004 when it detained two British officers and six soldiers in two boats. They
were released on 21 June 2004 after high-level contacts between London and Tehran:
This paper has been the source for much of the recent news about this incident. Who
knows if they have reliable contacts or not.
But this sure sounds like a typical Iranian gambit.
Of course Iran will never be called upon to explain how these Iranian officers came
to be captured in Iraq in the first place
Iran raises the hostage stakes
Labels: Geopolitics, Middle Eastern Conflict
Hardliners demand British captives be used to teach West a lesson
by Tony Allen-Mills, Marie Colvin and Michael Smith
www.TheTimesOnline.co.uk
http://www.mystrangemind.com/2007/03/iran-raises-hostage-stakes.html
New York, NY, US
The 15 British sailors and Royal Marines captured by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in
a waterway separating Iran and Iraq were yesterday trapped in an outbreak of
aggressive political brinkmanship that may mark a bleak turning point in the West's
relations with Tehran.
Officials in London and Washington remained publicly optimistic that Iran would
respond to international pressure and free them within days, despite claims by a
senior military official in Tehran that the captives had "confessed" to illegally
entering Iranian territorial waters on Friday in a pair of rigid inflatable boats
known as RIBs.
Yet there were ominous signs from Tehran that hardline religious elements were
seeking to turn the incident into a major confrontation with the West. Several
conservative student groups called on the Iranian government not to release the
service personnel until five Iranians detained by US forces in Iraq earlier this year
were released.
The groups also called for the cancellation of United Nations sanctions imposed on
Iran after a unanimous security council vote in New York last night. The new
sanctions were in response to Tehran's refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment
programme, which may be used to build nuclear weapons.
Iran shrugged off the vote and vowed to pursue its nuclear goals. "Suspension is
neither an option nor a solution," said Manouchehr Mottaki, the foreign minister. "I
can assure you that pressure and intimidation will not change Iranian policy."
There was also a demonstration by 500 student radicals gathered on the Iranian shore
of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, where the Britons were seized shortly after they had
completed a routine antismuggling inspection of a dhow laden with vehicles. In a
sinister echo of the US embassy hostage crisis in Tehran in 1979, the students
chanted "Death to Britain" and "Death to America".
The British captives were said by one Iranian source to have been moved yesterday
into the notorious dungeons of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) at the
Ghasre Firouzeh military complex in Tehran.
Their seizure followed a series of embarrassing military setbacks for the IRGC,
founded by the late Ayatollah Khomeini after the Iranian revolution of 1979, and
which now answers directly to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme religious
leader.
There was widespread speculation that the seizure may have been a reprisal for the
arrest by US troops of five members of the IRGC's elite al-Quds Brigade, which has
been accused by the Pentagon of arming and assisting Shi'ite militias in Iraq. The
IRGC has also been stung by a series of apparent defections of high-ranking officers.
Intelligence sources in the region had warned that the IRGC may have been planning
retaliation for what it claimed was a western plot to destabilise Tehran's military
command.
The Sunday Times last week quoted Reza Falker, a writer for the Revolutionary Guards'
weekly newspaper, as saying: "We've got the ability to capture a nice bunch of
blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting ****s."
The Sunday Times article also quoted a Jordanian intelligence officer as saying: "In
Iraq, the Quds force can easily get hold of American and British officers."
The Shatt al-Arab waterway was an obvious target for a premeditated kidnap. Its
waters have been disputed for centuries and were a prime cause of the Iran-Iraq war
in the 1980s. It is still littered with the wrecks of bombed-out ships.
"The problem is that nobody knows where the border is," said Lawrence Potter, a
professor of international affairs at Columbia University, New York. "The British
might have thought they were on their side, the Iranians might have thought they were
on their side."
British officials have long been aware of the area's potential navigational hazards.
In June 2004 eight sailors and marine commandos were seized in a similar incident
when Tehran accused them of straying into Iranian waters. On that occasion the men
were blindfolded and paraded on Iranian television, then released three days later.
Tehran never returned their boats.
