Monday - January 29, 2007

Iran’s Helping Hand?

You’ve got to be kidding me! Iran now wants to offer reconstruction aid to help rebuild the infrastructure their surrogates in the insurgency and Shiite militias helped blow up? Plus they are offering to send troops to “help” the security situation?

What do they think we are - complete idiots?

Oops! Scratch that last question. I see Nancy Pelosi and John Murtha have been traveling across the region from Iraq to Pakistan to Afghanistan. With those two over there the Iranians have every right to think we’re fools and jerks. Never mind ...

Iranian Reveals Plan to Expand Role in Iraq
_{BAGHDAD (NY TIMES) - Jan. 28, 2007}

Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad outlined an ambitious plan on Sunday to greatly expand its economic and military ties with Iraq — including an Iranian national bank branch in the heart of the capital — just as the Bush administration has been warning the Iranians to stop meddling in Iraqi affairs.

Iran’s plan, as outlined by the ambassador, carries the potential to bring Iran into further conflict here with the United States, which has detained a number of Iranian operatives in recent weeks and says it has proof of Iranian complicity in attacks on American and Iraqi forces.

The ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, said Iran was prepared to offer Iraq government forces training, equipment and advisers for what he called “the security fight.” In the economic area, Mr. Qumi said, Iran was ready to assume major responsibility for Iraq reconstruction, an area of failure on the part of the United States since American-led forces overthrew Saddam Hussein nearly four years ago.

“We have experience of reconstruction after war,” Mr. Qumi said, referring to the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. “We are ready to transfer this experience in terms of reconstruction to the Iraqis.”

Mr. Qumi also acknowledged, for the first time, that two Iranians seized and later released by American forces last month were security officials, as the United States had claimed. But he said that they were engaged in legitimate discussions with the Iraqi government and should not have been detained.

Mr. Qumi’s remarks, in a 90-minute interview over tea and large pistachio nuts at the Iranian Embassy here, amounted to the most authoritative and substantive response the Iranians have made yet to increasingly belligerent accusations by the Bush administration that Iran is acting against American interests in Iraq.

President Bush has said the American military is authorized to take whatever action necessary against Iranians in Iraq found to be engaged in actions deemed hostile.

The Iranian ambassador abruptly agreed to a longstanding request for the interview — made repeatedly after the first American seizure of Iranians here on Dec. 21 — and seemed eager to rebut the accusations.

In a surprise announcement, Mr. Qumi said Iran would soon open a national bank in Iraq, in effect creating a new Iranian financial institution right under the Americans’ noses. A senior Iraqi banking official, Hussein al-Uzri, confirmed that Iran had received a license to open the bank, which he said would apparently be the first “wholly owned subsidiary bank” of a foreign country in Iraq.

“This will enhance trade between the two countries,” Mr. Uzri said. Mr. Qumi said the bank was just the first of what he said would be several in Iraq — an agricultural bank and three private banks also intend to open branches. Other elements of new economic cooperation, he said, include plans for Iranian shipments of kerosene and electricity to Iraq and a new agricultural cooperative involving both countries.

He would not provide specifics on Iran’s offer of military assistance to Iraq, but said it included increased border patrols and a proposed new “joint security committee.”

Any Iranian military assistance to Iraq would be fraught with potential difficulties. Aside from provoking American objections, such assistance could further alienate Sunni Arabs, many of whom already suspect that Iran, overwhelmingly Shiite, is encouraging Iraq’s Shiite-led government in persecuting them.

- More ...

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/29/2007 at 11:27 AM   
Filed Under: • Iraq •  
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