[News] US's Bungled Plan to Kidnap Iran's Top Spook

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/

April 3, 2007


CounterPunch Special Report


The Botched Raid on Arbil


US's Bungled Plan to Kidnap Iran's Top Spook Prompted Hostage Taking

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Arbil, Iraq.

A failed US attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on 
an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a 
crisis that ten weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British 
sailors and marines.

Early in 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 at his house beside Dokan lake 
and later saw Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan 
Regional Government, at his mountain headquarters at Salahudin 
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 very senior 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, in a 
separate interview. Mr Pire previously lived in Arbil where he headed 
the Patriotic Union of Kurdisan (PUK), Mr Talabani's political party.

The attempt by the US to seize two senior 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 newsagency IRNA that he was in Arbil at the time of the raid. 
In a little noticed remark Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr 
Mottaki told the agency: "The objective of the Americans was to 
arrest Iranian security officials who had gone to Iraq to develop 
cooperation in the area of bilateral security."

US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five Iranian 
officials they did seize, and 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 vare no 
Sunni Arab insurgents or Shia militiamen there.

The raid on Arbil took place within hours of President 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 asking: "So far 
has there been a single Iranian among suicide bombers in the 
war-battered country? Almost all who involved in the suicide attacks 
are from Arab countries in the region."

It seemed strange at the time that the US would so openly flaunt the 
authority of both the Iraqi President Mr Talabani and the head of the 
KRG Mr Barzani 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 as Mr Jafari and Gen Frouzanda.

For over 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.

But the raid on Arbil and the attempt to capture two such senior 
Iranian officials was a far more serious and aggressive act by the US 
than in any of these cases. Unlike them it was not carried out by 
proxies but by US forces directly. The abortive raid Arbil raid 
provokd a dangerous escalation in the confrontation between US and 
Iran which ultimately led to the capture of the 15 British sailors and marines.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of 
'<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1844671003/counterpunchmaga>The 
Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq', a finalist for 
the National Book Critics' Circle Award for best non-fiction book of 2006.


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