The British personnel seized on Friday were in Iraqi waters, according to their
commanding officer, Commodore Nick Lambert of the frigate HMS Cornwall, who said he
had "absolutely no doubt" about their position.
After their uneventful inspection of the dhow, the Britons were on their way out of
the area when they were surrounded by six larger vessels armed with heavy
machineguns. The crews of the RIBs had rifles and pistols.
A Royal Navy helicopter spotted the Iranian vessels towing the inflatables towards a
military base on the Iranian shore. The helicopter made radio contact with the
Iranians, and was told there had been no fighting and that nobody was hurt.
US military officials publicly supported Britain's claim that the seized sailors and
marines were inside Iraqi waters, but sources in Washington privately acknowledged it
was a difficult case to prove. The Iraqi military commander in nominal charge of
territorial waters cast further doubt on the British claim.
"We were informed by Iraqi fishermen . . . that there were British gunboats in an
area that is out of Iraqi control," said Brigadier-General Hakim Jassim in Basra. "We
don't know why they were there." Yet the main concern in both London and Washington
was that legal niceties would rapidly become irrelevant if the incident spirals into
a stage-managed confrontation over Iran's nuclear weapons programme and its alleged
subversion in Iraq.
Yesterday's UN resolution presents Tehran with a tougher sanctions regime, and
several US analysts speculated that the Iranians may feel they have nothing to lose
by precipitating a diplomatic crisis that has conveniently distracted popular
attention from recent setbacks to the country's nuclear programme, a source of
intense national pride.
A Russian decision to suspend supplies of nuclear fuel to the Bushehr reactor in
southern Iran had shaken confidence in the government of President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. But the Shatt al-Arab incident has "helpfully changed the subject", said
one Iranian opposition source.
The Tehran foreign ministry's spokesman, Mohammad Ali-Hosseini, yesterday accused
Britain of "illegal and interventionist" entry into Iranian waters. Kate Smith, the
British charge d'affaires in Tehran, was summoned to the Iranian foreign ministry on
Friday to receive a formal protest. Geoffrey Adams, Britain's ambassador to Iran, had
been out of the country and was returning this weekend.
Most worrying for London were recent belligerent remarks by Khamenei, who was said by
an Iranian source yesterday to have personally approved the order to abduct the
Britons.
The fact that the IRGC has custody of the captives will further complicate efforts to
find a diplomatic solution. The force, considered the elite of Iran, operates
independently of Ahmadinejad's government.
Sources in Tehran said the British prisoners were almost certain to be suffering
similar conditions to those endured by the eight captives held in 2004. They were
subjected to mock executions and told they would be put on trial as spies. If Tehran
concludes this time that its status in the Middle East will be enhanced by a show
trial of British "aggressors", this crisis could last for months.
--
_____________________________________________________
I intend to last long enough to put out of business all ****-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
___________________________________________________
--
Officers Detained in Iraq-Iranian Military Source
http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/iran-wants-to-swap-captives-for-pows-in-iraq
by Ali Nourizadeh
London
A military source close to the command of the Iranian Al-Quds Brigade revealed to
Asharq al-Awsat the motives behind detaining 15 British sailors in Shatt al-Arab on
Friday. He said the decision to take in the British military elements was taken at an
emergency meeting of the Higher Defense Council in the light of a report received by
Brigadier Qasim Sulaymani, the commander of Al-Quds Brigade, and communicated on 18
March to General Hasan Fayruz Abadi, the armed forces Chief-of-staff.
Asharq al-Awsat learns that the report contained a warning that the operations
undertaken by Al-Quds Brigade and the Revolutionary Guards have become exposed to
American and British military intelligence after the arrest by American forces of
Brigadier Tayshizri, the commander of Al-Quds Brigade operations in Iraq, and his
assistant, Brigadier Qayim, and three of their aides in Irbil, and the subsequent
abduction of Jalal Sharafi, the representative of the Intelligence Ministry at the
Iranian diplomatic mission in Baghdad, in addition to the disappearance of Colonel
Amir Muhammad Hussein Shirazi in Turkey. Sources said he has defected but Iran says
he was kidnapped. He is one of the most important intelligence officers in Al-Quds
Brigade in Iraq.
