US
Continues Detention Of
Five Iranian Officials In Iraq
By Peter Symonds
20 April,2007
World
Socialist Web
In a decision that was barely
reported, the Bush administration resolved last week to continue to
hold five Iranian officials seized in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil
on January 11. While the US and international media was flooded with
stories about Iran’s contentious arrest of 15 British sailors
last month, there was not a murmur of protest over the illegal and provocative
American detention of the Irbil five.
Their arrest came just hours
after President Bush declared in his January 10 speech on Iraq that
the US military would “seek out and destroy” alleged Iranian
networks supplying arms and training to anti-US insurgents. American
special forces broke into the Iranian liaison office in Irbil around
3 a.m., disarmed the guards, hauled down the Iranian flag and seized
computers, documents and the five officials. The raid provoked muted
protests from both the Iraqi government and the Kurdish regional government,
neither of which had been previously informed of the operation.
The Bush administration has
alleged that the detainees were members of the Quds Force, an arm of
the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and were engaged in providing money
and arms to Iraqi militia groups. More than three months after their
detention, however, the US military has produced no evidence, nor have
any charges been laid. US officials have dismissed Iranian claims that
the five had diplomatic protection, even though the liaison office had
functioned as a de facto consulate since well before the US invasion
in 2003 and was in the process of being fully credentialed.
According to a Washington
Post article last weekend, the US administration’s top-level foreign
policy team discussed the issue at a meeting on April 10. The details
provided by unnamed US officials are limited, but nevertheless shed
some light on the inner dynamics of the Bush administration and its
increasingly aggressive stance toward Iran.
As the Washington Post explained:
“Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went into the meeting Tuesday
advising that the men be freed because they are no longer useful, but
after a review of options she went along with the consensus, US officials
say. Vice President Cheney’s office made the firmest case for
keeping them. Their capture signals that Iran’s actions are monitored
and that Iranian operatives face seizure.”
Associated Press confirmed
that Cheney’s staff had “won the internal administration
tussle”. The outcome undercuts recent media commentary that Cheney
and his militarist neo-con allies have been eclipsed in the administration
by the rising star of Rice and her diplomatic initiatives in the Middle
East. While the issue may appear to be relatively minor, Cheney put
his foot down for a reason.
By blocking the release of
the Iranian officials, Cheney is undermining a top-level conference
in Egypt next month organised by the Iraqi government to bring together
the foreign ministers of its neighbours, including Iran, and the permanent
members of the UN Security Council, including the US. Speculation has
been rife that Rice may try to use to the meeting to open a dialogue
with her Iranian counterpart. The Iranian government, however, is threatening
not to attend while the US continues to hold its officials.
Despite all its talk about
seeking “a diplomatic solution” to its confrontation with
Iran, the Bush administration has only heightened tensions with Tehran.
Two US aircraft carrier battle groups have been menacingly stationed
in the Persian Gulf and a third “replacement” is on its
way to the region. In the midst of the standoff over the British sailors,
US warships conducted a major military exercise not far from Iranian
waters. Many media reports have indicated that the CIA and US military
are actively supporting opposition groups and armed militias inside
Iran.
At the same time, the US
propaganda war is running unabated. The White House continues to accuse
Iran of building nuclear weapons and is demanding even tougher UN sanctions
over Tehran’s refusal to shut down its uranium enrichment program.
The US persists in making unsubstantiated allegations that Iran is arming
and training Shiite militias in Iraq. Last week, military spokesman
Major General William Caldwell alleged, rather implausibly, that Tehran
was also arming Sunni fanatics—that is, Shiite Iran was assisting
groups that regard Shiites as heretical enemies. This week, the US Joint
Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace claimed that Iranian weapons were
flowing to Sunni Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Any or all of these
allegations may be exploited by the US in the future as the pretext
for attacking Iran.
The essential lawlessness
of the Bush administration is summed up in its inner “tussle”
over the five detained Iranians. As reported by the Washington Post,
the discussion revolved around purely pragmatic arguments, devoid of
any consideration of principle, international law or Iraqi sovereignty.
Cheney’s view was that the Iranians should be held as a message
to Tehran that its “actions are monitored,” as opposed to
Rice who considered the detainees “no longer useful”.
In effect, the five Iranians
are being held by Washington as hostages to be exploited as the situation
dictates. The Bush administration has ignored repeated calls by the
Iraqi government for their release and invoked the threadbare legal
pretext that the US military in Iraq has the right under UN resolutions
to protect itself. Like many others held by the US in Iraq, the five
Iranians have no recourse to legal action or any other avenue to challenge
their continued detention. The US finally allowed the International
Red Cross to visit the prisoners, but, to date, has refused requests
for Iranian officials to see them.
According to the Washington
Post, the Bush administration decided that the Iranian officials should
remain in custody and go through a periodic six-month review, like the
250 other foreign detainees held by the US military in Iraq. The next
review is not expected until July. As one US official told Associated
Press, the men will be held “certainly a good number of weeks”
and possibly for several months. In any event, they are unlikely to
be released before next month’s conference in Egypt.
A second Washington Post
article revealed last Sunday that the number of Iraqis in US custody
in two huge prison complexes has dramatically increased to 18,000—up
from 10,000 a year ago. In the past month alone, US forces have detained
another 1,000 Iraqis. About 8,000 have been held for more than a year
and 1,300 have been in custody for two years. None has been charged.
They are not treated as prisoners of war and are not afforded basic
rights under the Geneva Conventions.
A final point should be made
about the detained Iranians. One possible purpose for which they may
be exploited is the strange case of former FBI agent Robert Levinson,
who went missing on a trip to Iran’s Kish Island last month. According
to various reports in the US media, Levinson, who was an FBI expert
on organised crime, was on a business trip to Kish Island—a resort
area that does not require a visa to enter. After retiring from the
FBI in 1998, he set up his own private security company and is also
a principal in an international investigative firm. According to Associated
Press, he was last heard from around March 11, while in a coastal area
of southern Iran, purportedly working for an independent filmmaker.
Levinson’s disappearance
has prompted a top-level intervention by the Bush administration, which
has repeatedly asked Iranian authorities via Swiss intermediaries for
information about the Levinson. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack
told the media on Monday that the US had sent another request over the
weekend. McCormack declared, rather hypocritically, that Iran should
conduct “a good faith search for an American citizen,” regardless
of the political differences between the two countries. It may be that
the US is holding the five Iranian detainees in reserve as bargaining
chips in exchange for Levinson, whose dubious activities raise the legitimate
suspicion that he was operating as an American spy.
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