Bush
Authorizes Shoot-To-Kill
Policy Against Iranians In Iraq
By Jerry White
30 January, 2007
World
Socialist Web
The
Bush administration has authorized US military forces in Iraq to hunt
down and kill Iranian government personnel operating in that country,
according to a report that first appeared in the Washington Post last
Friday. The newspaper said President Bush authorized the new “kill
or capture” program last fall during a meeting with his most senior
advisors, which also resulted in the approval of a series of other measures
aimed at destabilizing the Iranian regime.
The existence of the program
was confirmed by Bush Friday. He told reporters that “it just
makes sense that if somebody is trying to harm our troops and stop us
from achieving our goal, or killing innocent citizens in Iraq, that
we will stop them.” The White House and the Pentagon have long
claimed that Iranian military and intelligence operatives in Iraq have
provided supplies for roadside bombs and technical assistance for attacks
against US troops. Not a shred of evidence has ever been presented to
substantiate these claims.
The targeting of Iranian
citizens has one purpose: to provoke a military confrontation with Iran.
The revelations about the program follow the bellicose threats against
Iran and Syria made by Bush in his January 10 speech, when he said American
military forces would “seek out and destroy the networks providing
advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.” The next
day, US forces raided the Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi city
of Irbil, detaining at least five diplomatic employees. Shortly afterwards
the US dispatched an additional aircraft carrier battle group, armed
with nuclear weapons, to Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf.
These provocations against
Iran underscore the fact that Bush’s decision to send 21,500 additional
troops to Iraq has nothing to do with stabilizing the situation in the
country—a proposition that no serious observer considers achievable
through such a deployment. On the contrary, faced with a military and
political debacle in Iraq, the White House intends to extend the war
to Iran and its population of 70 million people.
According to the Post report,
for more than a year US forces in Iraq have secretly detained dozens
of Iranians, holding them for three to four days at a time, while collecting
DNA samples from some without their knowledge and subjecting others
to retina scans and other identification methods before letting them
go. However, starting last August, top administration officials—including
deputy national security advisor Elliott Abrams, NSC counterterrorism
adviser Juan Zarate, outgoing State Department counterterrorism chief
Henry Crumpton and several representatives from the vice president’s
office and the Pentagon—called for the replacement of the “catch
and release” policy with a much more confrontational approach.
“There were no costs
for the Iranians,” one senior administration official told the
newspaper. “They were hurting our mission in Iraq, and we were
bending over backwards not to fight back.” Another “counterterrorism
official” added, “Our goal is to change the dynamic with
the Iranians, to change the way Iranians perceive us and perceive themselves.
They need to understand that they cannot be a party to endangering US
soldiers’ lives and American interests, as they have before. That
is going to end.”
Under the new policy, US
troops have the authority to target any member of Iran’s Revolutionary
Guard, as well as officers of its intelligence services believed to
be working with Iraqi militias. While allegedly not targeting diplomats
and civilians, the new order will have the effect of placing a target
on any Iranian found in Iraq. In addition to the hundreds of Iranian
government personnel in Iraq, thousands of Iranian religious pilgrims
visit the Shiite holy cities in southern Iraq each year, along with
many others engaged in trade, including the export of electricity, refined
oil and other products.
Though US forces are not
known to have killed any Iranians yet, the Post reports, “Bush
administration officials have been urging top military commanders to
exercise the authority.” During interviews with the newspaper
two unnamed “senior administration officials,” both compared
the Tehran government to the Nazis and the Revolutionary Guard to the
“SS.” They also referred to the Guard members as “terrorists,”
a designation that would at the very least subject Iranian personnel
in Iraq to indefinite detention as “enemy combatants” in
a secret CIA prison.
In comments to the US Congress
last week, the new US commander of military operations in Iraq, Army
Lt. Gen. David Petraeus said a top priority will be “countering
the threats posed by Iranian and Syrian meddling in Iraq, and the continued
mission of dismantling terrorist networks and killing or capturing those
who refuse to support a unified, stable Iraq.” From the standpoint
of White House and Pentagon, as well as the US media, the devastation
wrought by the US occupation does not constitute “meddling”
in Iraq’s affairs. However, Iran—which has a long history
of cultural, economic and political ties with its western neighbor—is
denounced as a “foreign” influence.
The Post reported that the
decision to ratchet up the anti-Iranian operation coincided with the
Israeli invasion of Lebanon last summer, which failed to defeat the
Hezbollah militia forces. “Officials said a group of senior Bush
administration officials who regularly attend the highest-level counterterrorism
meetings agreed the conflict provided an opening to portray Iran as
a nuclear-ambitious link between al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and the death squads
in Iraq.”
Like the propaganda campaign
during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the vilification of Iran
is filled with transparent lies, including suggestions that Tehran supports
al-Qaeda, a Sunni fundamentalist terror group hostile to Shiite-dominated
Iran. Acknowledging the fabricated character of the administration’s
charges, a senior intelligence officer wary of the new strategy told
the Post, “This has little to do with Iraq. It’s all about
pushing Iran’s buttons. It is purely political.” He went
on to suggest that the US was escalating toward an unnecessary conflict
with Iran to shift attention away from Iraq and blame Iran for the US
failure there.
There are sharp tactical
divisions within the US political establishment over extending the war
to Iran and the implications that such a reckless move would have for
the long-term interests of American imperialism. Within the top echelons
of the Bush administration, however, it is apparent a consensus has
emerged that the only means to salvage the disaster in Iraq is to extend
the war.
Although the regime in Tehran
assisted the US invasion of Afghanistan and is aligned with the same
Shiite conservatives the US brought to power in Baghdad, Iran’s
increasing regional influence—particularly in the aftermath of
the toppling of the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein—is considered
an unacceptable obstacle to US plans to exert hegemony over the oil-rich
Middle East. Because of this there is considerable support in Washington
for a war against Iran—within both the Republican and Democratic
parties—despite the massive opposition of the American people
and world public opinion to such a crime.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada,
the Democratic majority leader, said he backed the “kill or capture”
policy toward Iranians operating in Iraq. “We want the American
troops protected in Iraq,” he said in a question-answer session
at the Capitol. “Whatever it takes to protect them is something
we’re certainly interested in. But for the president to escalate
this conflict outside Iraq is something he has to come back and ask
us permission to do.”
For some time, leading Democrats
have criticized the invasion of Iraq for “diverting” US
military and financial resources from the “war on terror”
and squandering public support for other wars more vital to American
interests, including against Iran. The chief concern, however, is that
if the Bush administration takes unilateral action against Iran it will
provoke a massive political crisis in the US.
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