The Revolutionary Guards intelligence had submitted to the joint chiefs of staff of
the Iranian armed forces early in March a plan to abduct a number of American and
British military to exchange them for the detained Iranian officers, who total 15
officer and intelligence agents. But the Joint Chiefs of Staff called for giving the
issue more time and allowing room for diplomatic contacts between the Iraqi and
Iranian Foreign Ministries. It was learned that Foreign Minister Manouchehr Muttaqi
received promises from his Iraqi counterpart Hushyar Zebari that the five officers
arrested in Irbil might be released before the Nowruz feasts (Iranian New Year). But
Nowruz was celebrated in 21 March and no news came about the said officers except for
a phone call one of them had with his wife in the presence of a representative from
the International Reed Cross. It was then that instructions were issued to the units
of the Guards and the Marine Base at Khurramshahr to implement the first part of the
plan by laying siege and detaining one of the British Navy patrols charged with
combating smuggling. The Revolutionary Guards Navy had undertaken a similar act in
June 2004 when it detained two British officers and six soldiers in two boats. They
were released on 21 June 2004 after high-level contacts between London and Tehran:
This paper has been the source for much of the recent news about this incident. Who
knows if they have reliable contacts or not.
But this sure sounds like a typical Iranian gambit.
Of course Iran will never be called upon to explain how these Iranian officers came
to be captured in Iraq in the first place
Iran raises the hostage stakes
Labels: Geopolitics, Middle Eastern Conflict
Hardliners demand British captives be used to teach West a lesson
by Tony Allen-Mills, Marie Colvin and Michael Smith
www.TheTimesOnline.co.uk
http://www.mystrangemind.com/2007/03/iran-raises-hostage-stakes.html
New York, NY, US
The 15 British sailors and Royal Marines captured by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in
a waterway separating Iran and Iraq were yesterday trapped in an outbreak of
aggressive political brinkmanship that may mark a bleak turning point in the West's
relations with Tehran.
Officials in London and Washington remained publicly optimistic that Iran would
respond to international pressure and free them within days, despite claims by a
senior military official in Tehran that the captives had "confessed" to illegally
entering Iranian territorial waters on Friday in a pair of rigid inflatable boats
known as RIBs.
Yet there were ominous signs from Tehran that hardline religious elements were
seeking to turn the incident into a major confrontation with the West. Several
conservative student groups called on the Iranian government not to release the
service personnel until five Iranians detained by US forces in Iraq earlier this year
were released.
The groups also called for the cancellation of United Nations sanctions imposed on
Iran after a unanimous security council vote in New York last night. The new
sanctions were in response to Tehran's refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment
programme, which may be used to build nuclear weapons.
Iran shrugged off the vote and vowed to pursue its nuclear goals. "Suspension is
neither an option nor a solution," said Manouchehr Mottaki, the foreign minister. "I
can assure you that pressure and intimidation will not change Iranian policy."
There was also a demonstration by 500 student radicals gathered on the Iranian shore
of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, where the Britons were seized shortly after they had
completed a routine antismuggling inspection of a dhow laden with vehicles. In a
sinister echo of the US embassy hostage crisis in Tehran in 1979, the students
chanted "Death to Britain" and "Death to America".
The British captives were said by one Iranian source to have been moved yesterday
into the notorious dungeons of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) at the
Ghasre Firouzeh military complex in Tehran.
Their seizure followed a series of embarrassing military setbacks for the IRGC,
founded by the late Ayatollah Khomeini after the Iranian revolution of 1979, and
which now answers directly to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme religious
leader.
There was widespread speculation that the seizure may have been a reprisal for the
arrest by US troops of five members of the IRGC's elite al-Quds Brigade, which has
been accused by the Pentagon of arming and assisting Shi'ite militias in Iraq. The
IRGC has also been stung by a series of apparent defections of high-ranking officers.
