The kindling behavior preceding outbreak of hostilities with Iran is clearly building. To wit:
I have never claimed that U.S. military casualty statistics is the sum total of how the U.S. war in Iraq is progressing. Without diminishing the death of every precious life, 3020 would be a small price to pay as a nation in a just war of self-defense. We are invoved in a war of hegemony. The price that America is paying is far too high, and it pales in comparison to the price that Iraqis are paying by having a U.S. war of aggression foisted upon them.
Here is the state of affairs as of 16 January 2007. The Sunnis are outraged over the botched executions of Saddam Hussein and two of his hinchmen. The Kurds have both an historical and an ongoing relationship with neighboring Iran. The Kurds, our closest allies in Iraq, are outraged by U.S. actions against Iranian consular officials in Arbil, Iraq. The Kurds also do not want the U.S. fighting a proxy war aginst Iran in Iraq or in Kurdish territory. They don't like that prospect on bit.
Finally, the Shiites are outraged because we won't let them control affairs in Iraq. They won in the elections. The Iraq Prime Minister is a Shiite. The Shiites have close historical and ongoing ties with Iran. News reports say that Iranian intelligence is set to take over in southern Iraq. There is no doubt that United States will engineer the removal of Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki in short order because there is no evidence whatsoever that he will move against Shiite militias in Iraq including those militias alligned with Moqtada al Sadr.
The United States has moved naval forces into the Persian Gulf with the express purpose of targeting Iran's "very negative" behavior according to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. So, although U.S. casualties are down at the moment - and that is good - the situation in Iraq and the region is more dire than ever - something like the calm before the storm IMHO.
Iran target of US Gulf military moves, Gates says
quote:Iraq edges closer to Iran, with or without the U.S.
Mark Tran and agencies
Monday January 15, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Increased US military activity in the Gulf is aimed at Iran's "very negative" behaviour, the Bush administration said today.
The defence secretary, Robert Gates, told reporters that the decision to deploy a Patriot missile battalion and a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf in conjunction with a "surge" of troops in Iraq was designed to show Iran that the US was not "overcommitted" in Iraq.
Speaking in Brussels after meeting Nato officials, Mr Gates said: "We are simply reaffirming that statement of the importance of the Gulf region to the United States and our determination to be an ongoing strong presence in that area for a long time into the future."
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quote:
By Louise Roug and Borzou Daragahi
Los Angels Times Staff Writers
January 16, 2007
BAGHDAD — The Iraqi government is moving to solidify relations with Iran, even as the United States turns up the rhetorical heat and bolsters its military forces to confront Tehran's influence in Iraq.
Iraq's foreign minister, responding to a U.S. raid on an Iranian office in Irbil in northern Iraq last week, said Monday that the government intended to transform similar Iranian agencies into consulates. The minister, Hoshyar Zebari, also said the government planned to negotiate more border entry points with Iran.
The U.S. military is still holding five Iranians detained in Thursday's raid. Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said records seized in the raid and statements made by the detainees showed that at least some of them worked for Iran's intelligence service.
"I don't think there is any disagreement on the fact that these folks that we have captured are foreign intelligence agents in this country, working with Iraqis to destabilize Iraq and target coalition forces that are here at Iraq's request," Casey said Monday.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, added, "We are going after their networks in Iraq."
Iraqis, who have echoed Tehran's calls for the U.S. to release the five men, say the three-way standoff that has ensued reveals more about American meddling in Iraqi affairs than about Iranian influence.
"We, as Iraqis, have our own interest," Zebari said in an interview with The Times. "We are bound by geographic destiny to live with" Iran, adding that the Iraqi government wanted "to engage them constructively."
Zebari's comments reinforced the growing differences between the Iraqi government's approach and that of the Bush administration, which has rejected calls by the nonpartisan Iraq Study Group to open talks with Iran and Syria.
Administration officials accuse Iran of sowing anarchy and violence in the region.
Zebari's remarks came two days after Iraq and Iran announced a security agreement. "Terrorism threatens not only Iraq but all the regional countries," Iranian radio reported Sherwan Waili, Iraq's national security minister, as saying.
The overtures to Tehran also followed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's appointment last week of a security commander for Baghdad over the objections of U.S. officials, who favored another candidate.
American officials oppose the presence in Iraq of Iranian officials and members of the Revolutionary Guard, which is controlled by religious hard-liners in Iran. Washington and Tehran have been at odds for decades and are in a standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions.
But to Iraq, Iran is its biggest trading partner and a source of tourist revenue, mainly from the thousands of Shiite Muslim pilgrims who travel to the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala every year.
In Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish north, much of the economy is founded on trade with Iran and the smuggling of contraband into the Islamic Republic. Since the 1979 founding of Iran's theocracy, Kurdistan has been a transit point for banned alcohol, movies and satellite dishes.
A blow to the economy
The U.S. raid on the Iranian office, which handled visas and other paperwork for Iraqis traveling to Iran, struck at the heart of Kurdistan's economy, which depends on commercial ties with Iran facilitated through that office.
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Faire l'amour, pas la guerre
Make love not war
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