Intelligence sources in the region had warned that the IRGC may have been planning
retaliation for what it claimed was a western plot to destabilise Tehran's military
command.
The Sunday Times last week quoted Reza Falker, a writer for the Revolutionary Guards'
weekly newspaper, as saying: "We've got the ability to capture a nice bunch of
blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting ****s."
The Sunday Times article also quoted a Jordanian intelligence officer as saying: "In
Iraq, the Quds force can easily get hold of American and British officers."
The Shatt al-Arab waterway was an obvious target for a premeditated kidnap. Its
waters have been disputed for centuries and were a prime cause of the Iran-Iraq war
in the 1980s. It is still littered with the wrecks of bombed-out ships.
"The problem is that nobody knows where the border is," said Lawrence Potter, a
professor of international affairs at Columbia University, New York. "The British
might have thought they were on their side, the Iranians might have thought they were
on their side."
British officials have long been aware of the area's potential navigational hazards.
In June 2004 eight sailors and marine commandos were seized in a similar incident
when Tehran accused them of straying into Iranian waters. On that occasion the men
were blindfolded and paraded on Iranian television, then released three days later.
Tehran never returned their boats.
The British personnel seized on Friday were in Iraqi waters, according to their
commanding officer, Commodore Nick Lambert of the frigate HMS Cornwall, who said he
had "absolutely no doubt" about their position.
After their uneventful inspection of the dhow, the Britons were on their way out of
the area when they were surrounded by six larger vessels armed with heavy
machineguns. The crews of the RIBs had rifles and pistols.
A Royal Navy helicopter spotted the Iranian vessels towing the inflatables towards a
military base on the Iranian shore. The helicopter made radio contact with the
Iranians, and was told there had been no fighting and that nobody was hurt.
US military officials publicly supported Britain's claim that the seized sailors and
marines were inside Iraqi waters, but sources in Washington privately acknowledged it
was a difficult case to prove. The Iraqi military commander in nominal charge of
territorial waters cast further doubt on the British claim.
"We were informed by Iraqi fishermen . . . that there were British gunboats in an
area that is out of Iraqi control," said Brigadier-General Hakim Jassim in Basra. "We
don't know why they were there." Yet the main concern in both London and Washington
was that legal niceties would rapidly become irrelevant if the incident spirals into
a stage-managed confrontation over Iran's nuclear weapons programme and its alleged
subversion in Iraq.
Yesterday's UN resolution presents Tehran with a tougher sanctions regime, and
several US analysts speculated that the Iranians may feel they have nothing to lose
by precipitating a diplomatic crisis that has conveniently distracted popular
attention from recent setbacks to the country's nuclear programme, a source of
intense national pride.
A Russian decision to suspend supplies of nuclear fuel to the Bushehr reactor in
southern Iran had shaken confidence in the government of President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad. But the Shatt al-Arab incident has "helpfully changed the subject", said
one Iranian opposition source.
The Tehran foreign ministry's spokesman, Mohammad Ali-Hosseini, yesterday accused
Britain of "illegal and interventionist" entry into Iranian waters. Kate Smith, the
British charge d'affaires in Tehran, was summoned to the Iranian foreign ministry on
Friday to receive a formal protest. Geoffrey Adams, Britain's ambassador to Iran, had
been out of the country and was returning this weekend.
Most worrying for London were recent belligerent remarks by Khamenei, who was said by
an Iranian source yesterday to have personally approved the order to abduct the
Britons.
The fact that the IRGC has custody of the captives will further complicate efforts to
find a diplomatic solution. The force, considered the elite of Iran, operates
independently of Ahmadinejad's government.
Sources in Tehran said the British prisoners were almost certain to be suffering
similar conditions to those endured by the eight captives held in 2004. They were
subjected to mock executions and told they would be put on trial as spies. If Tehran
concludes this time that its status in the Middle East will be enhanced by a show
trial of British "aggressors", this crisis could last for months.
--
_____________________________________________________
I intend to last long enough to put out of business all ****-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
___________________________________________________
--
